Gabriel Renggli 1 What Was the Matrix Trilogy All About? [This text was written before the release of The Matrix Resurrections, and originally published on the website The Zurich English Student.] The Matrix movies are a strange beast. The Matrix redefined the action genre. It wasn’t just cool; it was a different cinematic language. The Matrix Reloaded was bigger, louder, and less focused, but it was exciting. And I vividly remember The Matrix Revolutions as one of my early lessons in just how thoroughly an anticipated production can let down its fan base. It seems that since Revolutions, all three films have come under increased scrutiny, and although the first one is often exempted from some of the harsher criticism, the consensus regarding the sequels is that they are a case of form over substance. As in: the ideas these films explore are essentially a fake: a pale imitation of profound thought, dressed up in verboseness and selfimportant symbolism, but making no actual sense. Since it so happens that I disagree, allow me to present to you my pet theory of what the Matrix trilogy was all about. Gabriel Renggli 2 No, not that. It was never about people living in a computer simulation, raising questions about reality, illusion, and how we can know the difference. The VR aspect of these films is a gimmick that allowed the Wachowskis to play fast and loose with physics in their fight scenes. It is not the problem that drives their plot or their philosophy (as was picked up on by Jean Baudrillard, who pointed it out rather bluntly). The Matrix trilogy has little to say on the whole issue of truth and illusion. There is a grand total of three sentences in which Morpheus talks about dreams that seem real, and another three sentences in which he explains that electrical signals, correctly delivered to the brain, are indistinguishable from the world as reported by your senses. On the question of what it means to blur the line between reality and simulation, my guess is that the Wachowskis were not, at the end of the day, all that interested in this theme. My reason for saying so is that, as a plot device, the virtual reality of these films is broken. The idea that there is a VR in which the laws of physics need not apply, because people can manipulate computer code in order to, say, move faster than a bullet, this idea does not even begin to explain why there should be an Oracle in this VR. That’s right, there was an Oracle in these movies. And she lives up to her name, predicting the future down to such details as when Keanu Reeves will knock over a vase, feel like sitting down, or have a hankering for candy. Does this strike you as something NPCs normally know about users? Because that is what these films are saying: the matrix is a virtual world consisting of layers and layers of programmes, and one of these programmes can predict future decisions made by the real human beings who are logged into this virtual world. By the time the second film comes around, even Neo is predicting the future, as his recurrent nightmare about Trinity falling anticipates events that later actually take place. To quote the One himself: Gabriel Renggli 3 “Whoa!” Here’s my thesis. The philosophical problem that informs these films is not reality vs. simulation, but the question of free will. The concept of VR as a prison is a thematic extension of this question. This is how the matrix is talked about from the very beginning. In the first film, Morpheus answers his own question, “What is the matrix?”, with a single word: “control.” The problem is not that the matrix is digital and that synthetic is bad, it’s that, as Morpheus puts it: “as long as the matrix exists, the human race can never be free.” Consider this: how is the Matrix built? As Neo is able to see by the end of the first film, it’s code. It is a programme, so everything in it, from the shape of objects and living beings down to the tiniest particles allowed for by the graininess of the simulation, and even including the “physical” laws of how these elements interact, has to be stored somewhere in the form of definite data (a 1 or a 0). This brings the matrix rather close to the idea of a deterministic universe: the theory that our world is mechanistic and leaves no room for material or logical fuzziness. One of the main questions raised by this understanding of the universe is precisely that of free will. Would not any decision you think you are making, in such a world, be the playing out of an ultimately physical chain-reaction (particles forming biomolecules forming neurons and neural circuits) that could, in theory, have been computed in advance, meaning that you are not in fact free? And if you connect yourself to a computer, literally letting it read out your brain and calculate a world on that basis, isn’t the result going to be rather similar? Hence my impression that the role of VR is thematic rather than literal in these films. Computers crunching numbers is one way of posing the question: Just how predictable is our world, and how free or unfree does that make us? In the second film, the Wachowskis introduce the character of the Merovingian to drive home this point. The Merovingian loves to go on (and on) about this subject: “You see there is only one constant. One universal. It is the only real truth: Causality. Action, reaction. Cause and effect.” Morpheus objects: Gabriel Renggli 4 “Everything begins with choice.” Answer: “No, wrong. Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.” The dialogue could not be more on the nose here. The heroes are standing up for choice. The villain is proclaiming his belief in determinism. And then the Wachowskis have the villain himself explain the only empowering response to a world in which outcomes are already defined: “Causality. There is no escape from it. We are forever slaves to it. Our only hope, our only peace is to understand it, to understand the why.” To me, this sounds not unlike the argument made by existentialist philosopher Albert Camus, who in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” proclaims that “crushing truths perish from being acknowledged” (88). Both statements suggest that although we may not be able to change the facts, there is value in bringing our thinking into alignment with the facts. As Camus’s title indicates, his main example of this process is Sisyphus, the figure from Greek myth condemned to push a boulder uphill for all eternity. Famously, Camus goes on to end his essay with the statement: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy” (89). Why? Because “[h]is fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing” (88). Zeus may be able to force this punishment on Sisyphus, so Sisyphus does not have any actual choice, but by identifying with his task, he can nonetheless make it his own. If this seems paradoxical, that’s because it is. Camus was concerned with showing that there is freedom even in situations that apparently provide none, and he did this not by proving the appearance to be wrong, but by arguing that there is freedom at a different level: that of the subject’s inner attitude. Now, there’s plenty wrong with this idea. Michel Foucault called it an “existentialism of self-flagellation” because, in this view, “everyone is responsible for everything” (189). Suggesting, for instance, that victims of violence would experience perfect freedom if only they were to adopt the proper attitude regarding what is being done to them is a template for victim-blaming. This aspect is particularly worrisome when we recall that Gabriel Renggli 5 Camus published his essay in 1942, in the midst of some of the most horrific crimes in recorded history. It is important to realise, then, that although Camus’s approach was incautious, his intent was neither to attach blame nor to promote fatalism or resigned acceptance. His essay has more fight in it than that. At its centre stands a jubilant humanism whose most fervent belief is that no matter what fate, the gods, or sheer accident could throw our way (up to and including the unending torture of Sisyphus), human beings have the philosophical and moral tools to triumph over it. This brings me back to the Oracle. Her knowledge of the future links her to the theme of necessity, but the use she makes of this knowledge constitutes an existentialist reappropriation of necessity. Her prophecies tell people exactly what they need to know in order to fulfil their various roles. She tells Morpheus that he will find the One, and once he’s heard this, he continues searching until he does. She tells Trinity that she will fall in love and that that person will be the One, and Trinity manages to pass that conviction on to Neo. And the Oracle tells Neo that Morpheus will sacrifice his life for him. She already knows that both of them are going to survive the events of the first film, but giving Neo this piece of information is exactly the nudge he needs to go and break Morpheus out of captivity (in the process giving us one of the coolest gun fights in cinema history). As the Latin motto over her door – “Temet Nosce” (“know thyself”) – spells out, what she does is less about knowing the future of the world than about subjective attitudes. Or, as Morpheus tells Neo: “Try not to think of it in terms of right and wrong. She is a guide, Neo, she can help you to find the path.” In that same conversation, Neo asks: “And she knows, what, everything?” Morpheus’s answer is: “She would say she knows enough.” Consider the difference in meaning here. “Everything” is an absolute term; it concerns knowledge that exhausts a situation, leaving zero wiggle room. “Enough” is a subjective term; it concerns knowledge that empowers the subject in question. In condensed form, these terms represent two different outlooks regarding what it means to fully understand the situation you are in. “Everything” is deterministic and fatalistic, “enough” is existentialist and empowering. That’s also how I would interpret the following exchange between the Oracle and Neo, from Reloaded: “If you already know, how can I make a choice?” “Because you didn’t come here to make the choice. You’ve already made it. You’re here to try to understand why you made it.” This is precisely one of those bits of dialogue that seem to have people up in arms about how the Wachowskis combine clever-sounding words in ways that make no logical sense. But you can read their use of “understanding” here to mean the paradoxical shift in agency also described by Camus. Neo may have been placed on a path leading to an outcome already determined, but it is up to him to now invest that path with meaning. One of the most important scenes in Reloaded dealing with the issue of choice is Neo’s meeting with the creator of the matrix, the Architect. Admittedly, it is a risky strategy to make Gabriel Renggli 6 a dialogue scene involving this particular character the missing link between the film’s plot and its thematic concern with free will. To many, the architect’s stilted way of talking – presumably meant to evoke an AI’s august intellect – reads as meaningless blather. Far from talking nonsense, however, the Architect expresses some of Reloaded’s central ideas. He explains that Neo is the result of “an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate.” The anomaly in question is that human beings connected to the Matrix only “accepted the program as long as they were given a choice.” In order to make the matrix work, that is, there had to be a possibility of opting out, of waking up from the programme. As Neo succinctly puts it: “The problem is choice.” The machines, however, know there is a choice. The only matrix-programme that works on humans is one that humans have an (unconscious) ability to reject. For this reason, there have always been people waking up from the matrix. Far from constituting something unforeseen, these escapees are an element the machines have long accounted for. They are aware that “those that refused the program, while a minority, if unchecked, would constitute an escalating probability of disaster.” The machines’ response to this problem is to allow these humans to find their way to the underground city of Zion. Then, as the Architect further explains, the machines destroy this city at periodic intervals (this little cat-and-mouse game seems logistically wasteful for a machine civilisation that has no qualms about processing dead humans as liquid food, but never mind). The events of the films, we are told, are leading up to the sixth reiteration of this process. All of this tells us two things. First, in the story the Wachowskis are telling, choice is such an integral part of reality that human beings will accept a virtual reality only if presented with a choice. Other VRs simply do not work. Secondly, although choice is present, it does not change the effective outcome. Those who escape the matrix have not moved outside the machines’ control, as the machines know exactly where they are and will destroy that population before it reaches a potentially dangerous size. Even the One is part of this plan. His job is to select 23 Gabriel Renggli 7 people still connected to the matrix, who will then be released and form the core population for the next reboot of Zion. As in existentialism, the choice involved in exiting the matrix is really more of a moral triumph than a practical one. How, then, does Neo defeat this system in The Matrix Revolutions? By using the one variable that has deviated from the machines’ carefully laid-out plan: Agent Smith. Smith has essentially turned into a virus, producing copies of himself by assimilating other programmes as well as the matrix-avatars of humans. He has become sufficiently destructive and powerful to threaten not just the matrix, and thus the machines’ energy supply, but the machine city itself. This allows Neo to strike a deal with the machines. They will leave Zion in peace, indefinitely, and he will in turn kill Agent Smith for them. What ends up happening, however, is that Neo allows Smith to assimilate him. At that point, the machine Neo is physically connected to in the real world uses that Neo/Smith connection to access Smith and delete him. There is an obvious saviour-motif here, but more humanist and existentialist themes are also present in the final fight between Smith and Neo. At first, this confrontation is something of a let-down after having previously seen Neo fight dozens of copies of Smith in Reloaded. Here, Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving punch each other in the rain, punch each other in slow motion, punch each other through walls, and punch each other in the air. Riveting. But then we get the moment the Wachowskis have been building up to. Agent Smith has beaten Neo into submission and is berating him. Life is without meaning. Life is without purpose. There is no point in continuing the fight. “You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can’t win. It’s pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?” Gabriel Renggli 8 “Because I choose to.” That is awesome. Neo knows he is going to lose. It’s actually the first thing he says to Agent Smith, if in a slightly cryptic manner: “It ends tonight.” And Smith answers “I know it does, I’ve seen it.” They are both aware of what is going to happen. As Neo puts it just before his death, repeating back to Smith the latter’s words from Reloaded: “You were right, Smith. You were always right. It was inevitable.” How then can Neo say that he is making a choice? He can say this only if he is an existentialist hero. To repeat: in the existentialist view, a subject is given agency not necessarily through changing the outcome of a situation, but through the choices involved in formulating an attitude that actively affirms the situation, taking possession of it in a more subtle, paradoxical way. Similarly, the idea the Wachowskis picked for their final showdown is explicitly stated as: choice, impossibly, beats even the absence of choice. Cue sunset. Roll credits. This is why I suggest that the philosophical points the Wachowskis make, and the questions they raise, have more to do with the problem of necessity vs. choice than with any debate over reality vs. simulation. Let’s not forget that, in an unlikely casting choice, the directors got the philosopher Cornel West to play a member of Zion’s council. West is interested in forms of emancipatory thinking which, as he puts it, avoid both “transcendental objectivism” (117), i.e. the idea that there is a single truth which controls us all, and “subjectivist nihilism” (117), i.e. the idea that without such transcendental truth, there is no meaning. Somewhere in between these extremes is a belief, presumably shared by West and the Wachowskis, in the liberating nature of knowledge and self-knowledge. This aspect of the Wachowskis’ project also makes for a perfect match with another artist whose work is frequently concerned with the role of the individual in contexts characterised by oppression: legendary comic book author Alan Moore. In view of the interpretation I outline here, it makes a lot of sense that it was the Wachowskis who adapted Moore’s V For Gabriel Renggli 9 Vendetta for the screen. Finally, one can draw attention to the fact that both directors have come out as trans women since the making of these films. They have had personal experience with questions of predestination vs. choice, systems of (social) control, and the courage of affirming one’s path. It is amazing to see how many things in the Matrix movies that previously felt vague or even pretentious fall into place when you watch the films with the topic of determinism vs. choice in mind. Morpheus asking Neo, during their very first meeting, whether he believes in fate, and Neo answering that he doesn’t like the idea that he’s not in control of his own life? Check. Trinity explaining that the matrix cannot tell you “who you are?” Check (because meaning is not created by exterior circumstances, no matter how determining those circumstances may be). Agent Smith lecturing Neo just before their big fight in Reloaded: “We’re not here because we’re free. We’re here because we are not free?” Check. Councillor Hamann going on about what control is, how the matrix is not the only form of necessity that people can be plugged into, and how he hopes that they will understand, before it is too late, the reasons for why they do the things they do? Check, check, and check. The ending to the original film is not Neo escaping from the matrix (that happens after 31 minutes), but Neo seeing through it, fully understanding his situation. The ending to the trilogy suggests that such an understanding allows for a choice that triumphs over meaningless necessity. WORKS CITED Camus, Albert. “The Myth of Sisyphus.” In The Myth of Sisyphus. Trans. Justin O’Brien. London: Penguin, 2013. 1-100. Foucault, Michel. “The History of Sexuality.” Trans. Leo Marshall. In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Ed. Colin Gordon. New York: Vintage, 1980. 183-193. West, Cornel. “The Historicist Turn in Philosophy of Religion.” In Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America. New York: Routledge, 2009. 107-121.