"Choice.
The problem is choice."
The Matrix Reloaded ends by, once again, undermining everything we thought
we knew about the world.
Neo is, we learn, not The One —
"This is the sixth version."
"Five before me?"
"You’re lying!
This is bullsh—"
he’s merely one in a series of "systemic anomalies,"
an eventuality the machines have already planned for.
"The prophecy was a lie.
The One was never meant to end anything.
It was all another system of control."
This choice was, to put it lightly, controversial
when The Matrix Reloaded was released in 2003.
But fan disappointment was part of the project from the beginning:
the Wachowski sisters made a conscious decision
to subvert the message of their popular and acclaimed first installment.
"A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries.
"The second movie is deconstructionist,
and it assaults all of the things
that you thought to be true in the first movie."
But what does that mean,
and how does it explain the film’s frenzied conclusion,
with Zion on the brink of extinction and Neo in a coma?
Let’s dive into The Architect, the problem of choice,
and the ending of The Matrix Reloaded.
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"The Take."
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For all its mind-blowing reveals and philosophical questioning,
the first Matrix movie is ultimately a typical hero’s journey.
Thomas Anderson, a seemingly ordinary man,
discovers that he is a long-prophesied hero who will free the human race.
"When The Matrix was first built, there was a man born inside...
who had the ability to change whatever he wanted."
But this isn’t a story about just any hero;
it’s one about a mythical, even religious figure.
"The Oracle prophesied his return…
and that his coming would hail the destruction of the Matrix,
end the war… bring freedom to our people."
Accordingly, The Matrix ends with Neo literally dying and coming back to life,
imbued with the powers of the savior of humanity.
"He is the One."
And when The Matrix ends, he can manipulate The Matrix at will,
can stop bullets with his mind, rewrite code while jacked in,
and force the once-unbeatable agents to run from him.
He’s a literal superhero.
"He’s doing his Superman thing."
At the beginning of The Matrix Reloaded,
the Wachowskis take pains to show us how powerful Neo has become
in a fight against the previously invincible agents.
"Hmph.
Upgrades."
By the end of the fight, Neo is literally hovering above The Matrix.
He is now seen as a higher being.
"You got me out, you saved me!"
For the humans of Zion, Neo is almost a god.
"Neo, please, I have a son, Jacob, aboard the Gnosis.
Please, watch over him."
Even skeptics like Link have come around.
"After being on that ship and seeing Neo do the things he can do,
I gotta say...
I’m starting to believe him too."
Neo’s abilities make creating stakes in The Matrix Reloaded difficult
for the Wachowskis—
after all, he can emerge victorious in practically any scenario.
The movie’s biggest action sequences have to aggressively sideline Neo,
whether by putting him 500 miles away from the city,
"You're not gonna believe this, but you’re all the way up in the mountains."
"Really?"
or by forcing the resistance to complete several objectives simultaneously—
unlike Smith, Neo can’t be in two places at once.
"Neo could take them both out easier than we could."
"There’s no time."
Still, for all that The Matrix tells us
that The One is an unbeatable, invincible savior,
the characters in The Matrix Reloaded spend a lot of time undercutting
Neo’s apparent omnipotence,
reminding us that, when it comes down to it, Neo is still flesh and blood.
First, the agents decide to fight him
because, after all, they’re not bound by being human.
"Do we proceed?"
"Yes.
He is still… only human."
When Neo fights The Merovingian’s goons, he wins—but he bleeds.
"You see?
He’s just a man."
And in the biggest single fight of the movie,
Neo reaches his limits:
Though he manages to fend off hundreds of copies of Smith in an epic brawl,
he eventually gets worn down and tired,
because that’s what happens to human beings.
"Are you all right?"
Why does this matter?
The Matrix Reloaded ends with Neo confronting a vision he’s been having
since the beginning of the movie: Trinity dying.
"Still can’t sleep?"
As Zion leader Councillor Hamman points out,
Neo’s difficulty sleeping is an indication
that he’s not become some kind of perfect deity or machine.
"It’s a good sign."
"Of what?"
"That you are, in fact, still human."
Near the end of The Matrix Reloaded, the two sides of Neo—
the invincible, unmovable hero and the anxious, scared human—
collide, when he’s forced to choose between his god-like duties
as The One and his personal commitment to Trinity.
"There are two doors.
The door to your right leads to The Source and the salvation of Zion.
The door to your left leads back to The Matrix—
to her, and to the end of your species."
The Matrix Reloaded is about the problem of choice.
The first Matrix already raised central questions about fate versus free will.
"And don’t worry about the vase..."
"What vase?"
[Vase shatters]
"Would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?"
In their first conversation together,
Morpheus asks Neo how he feels about fate.
"Do you believe in fate, Neo?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life."
The concept of choice in The Matrix trilogy is most famously embodied
by the red and blue pills—
representations of two potential approaches to life
that Neo (and all of us) can take.
"You take the blue pill, you wake up in your bed
and believe whatever you want to believe.
You take the red pill...
and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."
On one level, the red pill is a symbol for what The Matrix is all about—
rejecting a reality where you’re not in control,
and deciding to free your mind.
And even as Neo turns out to fulfill the prophecy of becoming the One,
The Matrix emphasizes that he still has to choose his destiny.
"Being the One is just like being in love.
No one can tell you you're in love.
You just know it."
By the beginning of The Matrix Reloaded,
though, the balance has shifted back toward the weightiness of fate.
"It is our destiny."
Neo’s fixed identity as the One
has replaced Thomas Anderson’s original identity as a slave of the system.
Accordingly, that idea of himself overrides his own judgment.
He’s sitting around, waiting for The Oracle to call
and tell him what to do.
"I just wish…
I wish I knew what I’m supposed to do."
When that does happen and he meets with The Oracle,
Neo seems to be given the next step of his destiny:
going to The Source.
"The machine mainframe."
"Yes.
Where you must go.
Where the path of The One ends."
For much of The Matrix Reloaded,
we might expect that this is the natural arc of the film—
Neo will make it to The Source,
and in doing so, he’ll somehow gain the power to end the war
between man and machine.
And if this were how the movie went, that would pretty much deliver
the same uplifting emotional journey of the first film.
"That's why I have to go."
"Why?"
"Because I believe in something."
Many, if not most of the other characters in The Matrix Reloaded
see their fate as being somehow tied to Neo’s quest for The Source,
and to the destiny they believe he has.
"It is my purpose.
It’s the reason I’m here.
The same reason we’re all here."
In the first Matrix, leader Morpheus is driven by faith
in the One and the Oracle’s prophecy.
But in The Matrix Reloaded, we (and the other characters)
double down on his fundamentalism.
"I believe this night holds, for each and every one of us,
the very meaning of our lives."
Even The Oracle, who has set Neo on this path,
seems to have placed her faith in him to a greater degree than she already did.
"You’ve made a believer out of me."
But in committing themselves
to their sense of fate, destiny, and purpose,
they also commit themselves to seeing the world
the same way the movie’s villains do.
"She is going to die and there is nothing
you can do to stop it."
Take Smith, whose crusade of trying
to homogenize and overtake the entire Matrix comes from
his desperate obsession with purpose.
"There’s no escaping reason, no denying purpose—
because as we both know, without purpose, we would not exist."
Or The Merovingian, who dismisses the possibility of making any choice,
"Choice is an illusion created between those with power
and those without."
and believes all things are determined solely by cause and effect.
"Causality.
There is no escape from it.
We are forever slaves to it."
So the human characters are, we might say, thinking like programs.
But that blind faith in destiny which unites the humans
and their computerized counterparts
crumbles when The Architect confronts Neo with his true purpose:
"You are here because Zion is about to be destroyed."
The Architect embodies a traditional idea of God:
he’s an old white man with a beard who built the world,
and he spends most of his time watching humans from a distance.
His comprehensive, algorithmic knowledge of humanity
allows him predictive power that approaches the supernatural.
"You can’t make me do anything, you old, white prick!"
So it’s fitting that this godly figure
here serves as a representation of external meaning —
of the way that people seek purpose
from something or someone outside of themselves—
something they don’t have to choose.
"Failure to comply with this process
will ultimately result in the extinction of the entire human race."
In the first Matrix, Neo originally expected to be told
if he was the One or not.
Then, throughout The Matrix Reloaded,
Neo waits for someone to tell him his purpose.
But when that happens,
his purpose turns out to be letting thousands of people die,
including Trinity—
something The Architect explains in dispassionate, obtuse language.
"This will be the sixth time we have destroyed it…
The function of The One is now to return to The Source,
allowing a temporary dissemination of the code you carry,
reinserting the prime program."
The supposed "end of the war" the prophecy foretells
is, in fact, a reboot —
a way of simply going through the cycle again.
"After which you will be required to select
from the Matrix 23 individuals…
sixteen female, seven male, to rebuild Zion."
Yet something gets in the way of the machine’s business-as-usual restart
and their mechanism for controlling the One —
the unexpected twist of Neo’s love for Trinity.
"Your five predecessors were, by design, based on a similar predication.
While the others experience this in a general way,
Your experience is far more specific…
Vis-à-vis... love."
"Trinity!"
Even facing the impending destruction of Zion
and the likely extinction of his species,
Neo renounces the supposedly rational decision—
his love is too strong.
So in the end, Neo embraces radical free will —
not only won’t he follow his given destiny,
but he also rejects the limitations of the choice given to him entirely.
"As you adequately put, the problem is choice."
While the Architect presents like an all-powerful god,
this overlord is really just part of another, larger system—
The Architect was created to fulfill a specific purpose
by the machines, who were in turn created by modern humans.
"You are the eventuality of an anomaly,
which despite my sincerest efforts,
I've been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony
of mathematical precision."
So by rejecting this fake God,
Neo must grapple with the revelation that there is no Source,
no Central Authority or Deity,
that can confer ultimate meaning on his existence.
And the purpose he chooses for himself is simply saving Trinity.
The word "existentialist" gets thrown around a lot in pop culture,
but this film’s arc is, literally, the process one goes through
as an existentialist—
acknowledging the lack of an external source of meaning,
and (after overcoming the crisis of that loss)
embracing the opportunity to create meaning and values in your own life.
"Neo goes from being in this sort of cocooned
and programmed world to having to participate
in the construction of meaning to his life."
In fact, the Wachowskis ground The Matrix in the work
of proto-existentialist Arthur Schopenhauer.
"When we wrote The Matrix trilogy,
we had above our wall this amazing Schopenhauer quote, that was:
The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests
is the inexplicable."
When asking what to do
in the face of a fulfilled or otherwise ignored purpose,
there’s a surprising place to look in the Matrix trilogy:
computer programs, creatures of the machine world
that should ostensibly be the enemy of humanity.
Like Neo, these programs were built to do one specific thing:
"See those birds?
At some point, a program was written to govern them.
A program was written to watch over the trees,
and the winds, and the sunrise and sunset."
But our understanding of the world in The Matrix
is complicated by these programs’ fear of death and the choices they make.
"Usually a program chooses exile when it faces deletion."
The programs that are visible to humans in The Matrix—
programs like Seraph, The Merovingian, and even The Oracle—
are those who have consciously chosen to ignore their purpose,
or who have merely outlived it.
Even The Merovingian’s bodyguards have, like Neo, lasted longer
than they were originally intended.
"They come from a much older version of The Matrix.
But like so many back then,
they caused more problems than they solved.
My husband saved them
because they’re notoriously difficult to terminate."
These programs have been given a new reason to live
by The Merovingian,
but absent his leadership, they would be in the same position as Neo—
lost, looking for what gives them purpose.
Neo emerges from his meeting with the Architect
determined to have it all his way:
not only does he catch Trinity as she falls through the air,
he pulls the bullet out of her, then restarts her heart.
"I’m not letting go.
I can’t."
It’s the same thing Trinity did for Neo back at the end of the first Matrix,
and it indicates the Wachowskis’ broader perspective on Neo’s abilities:
The power of The One is less about completing an assigned destiny
within the set parameters of a war,
than it is about ignoring those rules altogether
and doing what you want because you want it.
"I love you too damn much."
At the end of the movie, everyone is in a state of despair.
Zion is facing down a massive army of sentinels.
Neo is reevaluating his existence as The One.
And poor Morpheus has to question
the story upon which he has built his entire life.
"Everything was done as it was supposed to be done.
Once The One reaches The Source, the war should be over."
Eventually, with the destruction of The Nebuchadnezzar,
everything Morpheus thought he knew has been taken from him.
"I have dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me."
Now what?
If there’s another ending comparable to The Matrix Reloaded’s,
it might just be that of Angel, the spinoff of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
The series ends with Angel’s assembled crew,
full of characters who have rejected their original purposes,
choosing to continue to fight for good and justice,
even in the face of overwhelming odds.
"And in terms of a plan?"
"We fight."
For a moment near the end of The Matrix Reloaded,
that’s what the film seems to be leaving us with —
the act of continuing to fight, rather than the ability to win, is the point.
From there, though, the movie pivots— there is a chance to overcome the enemy.
"Something’s different."
The crew of The Nebuchadnezzar are attacked by sentinels,
forcing them to abandon ship.
But Neo, now more deeply aware of his connection to The Source
and of his abilities as The One —
not to achieve some singular purpose,
but as tools to let him achieve what he wants —
is able to shut them down, outside of The Matrix.
"I can feel them."
How exactly Neo accomplishes this feat,
what it will enable him to do next,
and what will happen now that he’s been connected to Bane
(a living man overwritten with the Smith program)
are questions for our next video.
"It’s the question that drives us, Neo."
Ultimately, Reloaded is a transitional movie,
leading in to the more explicitly spiritual themes
of The Matrix Revolutions.
"I see death, and you are all that stands in his way."
By the end of The Matrix Reloaded,
everything the resistance fighters thought they knew has been undercut.
"What are we gonna do?"
"I don’t know."
And likewise, the Wachowskis have unleashed a philosophical tremor
on the viewers,
capable of shaking up and toppling whatever you took away
from the first movie.
"Some people get very upset and they’re like, stop attacking me,
in the same way people get upset with deconstructionist philosophy.
I mean, Derrida and Foucault, these people upset us."
The first Matrix flatters us, and asks us to identify with its hero.
But once the hero loses his center of gravity,
we lash out accordingly.
Are people capable of moving past this kind of existential crisis?
Can the revolutionaries who have long viewed all machines as enemies
in a black-and-white "us versus them" mentality,
learn to work together with programs—
people who are not even technically people?
"I suppose the most obvious question is…
How can I trust you?"
The Matrix Reloaded answers with a resounding "maybe,"
leaving the answer up to us.
"Bad news is there's no way if you can really know
if I'm here to help you or not.
So it's really up to you."
Judging from the original reception of the movie,
it seems like many fans may have ignored that message.
Will it continue to be rejected?
"Let us hope that I was wrong."
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