MATRIX REFLECTIONS
By Kenneth C. Eng
The Matrix (1999) and its sequels were amongst the most influential films of all time. Almost two decades later, its impact is still felt. As such, it is important to analyze this film's hidden symbols and meanings to discern why it was so groundbreaking.
Starting from the very beginning, the film zooms in on the number 0. This happens because Cypher has the very first line of dialogue, and it is well-known that a cypher is a 0. Also, the phone number that is seen on the flowing columns of digits is 312-555-0690. The 3 represents Trinity, the 2 represents Morpheus and the 1 of course is Neo (the 1 is flanked by 3 and 2, much as in the cover of the Reloaded film). The 555 represents the Agents, all of whom have 5-letter names (Smith, Jones and Brown) and the fact that "agent" itself is a 5-letter word. The 555 is widely used in films to create fake nonexistent numbers, like how the Matrix itself is fake and nonexistent, including its guardians the Agents. The 69 represents love, which Cypher is asking Trinity about.
Agent Smith arrives and tells his lieutenant that "your men are already dead." This is because they exist in the Matrix and do nothing but follow rules, thereby being as good as dead. They chase Trinity and fail to capture her, to which Agent Jones says, "It has already begun." This refers to Neo being new and therefore beginning. The acronym NEO also means near-Earth object, which is an asteroid that is dangerously close to Earth like how Neo is close to seeing the true nature of reality and destroying all machines on the planet.
Neo wakes up and presses the Esc button as well as CTRL + X. He wants to escape the Matrix, and control his life (CTRL + X also resembles the word Matrix). He speaks to his customer Choi, who gives him 2000 dollars. This is in reference to the year the movie was released, and also to the supposed resurrection of Christ. Choi then reassures him by saying, "This never happened. You don't exist." Of course, this is a hint to the fact that the Matrix is not real and it did in fact never happen. Choi suggests that mescaline is "the only way to fly", which at the end of the movie is proven untrue.
The Rob Zombie song that plays in the background of the BDSM party scene has the lyrics, "Dead I am the one." The song is entitled Dragula, who is dead and alive, much like Neo becoming the one after being shot to death. He says that Trinity was the one who hacked into the "IRS D-Base." The use of the slang "D-Base" is possibly an allusion to D-Brane, which is a type of multidimensional space in string theory. After waking up, he goes to the office and meets a Fedex man who in the original screenplay is named "Fedex." Fedex is a 5-letter name like Agent. Neo is apprehended, and in the interrogation room, it is revealed that his name is Thomas A. Anderson, which means the son of man and is a possible reference to Hans Christian Andersen. This would make sense, since the name Christian is fitting for this religious movie, and Andersen was a fairy tale writer who preceded Carroll (Thomas is a 6-letter name, a devil reference). In addition, Andersen was always in search of a world he did not know (the upper class of Denmark), making stories that related to his own life. In this way, Neo is like the Little Mermaid, especially since there is a transformation and a thrusting of the lead character into a world she does not know.
However, unlike the mermaid, Neo gives the Agents the finger, which looks like a 1 symbol. He wakes up and is escorted to Morpheus, who shows him the real world. It should be noted that the real world is blue whereas the Matrix world is green. This is ironic because green is typically associated with nature and plant matter, whereas the Matrix is inescapably an artificial world. Furthermore, the sky has been blacked out in the real world, yet everything is blue as if they long for the original azure. Green is also a contrast to red amnion, which is a well-known use of embryonic symbolization during Neo's awakening. Green, red and blue are the primary colors of light (not paint, but the actual white light that we see). Notice that there is very little yellow in the film because the sun has been blocked out.
Neo is told that he has never used his eyes before and that he is far from death. He is essentially a newborn who has never seen the real world, only using his mind's eye. Morpheus states that there is, "nothing I can say that will explain it for you, Neo. Come. See for yourself." He wants him to use his eyes and his visual abilities, much as how the Matrix is a very visual film.
He meets Tank and Dozer, who are real world characters. Tank is a reference to a think tank, and also to the brain in the vat theory. Dozer means that he is sleeping (dozing). It also refers to bulldozer, the prefix of which refers to BS, or lies, similar to how the Matrix is a lie. This is hinted at when Cypher gives Neo an alcohol and says, "That's good shit, huh? Dozer makes it."
Neo is told that the sun has been blacked out. Morpheus has an 8-letter name, symbolizing the fact that light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach the Earth, which it cannot do now. It may also symbolize Alice trying to reach the 8th brook, where she becomes a queen. Since the sun cannot reach the Earth, no one can become a queen, the most powerful piece on the chessboard. Neo eventually gains such a power at the end of the film when he reaches his 8th brook.
Neo is later taken to the Agent training program. He comes across the Woman in the Red Dress, who possibly symbolizes the fact that Lewis Carroll had his Alice books printed in red instead of the green that was standard for children's books of his time (green also had little appearance in the Alice in Wonderland stories). There is very little red in the Matrix in general, aside from her and the chairs Morpheus and Neo were sitting on. She would also be a human representation of the red pill that Neo desired, but she soon turns to danger by transforming into an infertile male Agent Smith. She is also one of the few blondes in the film series, which could refer to the Wasp in a Wig segment of Alice Through the Looking Glass. In that segment, a wasp laments the fact that people make fun of his yellow wig.
During the dining hall sequence, Mouse references runny eggs and chickens as being possible flavors for tasty wheat. What he is saying is that the chicken is the egg and the egg is the chicken. This is speaking of the circular nature of the Matrix, and how it has had many iterations and versions. It also infers that there is no beginning or end.
Neo, when about to see the Oracle, is about to open the door, but someone opens it for him. This is probably because the Oracle knows he is coming, and that Neo is not ready to make his own choices yet. He is, like Alice, only a child at this point and must be guided. Ironically, it is the boy with the spoon that guides him by telling him that it is not the spoon that bends, but only himself. This is a concept in relativity because in fluid space warped by gravity, it is not a moon that orbits around a sun, but rather the fact that the space curves and pushes the moon into its motion. It is also a concept in quantum physics because two different realities happen at the same time.
Mouse, meanwhile, is sitting in Morpheus's red chair looking at the Woman in the Red Dress. This again proves that she is a humanized version of the red pill. He cannot have such a woman in real life, so he must create an imaginary woman, adding another level of unreality.
Morpheus is soon accosted by Agent Smith, who he remarks of, "You all look the same to me." This refers to the theory that all electrons in the universe are the same electron going back and forth through time. In the sequels, this becomes more pronounced when Agent Smith literally has millions of duplicates fighting in a cyclical realm. Agent Smith also captures Morpheus by finding out, "They're on the 8th floor." This means he wants to go to the eighth brook and become a queen, but since Morpheus and his motley crew descend one level, they wind up fighting in the bathroom of the 7th floor – one step below the 8th floor or brook.
After Morpheus's capture, Cypher betrays his friends and tells them that he is "tired of this war." Being that tired, he wants to go to sleep in the Matrix forever, which is death. He also says he wants of Trinity, "a little yes or no." This is a binary symbolization, which is 0 and 1, a vagina and a phallus. He wants to have sex with her, commenting that she is a beautiful woman.
During the interrogation of Morpheus, the Agents still wear sunglasses, indicating that they do it day or night. This refers to the fact that the sun in the real world is blacked out, and that they need to block out this light even in their artificial world to remind themselves of where they come from. Eventually, Agent Smith becomes impatient with the truth serum, and Agent Brown remarks, "Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions." This is saying that they are not inquiring on the right existential problems. Agent Smith asks them to leave, showing that he is the alpha of their pack, alpha also being the beginning or prime mover. An agent is a catalyst or a mover. Oddly enough, an agent in film is also the face that professionals see before they meet the actor.
Neo attacks the government building, but is first stopped by a guard who asks, "Would you please remove any metallic items you're carrying? Keys, loose change." This is because he does not believe that Neo is as he appears, while ignoring the question of whether or not his world is as it appears. He wants Neo to remove metallic items, symbolizing the fact that the One is not a machine. Loose change is exactly what happens when he and Trinity kill the guards, who speak in computer lingo like "backup!" and "freeze!"
Neo eventually acquires a helicopter, which lowers into the agent's room like how the machine lowered itself over Neo's pod when first he saw the real world. He acquires Morpheus, but Agent Smith shoots the chopper's fuel tank, which spews red fluid like amnion. This is fitting because Neo is hanging onto the chopper by a rope that is like an umbilical cord attached to the pilot Trinity. The word umbilical is also similar to un-biblical.
Trinity loses control of the chopper and shoots off the rope so she can swing on it to get away from the machine. In doing so, she becomes attached to Neo while abandoning the helicopter, a mechanical device reminiscent of the robots. The helicopter crashes into a building to leave circular ripples in the glass, which supposedly the citizens cannot see because Trinity is experiencing a faster perception of time due to a near-death experience. Neo pulls her up using the same rope that attaches them both, showing that he wishes to be back in the womb – back home.
Neo goes to the subway station, where there is a homeless man drinking wine. He is deluding himself, adding another layer of unreality to the unreal. In his weakness, he is overtaken by Agent Smith, who says that he will enjoy watching Neo die. In actuality, it is Neo's death that causes him to become the One. Agent Smith throws him on the train tracks and says, "Goodbye, Mr. Anderson." Neo replies, "My name is Neo." He is abandoning who once he was to become what he really is (it should be noted that Neo has two names like Lewis Carroll had a pen name).
On a minor note, the businessman who gets robbed says, "Flat or pumps." This means, 2-D or 3-D, flat or pumped like the matrix or the real world. Also, the cookies the Oracle gives are flat like the Matrix (or a grid), except the grid is circular to represent the cyclical nature of the film.
The first film was criticized heavily for using a deus ex machina to bring Neo back to life, but this is not the case. Neo died in the Matrix, but because Trinity kissed him, he could feel her in the real world and understood that the Matrix was not real, and therefore he did not have to die. Furthermore, in the finale of the last film, it is revealed that the machine mainframe is led by Deus Ex Machina, which could be a play on the audience's skewed perceptions of the movies being too easy on the heroes. Trinity's kiss was also reminiscent of Sleeping Beauty except with the genders reversed. No one criticizes Sleeping Beauty for being too easy on the protagonist.
Neo destroys the Agent Smith and tells the Matrix, "how it's going to begin." He then gives the final choice to the Matrix itself, after having been forced to make choices for the entire film. It is fitting that the ending is a new beginning since Neo is new.
In Reloaded, Neo's experience of bullet time (which influences space in a liquid fashion) is replaced by visions of the future (time in liquid fashion). He wakes up and finds himself in the real world 6 months after the events of the first film. This refers to Alice Through the Looking Glass taking place 6 months after the first book, and is a hemisphere/incomplete cycle. This hemispherical concept can be applied to the fact that celestial objects like the sun can only show one side at a time.
Neo, dressed like the Reverend Charles Dodgson (contributor to linear algebra's matrix theory), enters the Matrix to have a meeting that is interrupted by three new Agents – Johnson, Thomson and Jackson. These are 7-letter names, reference to the 7th day when god rested. Rest of course is what humans do in the Matrix. After defeating these enemies, he flies to a moonlit sky, which is the opposite of the sun and empowers the vampires and werewolves.
Neo meets with Seraph, who is able to match Neo in a fight. Seraph takes him to the Oracle, who tells him about the existence of ghosts, angels, aliens, vampires and werewolves. These were probably the equivalent of Agents in previous time periods. For example, the angels existed in Biblical Times, the ghosts in the Middle Ages, vampires and werewolves in the Victorian Era and aliens in the Cold War. It is interesting to note that vampires are vulnerable to the sun, which does not really exist in the Matrix or in the real world. Werewolves need the moon, which again cannot exist in the real world. Angels in the Renaissance Period were thought to descend from clouds like the kind that blotted out the sun (this could mean that Seraph was an Agent of his times, the Biblical Times, but because the sun was blotted out, he lost his wings and became different; the word angel is similar to Agent). Aliens come from other suns. Ghosts are a possible reference to the quantum theory and the uncertainty principle.
Speaking of quantum theory, the new Smith is able to be in many places at the same time. This of course is about the fact that electrons exist in a fuzz of reality, being in multiple locations until they are observed. It should be stated that the original screenplay for the Matrix Reloaded had Smith piling on top of Neo in mass numbers, only to have Neo fly, carrying a string of Smiths behind him (I know this from a conversation with a member of the VFX team). This would be skywriting the number 1.
Neo meets the Merovingian, who is the polar opposite of the Oracle. His wife Persephone is one of the few characters who wear yellow. The Matrix is in green, blue and red – green for the Matrix itself, blue for the real world and red for when Neo sees the fabric of reality. However, there are few instances of blondes, and few characters who have any yellow, possibly to indicate the absence of the yellow sun.
In that fight sequence, one of the ghost Twins is shot in the arm multiple times. The other Twin says, "Step away from the door," to free his brother, while denying Morpheus the ability to go through doors. The damaged Twin adds, "Just like new," when he repairs his arm by becoming immaterial for a moment. In that sense, he is "Just like Neo," because he dies and comes back to life (similar to how the vampires, werewolves and angels are monsters that are undead). Neo tries to come to the rescue, but a Twin slams a door in his face, leaving him hundreds of miles from where he should be. This is to demonstrate that Neo must open the door himself, but his enemies are making it more difficult for him.
Trinity invades the government facility to rescue Neo as he is entering the mysterious floor. During this time, she comes across a scientist and a large security guard, yet she knocks out the scientist first. This is because the scientist could easily become an Agent, and she must regard him as the enemy automatically. It is interesting to note that one of the guards says to his colleague, "Hey. You count sheep at home." The other replies, "Why? I get paid to count them here." Home would be Zion, but he wishes to be paid a normal salary in the Matrix. The sheep are the people in the Matrix, but they may also refer to the supposedly free people in Zion.
Neo enters the Source and meets the Architect, which is possibly alluding to the Old Man that the White Knight meets in Alice Through the Looking Glass. For example, every time Neo asks a question, he receives a nonsensical reply, which causes him to become angrier. The White Knight in a similar way asked the Old Man how he lived, only to receive nonsense, which agitated him to no end. The Old Man was also "sitting on a gate", similar to how the Architect is the gate between Neo and the ultimate choice – save humanity or save Trinity. This is the final choice Neo is given in the entire film series and the most important. In the final film, Neo is not given any choices, but must make his own options.
Neo rescues Trinity, and again, the audience would complain that he removed the bullet from her heart just because it was deus ex machina convenient for the story. Again, this would not be the case because it is a final demonstration of the power of the One, which is best left for the end of the Reloaded film of course. As such, it enhanced the drama to see that Neo is so powerful he can simply wish anyone alive. Furthermore, it is ironic because Trinity saved him in the first movie by touching him in the real world, whereas Neo touched Trinity in the Matrix to rescue her. This establishes an equivalence between the Matrix and the Real World.
In the third film, the first scene has the viewer pull through the numbers as in the previous two, except it goes through the U of Revolutions. This is a union between 1 and 0 in the roundness at the bottom of the letter U and the straight sides. Neo appears to be jacked in when he is not, which means that his brain has become so wired to the Matrix that he can connect even without plugs. Trinity and Morpheus rescue him by going to Club Hell, the elevator of which has the P scratched out on the Help button. The men in gas masks DJing and the strange figures in said club are probably the aliens the Oracle mentioned. Furthermore, the character Roland features heavily, his name a possible reference to "Rowland's Maccassar Oil" in Alice in Wonderland's White Knight sequence.
During the course of the movie, Neo is never given many choices, unlike in previous films. For example, in the limbo area, he is never given the option to escape. Later on, he realizes he must give himself a choice – to stay in Zion or go to the machine mainframe.
There are allusions to the earlier films when Bane blacks out Neo's eyes ("Those big pretty eyes."). Also, in the first film, Morpheus tells Neo that he has never used his eyes before – now he is an aged character who loses his sight. In becoming blind, he is able to truly see the world without time, in red, which somewhat adds another layer of illusion even to the real world.
Neo and Trinity ascend to the Earth above and fly over the fields where humans are grown. Neo says he can feel them, again hinting that the real world has another veil of unreality that Trinity cannot see. When the explosives detonate at Neo's will, it may be that the machines are purposely letting the explosives fail because in truth they want him to arrive. The hovercraft ascends to the sky, where both the sun and moon are visible. This shows twilight, a coming of night, which is what the Matrix is locked in.
Neo reaches the Deus Ex Machina, which is a machine with the face of an infant (the Deus Ex Machina's name was only mentioned in the credits). This of course is a play on the fact that Neo's revival in the first movie and Trinity's revival in the second were widely regarded as too easy a resolution. The fact that the ruler of the machines is presented as a baby with a horrifying voice adds terror to the concept of the machine, but it also makes the robots appear more human – a child that does not realize what he needs to do, and must be guided by Neo, who himself is new. Also, when Trinity kicks the thug into the wall earlier in the film, he creates a spiked halo similar to the Deus. Notice also that Deus sounds like day, which is what the humans are seeking. It also has the letters "SEX" in the middle, quite a contradiction to his appearance. Day Sex Machine. Or perhaps Gay Sex Machine.
Neo's final fight with Smith has an audience of Smith copies staring at Neo, nodding as if to applaud him. This could be a malfunction in Smith, evidenced by the fact that the Smith-Oracle was reviled by the others when first he appeared (or they can see that he will be their downfall, whereas he could not; odd for the Smith-Oracle). Neo is thrown into a wooden scaffolding that looks like a halo over his head, near a window that is green with panes that look like a grid – a linear algebra matrix.
Smith finally smashes Neo back to the Earth, the opposite of his flight to the sky in the first movie. At this point, Smith asks the ultimate question – "Why?" Or more specifically, "Why, Mr. Anderson, why? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting?" These are the same questions that all humans have asked since the beginning of time, and at this point, at the end of their time, Neo and Smith are still pondering the same puzzle. Neo states that he chooses to, which is a meaningless answer on the surface. However, on a deeper level, the fact that he is able to choose means that he can think. It is this thought that allows him to ask "Why", ergo if he were not here to ask the question, the question could not even have been delivered for him to give such an answer. It is circular.
Smith cannot understand circular things, preferring the clean straight lines that were represented by the power lines of the Deus Ex Machina. Smith pummels him into submission again, but then freezes when he realizes that he has seen this fight before. He says, "Everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo," which is the first time he calls him that name in person. At this point, he realizes something has changed from the last time this happened because Neo made the decision to rescue Trinity instead of rescuing Zion back at the Source. Neo becomes indestructible, most likely because another iteration of the Matrix would run unto infinity. Thus, Smith is forced to terminate him by absorbing him into Smith-Neo. It is ironic that as Smith is dying, he complains that it is not fair, when in the first film, he merely wanted to die.
The Matrix may be mostly forgotten now, but it is not without some interesting mind fodder.
Kenneth Eng is the author of Spell Knights, available here:
Spell-Knights-Unlimited-Kenneth-Eng-ebook/dp/B072FP6919