Why is choice the single most important part of stories? Because choice reveals character. Static characters make the same choices and react the same way. That’s fine if you’re a procedural network show or sitcom (think Law & Order or Seinfeld, where the maxim of “no hugging, no learning” was enforced all the way until Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer ended up in prison). Everything else requires dynamic characters who question their motives and transform over time, perhaps more than once.
That is what The Matrix sequels understand so perfectly and why, despite structural issues, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions are philosophically powerfully and deeply affecting works of art about free will, love, and what it means to be human.
Plus awesome kung-fu fights.
I of III: The Matrix, Dune and Subverting Salvation
Here’s the nut of it: everybody loves the first film, groundbreaking as it was in its fusion of sci-fi action and philosophically-loaded concepts. To put it lightly, not everybody loves the sequels. Often, they are lumped in with the Star Wars prequels as examples of an auteur mishandling their brainchild. Such a comparison is misleading because the space opera The Matrix series actually resembles (thematically speaking) is another recent sci-fi blockbuster. I’m speaking, of course, of Dune.
The first book in Frank Herbert’s Dune saga and the first Matrix movie do not confound audience expectations, that is, the natural desire for empowerment and a measure of justice or vengeance not seen in our world.
Both follow a protagonist (Paul Atreides and Neo, respectively) on a traditional hero’s journey of self-discovery. Both are examples of origin stories done right, to say nothing of the intricate worldbuilding the authors create to accentuate their prophesized chosen one . Both end with their heroes reaching apotheosis, a grand ascension that completes their conquest of their universes, Paul as the prescient Emperor of the Known Universe and Neo as the all-powerful One who can resurrect himself and fly.
What others might not know is that Herbert envisioned the first three Dune books as a single story until the tale grew so large in the telling that it became a trilogy. Unlike The Matrix, Dune never saw its sequels on the big screen after the initial 1984 version failed until 2003 when a Syfy channel combined the second and third books into a miniseries. With the new movie’s success, director Denis Villeneuve promised a trilogy to take audiences through the second half of the first book and end with the second, Dune Messiah.
Putting aside my desperate desire to see the new series reach the wormy grandeur of my favorite volume, the fourth book God-Emperor of Dune, the trilogy structure speaks to Villeneuve understanding Herbert’s story better than others (as does his stellar Blade Runner 2049, where he already sneakily deconstructed the Chosen One archetype in brilliant fashion). The second (and third) book is a brutal deconstruction of the hero’s journey and salvation stories, for both the protagonist and reader, subverting much of their more straightforward predecessors, which brings us back to The Matrix sequels.
The popular aversion to Reloaded and Revolutions may be because of this narrative alienation. Taken on their own terms, they simply do not contain the unabashed power fantasy that origin stories like the first Matrix and Dune dip their toes into, mostly because the protagonists are so overpowered by that point in the narrative that crippling them in some way becomes necessary for drama. Notably, both Paul and Neo are physically blinded but can still “see” in their sequels, another ancient trope placed in a sci-fi setting. Unlike lesser stories, Dune and The Matrix utilize such classical tropes as prophecy and second sight to transcend clichés rather than enforce them. We know this because, in both series, the hero’s journey does not end in apotheosis but sacrifice.
II of III: Love Conquers All – Walking Through Reloaded
The first Matrix used old archetypes in new ways. People loved it. Then the sequels came along and told the protagonist, and by proxy the audience, that they had been lied to and manipulated all along by an old guy in a white room filled with monitors who calls himself the Architect, the man (actually machine) behind the curtain of the Matrix. (the character’s parallel to a film director sitting behind on-set monitors while the cameras run is deliberate)
In a deliberately anticlimactic, alienating, and frankly, hard to understand scene, the film director, I mean the Architect explains that 99 percent of humans accept the Matrix so long as the machines offer a choice, even just subconsciously, but 1 percent always refuse and, over time, liberate each other and build up into quite a nuisance called Zion. Thus, the Path of the One (read: the first film) was created.
“Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the Matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected and thus not without some measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here.” – The Architect
“Choice. The problem is choice.” – Neo
The Matrix Reloaded
The Path of the One guides an avatar of choice to the Matrix mainframe where the Architect offers a Morton’s fork: accept the Matrix or doom humanity to extinction. The One’s acceptance overrides the built-up refusals, essentially making the choice for humanity, the Matrix is rebooted, and the cycle begins anew. What audiences heard (if they could understand the gobbledygook pouring out of the Architect) was that the Path of the One (i.e. the first movie) amounted to a mechanical raspberry blown at humanity.
However, this narrative displacement is essential for both the characters and audience. By making the prophecy a lie, the film posits that rebellion can be a system of control. To follow the Path of the One is to become just as much a pawn of the Matrix as those who are plugged in. Five previous iterations of the One accepted this. Neo is the first to make a different choice and defy the Architect – not out of spite or high-minded ideals but for love.
“Your five predecessors were, by design, based on a similar predication: a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the One. While the others experienced this in a very general way, your experience is far more specific vis a vis, love.” – The Architect
The Matrix Reloaded
Whereas the previous five Ones all presided over the destruction of Zion, Neo’s love for Trinity drives him to disobey the Path for the first time in the history of the Matrix, just as the Oracle planned when she told Trinity she was destined to love the One aka Neo. Thus love becomes not only an instrument of personal salvation but existential rebellion.
III of III: The Choice was Inevitable – Understanding Revolutions
If, as I’m arguing, the sequels are misunderstood masterpieces, what is the cause of the general distaste? That’s why I really like this video which breaks down the genuine storytelling weaknesses in both films and imagines addressing them without losing the story’s meaning. Some of his suggestions are great, such as saving Smith’s return for a twist ending of Reloaded and giving Morpheus more to do in Revolutions.
Also helpful to know or simply interesting to read is The Matrix 101 and The Matrix Resolutions, which break down the more intricate and misunderstood aspects of the story and worldbuilding, without which I wouldn’t have the clarity to appreciate the movies in full.
Critically, the scene to understand in Revolutions is Neo’s climactic sacrifice. Smith, the former agent-turned-virus, struggles to understand why Neo continues to fight after defeat becomes clear. His nihilistic tirade denigrates every reason or excuse ever proposed for life’s purpose, reserving special contempt for the concept of love. At an utter loss, he demands to know why Neo keeps fighting.
“Because I choose to.” – Neo
The Matrix Revolutions
Whereas the Architect treated humanity’s capacity for choice with cold calculation, Smith seethes with hatred, malice and, it’s implied, jealousy. Smith’s adoption of such negative human characteristics parallels Neo’s growing empathy for machines, which leads him and Trinity to Machine City in a last ditch effort to forge a truce.
In contrast, Smith learned to hate humanity while forced to act as an agent of the Matrix. When Neo inadvertently freed him and turned him into a rogue program, he became a virus, the exact thing he accused humanity of being in a monologue to Morpheus in the first movie.
This hypocrisy is so central to his character it becomes the key to his defeat. He mentions at the start of their final duel that, despite having countless clones at his disposal, only Oracle-Smith will fight Neo because he already foresaw his “victory.” However, as the Oracle previously told Neo, no one can see past a choice they don’t understand.
Smith, still just a pawn of the Oracle despite having her foresight, cannot see past his irrational need to destroy Neo or how such an act will bring about his destruction. When they reach the end of the fight he foresaw, he eagerly acts out the various preordained motions. Then his expression shifts and for the first and only time in the entire trilogy, Smith says Neo’s name.
“Everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo.” – The Oracle
The Matrix Revolutions
This tells us it is the Oracle speaking through Smith, some glimmer of the program Smith overwrote, the reason she allowed him to absorb her, her final nudge to Neo. The line harkens back to one spoken by the Architect:
“. . . the moment of truth, wherein the fundamental flaw is ultimately expressed and the anomaly revealed as both beginning and end.” – The Architect
The Matrix Reloaded
Immediately after the Oracle speaks through him, Smith doesn’t understand what he said or why he said it. Neo, on the other hand, is calm and says Smith’s favorite word, “inevitable.”
Why is the avatar of choice echoing his enemy’s deterministic talking points? Beyond Neo completing character synthesis, he is baiting Smith to act on the only impulse he knows without considering the suicidal consequences. In the end, Smith becomes just as predictable and self-destructive as the humans he despises, a threat to organic and synthetic life alike, whereas Neo selflessly sacrifices himself to end the war between humans and machines.
Smith absorbing Neo and being deleted can be interpreted a couple ways. Likeliest is that when Smith copied over Neo, he copied his choices as well, the last of which was acceptance of death. Thus, the Source, connected via Neo’s body, used the loophole to delete the Smith virus. Another possibility is that, without his thesis Neo, antithesis Smith had no purpose in the system and was thus up for deletion. Whatever the case, the trap was laid by the Oracle.
“You and I may not be able to see beyond our own choices but [the Architect] can’t see past any choice . . . He doesn’t understand them. He can’t. To him they’re variables in an equation. One at a time, each variable must be solved and counted. That’s his purpose. To balance the equation.” – The Oracle
What’s your purpose? ” – Neo
“To unbalance it.”
The Matrix Revolutions
What choice of her own defies the Oracle’s predictive power? Giving herself up to Smith, an irrational choice based on her faith in Neo and hope for peace.
She orchestrated the entire conflict in the trilogy by 1) playing Cupid to Neo and Trinity, thus ensuring Neo makes a different choice when he confronts the Architect and 2) using the threat of Smith as leverage to force the Machines to accept Neo’s truce.
The maniacally-evil Smith supersedes the cold and unfeeling Machines (represented by the Architect) as antagonist because, in a classic Jungian sense, Smith is Neo’s subconscious shadow. All the worst tendencies of humanity missing from Neo are present in Smith. A large part of Freudian psychoanalysis is about integrating the shadow into the conscious self to become whole. Earlier, the Oracle describes the relationship between the two as symbiotic.
“He is you. Your opposite. Your negative. The result of the equation trying to balance itself out.” – The Oracle
The Matrix Revolutions
It takes all the way until the end of the third movie for Neo to realize he will not defeat Smith by fighting him. He must follow Freud’s advice. What makes this more than a symbolic gesture is how the plot mechanics brilliantly line up character and theme like a winning game of tic-tac-toe.
First, recall how, after a brief fight, Oracle’s guardian Seraph told Neo in Reloaded , “You do not truly know someone until you fight them.” In this proper context, Neo’s many duels with Smith, including their final confrontation, are vital steps along the path to accepting Neo’s final realization: he must sacrifice himself to Smith.
On some level, Smith knows what’s coming. Both in his earlier scene with the Oracle and here at the end, he questions why he’s doing what he’s doing, even telling Neo to get away from him in fear. It never matters. He mindlessly does the one and only thing he’s good for: copying himself. When he does, he also absorbs Neo’s choice to sacrifice himself. That’s why his last words are “Oh, no, no, no, it’s not fair.” Blinded by irrational hate, Smith could not understand that fulfilling his goal of destroying Neo would destroy him, too.
The size of the Oracle’s gamble cannot be overstated. She genuinely risks Smith actually winning. Bear in mind, no one can see past a choice they don’t understand, not even the Oracle. Giving herself up to Smith in Revolutions is irrational because it defies all probability. This points to her as an evolved and enlightened machine, the one who has most probed the human psyche, and has learned to make choices because on hope, which the Architect dismisses as “the quintessential human delusion.”
Hope that Neo would save Morpheus in the first movie, not out of heroism but selflessness . . .
Hope that Neo would defy the Architect, choose love, and save Trinity . . .
Hope that Neo would make the ultimate sacrifice, end Smith, and bring peace to the world . . .
And she wins.
IV of III: Holy Shit, Look at The Matrix Resurrections!
. . . Or does she?! I have no clue what’s going on in this trailer but I dig the fuck out of it. The Matrix is no longer green and instead full of sunlight as it was at the end of Revolutions so this isn’t some stealth prequel or something (A shot of a blinded Neo jacked in! Is Jonathan Groff the new Smith? Why is footage of the first movie playing on a wall in the fourth movie?). Trinity’s return is welcome but perplexing; I suppose they could have retrieved her body as they did Neo’s and revived them somehow but why?
More inexplicable is the return of Morpheus played a new, younger actor. People always seem to put on sunglasses and leather when they jack into the Matrix. Did they start making themselves younger and sexier too? We shall see. The irony of the most original blockbusters ever made becoming IP mined for a legacy sequel is not lost on me, but my faith in writer/director Lana Wachowski is unshakeable.
The original trilogy is glorious because of, not despite, their flaws, from the over-the-top CGI action to the infamous cave-rave scene in Zion. The series pioneered immersive multimedia crossover between film, animation (The Animatrix), and video games (Enter the Matrix, The Path of Neo & The Matrix Online) packed with details that no one but a Matrix lover could appreciate. Here’s a scene that’s only available in the Enter the Matrix game but still illuminates character and plot regarding the secondary character Ghost.
Like the hallway of backdoors our heroes traverse, the amount of ideas and themes visited in The Matrix movies is absolutely door-busting.
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