When I wrote up part 1 of my interpretation of The Matrix I originally intended to only do two parts, one for the first movie and one for the sequels. Upon watching all of the movies again I realized that my initial estimates of two parts was far too short to analyze all the symbolism in these movies. I will do my best to keep from dragging these out but I have a lot of material to cover because these are very dense, symbolic movies. I also intend to separate the themes into categories to help keep myself on track and make things easier to read
Systems of Control
What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this. (Holds up battery)
The final conclusion Morpheus draws to explain to Neo the what and why of the Matrix is that it controls us so we can be harvested for energy. However, the explanation of the Matrix given in the movies does not fully explain everything that happens. In all of the movies it is clear that people jack in to the Matrix via a long spike inserted into the plug at the base of the skull; it is safe to assume this spike works by sending and receiving electrical signals to and from the human brain thus acting as a redirection. Our brain sends movement signals to the body which are received by the spike and transmit to the Matrix to which the Matrix responds by sending the appropriate response signals back to the brain.
A system like this makes sense in a lot of ways but there are a few problems: first, and most important, is the fact that if you die in the Matrix then you die in real life. Morpheus explains this by saying, "the body cannot live without the mind" and thus if you die in the Matrix your mind dies and then your body with it. But the brain does not die when your five senses tell you you're dying, the brain dies when it is deprived of oxygenated blood. For now though lets assume that Morpheus is right in his conclusion, that still doesn't explain what actually happens in the movie. The first time we see bodily damage from the Matrix is when Neo is in the jump program and manages to face plant into a road, this busts open his lip and he bleeds a little bit, when he wakes up from the Matrix his lip is bleeding. That isn't possible with Morpheus' explanation; the mind can't simply will a person's lip to split open like that. Some might say "what if he bit his lip at the impact?" To which I would respond, "except that later on we see Mouse get shot multiple times and this not only causes him to convulse but it causes him to cough up massive amounts of blood."
There are also other things that throw the idea of jacking in to the Matrix out the window: for example in The Matrix Reloaded, Neo manages to destroy sentinels just by thinking about it, the same way he would in the Matrix, and he does this again in The Matrix Revolutions, taking on the entire defense of the machine city. He also goes into a coma and is connected to a sort of limbo between the Matrix and the real world, which doesn't make any sense. How can he be jacked in to the Matrix in any form without the metal spike? And we know it's connected to the Matrix because Neo talks to programs on their way to see the Marovingian, an extremely old and powerful program within the Matrix. Plus, when Trinity, Morpheus, and Seraph come to rescue Neo they take him from the limbo back into the Matrix itself and then he jacks out of it having inexplicably gone from comatose to physically jacked in at some point. The movies explain this by claiming that Neo touched "the source" which allowed his powers as The One to extend beyond the Matrix, but we are never told what the source is or why it exists.
The only adequate explanation of this is that the humans never actually leave the Matrix. What they refer to as the Matrix is a virtual world and what they consider the real world is another part of the same virtual world. Many video games deal with parallel realities and it would be no problem to create two separate worlds. This theory also fits very nicely with the explanation we are given by the Architect when he meets Neo.
The Architect tells Neo that the original Matrix was designed to be a perfect world and that every human would be happy, however no human truly accepted the program and thus had to be unplugged and killed, which is a waste of energy for the machines. He then explains that while later versions of the Matrix were designed to more closely resemble the imperfections of the real world as it used to exist, the final method of getting people to accept the program was to give them a choice between the Matrix and the real world at a nearly unconscious level. Unfortunately, while this is the most successful method of making people accept the program of the Matrix it is also inherently flawed as a very small percentage of people will still not accept the program. The Architect refers to these people as anomalies and states that the emergence of an anomaly among the crop of humans is the emergence of The One; Neo is the anomaly that did not accept the program. However, this is not an adequate explanation either because several people never accept the program completely which is how they come to find the resistance who have been unplugged and escape the Matrix themselves.
Where the theory of dual virtual realities comes in is that the choice changes. Instead of choosing between the Matrix and the real world, the people are choosing between the two virtual worlds. This explains why people can reject the Matrix naturally without being The One, and what makes The One so special is that he rejects both worlds. Even though his dual rejection of reality is on an unconscious level, the choice was on an unconscious level as well and thus Neo gains the ability to control things in both worlds as The One without knowing why. This dual virtual reality theory also ties back to both the speech given by the Merovingian and the themes of the first movie.
Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.
The Merovingian directly tells Neo that some choices are useless, such as choosing the Matrix or choosing the real world because either way they are still under control by the machines. Everything starts to make more sense when we realize that there are two virtual worlds and nobody ever actually escapes. People are given a choice of accepting the Matrix or finding their way to the real world, but either way the outcome is essentially the same. Nearly everyone accepts one world or the other and thus the system of control that is the Matrix becomes a perfect balancing act. A balanced equation.
In part 3 I'll talk about the idea of a balanced equation between the two worlds and within the Matrix itself.
Because nobody that is posed with a choice between two solutions expects that a third or more might be available. Assuming that only the two shown to them exist is the simplest method, and is often chosen.
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