Explanation of The Matrix
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The more you watch them the more new stuff you discover, e.g. it recently occurred to me that the Zion control mechanism is very similar in spirit to "the book" in 1984, called The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism supposedly written by the anarchist mastermind Emmanuel Goldstein, leader of the Brotherhood. It is later revealed that this book was indeed written by O'Brien, the member of the thought police that eventually arrests Smith. I believe other sophisticated autocratic regimes, like China, have similar multilayered control mechanisms in place.
in non-autocratic regimes, all you need is People magazine and TMZ.
It has often been commented that out of the two futuristic scenarios, Huxley's is much closer to the reality we are experiencing now.
Sowing confusion creates a ton of follow-on merchandising opportunities in the form of special editions, additional cuts (directors cuts, unrated cuts, extended editions), explanatory books, etc because the people who enjoyed the movie will want to continue to learn more about it.
That kind of narrative vagueness allows people to fill in the missing bits with their imagination, which is a very powerful way to get people to like something.
The secret is near the end of the 1st film. Neo was not supposed to try to destroy Agent Smith with his newly discovered realization of power-over the matrix. That was the difference "this time around" that the Oracle realized, and perhaps triggered unexpectedly by causing him to care about Trinity and wanting to protect her.
He overreacted and went too far. By trying to destroy Smith in the way he did, he instead cloned some of Smith's code and Smith took some of his. That was never supposed to happen in the Oracle's scheme.
Then they became two parts of same force trying to cancel each other out, each gaining an awareness they were not supposed to have, Neo gaining deeper control of the matrix and the machine world, Smith an awareness of the human world and physical existence.
The Oracle can predict the future because she's seen the five previous versions of the Matrix and knows the permutations. But she cannot completely predict the current version of Neo because of how he's changed the rules by taking some of Smith's code. To get her scheme back on track, she has to sacrifice herself to Smith in this permutation, which never happened before.
ps. The Merovingian was not the first Neo (second itiration) he was the ruler of their version of hell, a "fallen angel" from the first/second version of the matrix and Seraph was his "right hand man" an Agent enforcer that left to protect the Oracle from him instead - hence "the prodigal child returns" when he takes Neo to the nightclub.
pps. By the way, isn't the Architect the same guardian that told Neo to "SPEAK" in the realworld? Because the Oracle asked the Architect if he was going to "keep his promise". In his Architect form, he never made a promise to Neo. Only the guardian's physical form made a promise to him. Aha?!