The first two Matrix movies were quite fun — despite the rather strange and improbable premise that humans make good batteries. However the third movie was quite disappointing. In the software development world, the process of revising your software to make it better is sometimes called “refactoring.” This suggests to me the title of a new Matrix movie, “The Matrix Refactored.”
The Matrix series raises a number of questions about the borders of reality and machine world, and introduces a number of mysterious entities. By the third movie, I expected some explanations of what was what. Alas, I got none.
- Consider the program called “The Merovingian.” Many people currently believe that the Merovingians are the descendents of Christ and Mary Magdalene. Whatever you think of the historical merit of such an idea (I think it is rubbish), the name of this character suggests that he is a child of the One, a program authored by Neo in a previous iteration of the Matrix. In my version of the Matrix, this idea would have been developed.
- When Neo confronts the Architect in the second movie, he sees recordings of previous confrontations he has had with that entity. If he always looks the same, then why can’t the Architect and the agents use that to find him? Why is there a “One” in each iteration of the Matrix? What I would suggest is that the Architect and the Oracle are two AI programs that are playing a game against each other. The Oracle decides to seed the vats with DNA, deciding where to hide the One. The Architect uses the agents to try and stop him — sort of a giant shell game. I would have had Neo discover this fact.
- Neo is able to use his powers to stop the squids when they are not in the machine world. This suggests that either he did not really leave the Matrix, or that there is a Matrix inside the Matrix, or that reality itself is, at some fundamental level, nothing but a program. Maybe Neo has control over machines through some radio link. I would have tried to preserve the ambiguity here, pointing to “love” as a deeper reality. But “love” becomes it’s own item in this list….
- One of the themes of the first two movies was that love conquers all. Both Trinity and Neo were brought back from the dead by love. In the third movie, however, we get the horrible “love is a word, and I have a relationship to it” speech — followed by the death of Trinity. I would have given this speech to the agent, or the Architect.
- They could discover a space station, Nirvana, was built before the machines took over, and that it is still functional. Persephone (as her name suggests) would be the one program that spends time on the station and on Earth, and she could arrange a rendezvous by which Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, etc. can escape to Nirvana and escape the cycle of the Matrix.