When the credits rolled, most people who saw The Matrix Reloaded were hoping things would pick up on the third instalment. By the time The Matrix Revolutions came out, talk that this trilogy would surpass even the original Star Wars films became a joke.
After all, it was George Lucas and not the Wachowskis, who drew heavily from Buddhism, Catholicism and whose movies where chock-full of religious symbolism. Right. Right?
But the two filmmaker brothers from Chicago had, in fact, seemingly made the “films with depth” the audience had asked for. Apparently, we just didn’t realize. A couple of daring writers have come forward to explain to us all just why we may have gotten it all wrong.
Brian Takle begins his first essay with the subject of the Architect: “This is the Creator God, the Father God. Brahma is a good parallel. Brahma creates the world but does not rule it. Brahma essentially just sits on his lotus flower. He is like the cosmic Clock-maker of the Deists who winds up the springs and then only watches things happen. But in addition to this Brahma-like quality, the Genesis God and the Architect both have this forbiddance against knowledge.”
While discussing rebellion he makes the following point: “It's often overlooked that the serpent was created by God and put into the Garden. I mean, who else would have created him? It is a mistake to read Genesis with the assumption that the serpent is evil. He's not any more evil than dish soap is evil for breaking up the grease on your plate. One (I think good) translation of the adjectives applied to the serpent is "crafty." As in, he has knowledge of crafts. This is really Loki, who is also branded as a deceiver or a trickster, and that's part of his nature, but Loki also brings new technology: he is crafty, an innovator. He is the quintessential hacker.”
“Recall that the Architect scene happens in utterly clean, utterly white perfection. The Biblical reference is clear enough. Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, and the rest of Zion have rejected God's Garden of Eden where all their needs are taken care of in favor of a hard, scrabbling existence where at least they have free will.” As for Neo and Trinity making love during the rave scene, he offers: “In addition they appear under a dome, which is the Dome of Heaven, so this is a Blessed Union.”
A programmer called Juha Nieminen, has the following to say on the subject of Morpheus stating that machines need humans for energy to survive, as though they were “batteries”: “The energy pipes transporting some type of energy from the humans to the machine city are not for survival, but for other purposes. This is probably somehow related to the desire of the machines to evolve their consciousness, an ability they do not possess on their own. It's also the reason why they use humans and not cows.”
This leads one to wonder why agents aren’t simply perfect “superhuman” entities. Nieminen, with his programming knowledge, goes on to state that: “Making an actual jump launches the proper physics subroutine in the Matrix program code to simulate a normal jump. From there it's enough to tamper it just slightly to get a boosted jump. This slight "nudge" is much easier to do than a teleportation would be. Teleporting oneself from one building to another without first triggering any physics subroutine would require a much heavier tampering of the system, which they simply are not able to do.”
Back to Takle: “I was gratified at the wu hsing quality of the trilogy. The wu hsing are the five Chinese elements, in constant motion, and these elements generate each other. That's the universe of the Matrix. Humans caused the deification of machines, which cause the deification of humans, which cause the deification of machines. What I especially like about wu hsing is its complexity. Nothing is clear-cut black-and-white. That feels like the philosophy of elders, and I find that very comforting.”
On the Mobil station: “Mobil is Limbo. The theme of the entire film is described by that name. Limbo, the limbus patrum, is the place where purified souls go to await the ascension of Christ into heaven. I ask you to please go back and re-read that last sentence again. Think about what they are waiting for.” Furthermore: “The other confusing aspect of Mobil is what the program family is actually doing. I'll clear that up before I dig into the heart of this scene. Mobil is a place between the machine city and the Matrix.”
More:
http://www.wylfing.net/essays/
http://warp.povusers.org/HistoryAccordingToTheMatrix.html
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