Isn't this The Entire Point?
That there is value in truth, even if the truth is painful?
That we should believe in and fight for a cause, even if fighting is hard?
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
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Ah see, but he is depicted as the soyjack
And that's what I love so much about it, it really drills down to what you value in life. What's more important, being comfortable, or knowing the truth? Do you really want to know how the sausage is made?
I think of cases like 1930s Germany, where people just ignored the atrocities happening because they weren't happening to them. Those bystanders were like Cypher in The Matrix, where they decided that "ignorance is bliss" and looked the other way. The film certainly paints Cypher as a bad guy, but I think a lot would side with him if he instead were a new recruit who decides to go back to the Matrix shortly after learning the truth.
Anyway, The Matrix is perhaps my favorite movie of all time, I'm still waiting for a sequel. 😉
Yeah, it's a real shame they never made another. I'd love a third Alien movie also, but we'll just have to make do with two.
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Years after the release of The Matrix, both of the Wachowskis came out as transgender women.[183] The red pill has been likened to red estrogen pills.[184] Morpheus's description of the Matrix creating a sense that something is fundamentally wrong, "like a splinter in your mind", has been likened to gender dysphoria.[184] In the original script, Switch was a woman in the Matrix and a man in the real world, but this idea was removed.[185]
The last detail about Switch is so cool—I wish they had kept it.
As ~~first time~~ relatively green directors, the studio had a lot of say over what they got to include. Often to the story's detriment. Humans were originally processors instead of batteries (which makes a fuck ton more sense)
I always thought that in the end you would find out that the "real world" wasn't actually real. The reality was that machines were not using them as batteries but were simply preserving the human race out of respect for their creators (like we preserve endangered species today). The machines were simulating multiple levels of a reality as some humans were stroking out or going mad as they discovered the simulation. The entire conflict was to deal with the human need for exploration and conflict in the face of control and restriction.
Smith even talks about it when he's explaining how the first version of the Matrix was created to be a utopia.
It's been so long since I watched it. Maybe this is an actual interpretation you could get from the ending and it's why I thought it. I forget. But it made a lot more sense than being used as batteries.
Or the preservation of humans was deemed important because, well, humans are amazing. I think any artificial intelligence would be smart enough to know that organic life and billionaires of years of evolution were definitely something worth preserving. Even if that life could no longer live within the environment (climate change) that it once could.
Like, there are a million different better explanations than fucking batteries. So, even if that wasn't the writers idea. I always found it much more satisfying to think this.
On a first viewing, if you turn your brain off, batteries make enough sense. But don't sit back and ponder how many calories the machines had to pump into the humans to get a few volts out. :)
“Combined with a form of fusion”
There we go, all fixed!
- The Studio
To properly power a Sentinel one must:
Nonono see , it's bioelectricity ...which is uh, different.
Morpheus' last line in the movie is "Is this real?" People have taken it and run with it. That coupled with the Oracle's explanation that choice was the key to the current matrix's success led people to believe that both the matrix and "the real world" are matrix instances and that the only way out would be to realize that fact and then reject the system wholesale. It also explains why Neo's abilities still work in the real world as well. And again, explain the fucking batteries line.
Thanks. It's been awhile since I watched the second and third movies. I just knew it ended without clarity and being open to interpretation. Which I guess allows me to project my own story onto it where humans are basically being preserved as organic life forms. Or even don't exist organically at all. I enjoy writing that allows for that open ending.
IIRC, in supplementary material (maybe the Animatrix?) it’s revealed that the machines kept trying to sue for peace, but the humans insisted it had to be genocide, so the machines settled on the Matrix as their way not to have to kill all humans.
I just mentally replaced "battery" with "processor" anyway.
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So was Switch supposed to be a woman in the Matrix because of a bug and in the real world he was his true self, or did the machines allow her to live her true gender in the Matrix?
Just because it's a trans allegory doesn't mean they figured it all the way out. I think it was mostly the broaching of the topic and putting the ideas into normal people's head that something like that could happen. I can imagine a very different social experience if explaining trans in the early 2000s could have been boiled down to "I'm kinda like switch from the matrix."
Bruh. Think through the thought for a moment before you dismiss it as something that wasn't thought through. People with gender dysphoria often question their existence. The robots don't want people to do that, cause they'll start finding the seams. So yeah, everyone meshed with their gender (assuming it could fit within the binary parameters of the 90s) because the matrix wants to be as stable as possible.
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I'd wager Matrix was true expression.
Then the allegory wouldn't make sense though, would it?
The main character would have less reason to want to stay in the real world if they received the "wrong" body. They lived their whole life in the "right" body in the simulation and then wake up just to feel gender dysphoria? It would just be confusing and uncomfortable as fuck for them.
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Morpheus gave him a choice. But, of course, being a good marketer, he didn’t say how reality would be.
The Matrix, Office Space, American Beauty, and Fight Club all came out in 1999. They all starred white males between the ages of 30-40 who have become disillusioned with their soul sucking jobs in a consumerist society. They all have an epiphany that breaks them away from the corporate consumerist grind and rebel against it, before finally becoming a sage who can live in the world but not be destroyed by it. Except for Kevin Spacey’s character, but seriously, fuck that guy.
Cipher’s a much better example. He’s tempted not with being an office drone, but with having a steak in a fancy restaurant, so being upper middle class? Anyway, that’s enough to get him to resort to literal murder.
Anyway, 1999 was a weird year in film. It seems almost trite nowadays that having a stable job with stable housing and being able to afford Starbucks every day was the bane of human existence, when nowadays it’s living in the lap of luxury.
Having a stable job just means masking everything different about yourself so you can be a good little worker ant in the capitalist machine. I want a stable job in the sense that I do something I genuinely want to do which serves my fellows.
There's a reason they thought 1999 was peak in the matrix. If the biggest problem was boredom.
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Idk man, didn't look perfect or comfy to me. Disconnecting was not necessarily an upgrade in life quality, but he was certainly more free than he was before.
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You mean that dead-end job and no social life to speak of? Not to mention the clashes with police he had.
Neo wouldn't even have left his house to go to the party if it wasn't for the white rabbit reference.
Living the dream.
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EDITED: Sorry guys I tried to make an argument in favour of the movie, but of course I forgot trans is bad and therefore movie bad
Also, y'know, Neo was miserable and depressed and trying to figure out why he felt like there was something deeply wrong with the world and then took a pill to explore the truth and gain the agency over his life he was lacking. Unrelatedly the authors are trans and left wing.
Couldn't possibly be a metaphor for how modern society crushes freedom of expression and agency in order to serve the powerful often in ways most people aren't even aware of.
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Obviously there are also counter arguments as for every philosophical position, but the experience machine is a thought experiment to show how hedonism isn't a good basis for well being if you're trying to base your virtues or ethics in well being
I never understood why this was seen as a good counterargument. I think the hedonist would say just say "yes, hook me up" assuming people aren't suffering in the real world that they would otherwise be helping. The reason for wanting to make change is if people are suffering, so if no one is suffering the hedonist would just say sign me up, no?
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“Would you rather have an average mediocre life, or a bi-polar life that swings between being a god and a pauper on the run?”
Neo is basically Christian mythos cyber-Jesus... why would he stay in comfort but aimless boring routine instead of trying to find the truth about the world and make it a better place, even if it means risking his own life? 🤷
I’ve seen this many times and it’s always fucking funny for me every time. The combination of the picture and the caption is so perfect.
PORRIDGE SLOP NEOOOOOO
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They tried to make the Matrix seem ominous, then they showed the girl in the red dress.
There's an interview with Keanu where he tells the story of how he explained the plot of Matrix to some child, who basically replied with "what does it matter if it's real or not?"
Neo basically had no free will and had no real choice in the matter anyway. The Architect designed the Matrix so that the One would appear eventually and reset the instance after the rebellion. If he didn’t take the red pill he would have woken up in another way. He only had true free will when he decided to save Trinity.
Cipher had the right idea
Cipher: "I love steak. Yum yum yum. Even if its fake, I love steak."
Agent Smith, smiling: "As soon as I don't need you anymore, I'm going to turn you into a literal cockroach and step on you."
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I mean its obviously better to live free and without false reality I find it crazy this is even being debated.
There are some takes in these comments.
Oh, hey Cypher!
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