I hear that mill a-runnin’, it’s grindin’ all the way, and I ain’t heard a Matrix theory, for one whole day. Apologies to Johnny Cash for attempting to take over one of his famous lines, but Abbey White of Looper and many others appear to think that we haven’t thought of the many different ways that the Matrix 4 could be made possible when in truth the rumor mill has been grinding away like mad since Lana Wachowski made the announcement that she would be bringing the Matrix back to the big screen once again. It’s not too mind-blowing to think that Neo and Trinity are going to need a serious hook to come back, but it is a cool idea to think that they might show up in a different spot along the timeline, especially knowing what we do thanks to the second movie concerning Neo’s many different appearances in the history of the Matrix. It stands to reason that the theory of how the Matrix tends to recycle people might make a lot of sense given that certain templates could be more desirable than others and that ‘cloning’ them in its own way might be the Matrix’s version of keeping the best and the brightest around since they could always reboot sections of the Matrix or the whole thing when they so desired. Given that the Matrix controls most everything in its system it could possibly examine any timeline it wanted since it could likely replicate just about anything that comes from human memory or the histories that it likely possesses within its archived data.
But the idea of Neo and Trinity coming back as per the second theory is still interesting as well since it indicates the transference of energy and the guided but still fairly controlled manner by which this is done in the digital world, meaning that whatever form the energy takes is up to the machines within their sphere of influence. Plus, the idea that the One is born within the Matrix within cycles is bound to be a sticking point that could easily be used as a continual deus ex machina that will insure that there will never be lasting peace but that the human race will continue to survive and struggle to break free of the bonds that they created so long ago. When one thinks of it that way it does raise a few hackles really since no human would willingly say that they created their own prison and then gladly stepped into it. That kind of personal hell is usually reserved for those that have a severe guilt complex, but humanity tends to do this quite often without thinking about it, and the formation of the Matrix was unfortunately a response to mankind’s outward cruelty to the machines, as was seen in The Animatrix.
With that in mind The Matrix is pretty much a story about humanity trying to undo its own mistakes and the descendants of those misguided souls attempting to survive the sins of their ancestors. Not a one of them knew that the cycle had gone on for a few runs at the time the audience was first being introduced to the story, so the theory of seeing an earlier version of the machine world might actually be feasible since it would grant a chance for characters to return and for Yahya Abdul-Mateen II to play a younger Morpheus as this would give a big opening to the idea that certain patterns would continue to repeat themselves without anyone being the wiser as the story goes along. Morpheus would continue to believe in his quest to find ‘the One’ while the rest of the Zion population would believe that they were being liberated a few souls at a time in order to bring the fight to the machines. How depressing would that be to realize however? The machines win the initial war against the humans, killing all but a few to keep them alive, and then eventually foment the war over and over again, trying to get the formula right and possibly trying to correct the anomaly of the One so that things can finally be brought back to square one where the machines want it. Meanwhile, the humans that are trying to reclaim their world are oblivious to the fact that they’ve been played, over and over.
The only worse thing would be if any of the humans that were kept alive in the end knew the plans of the machines and were forced to keep quiet or watch their entire race die or become the unwitting slaves of the machines without any chance of reprieve. When one looks at it the Matrix is kind of a depressing story already, but losing all sense of hope would be even worse.
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