An Analysis of the Matrix

Because that's always a good idea.

I've just finished watching the cool parts of the first two Matrix movies. I noticed a lot of things. It's fairly common knowledge that humans are not a source of power. The energy we get ultimately comes from the SUN, so to feed us the robots need an alternate source of energy, in which case we're completely useless anyways. There goes that idea.

First of all, why have the Matrix. If they can project a whole world into our minds that is run by an unbelievably complicated program, why the hell not just make us unconscious? It's not like we're doing anything anyways- we're just chilling in a bubble of some foul-looking liquid. Making us comatose is infinitely less complicated than a program that outputs the world's display realistically (down to every detail of our existence) with 6 billion of us simultaneously affecting the whole world's state, the results of which must then be dumped back into our brain. Just... WHY?

Secondly, we have the agents. Assuming that you, as a robot, feel bad for those humans and want them to have some sort of existence, and you want to run it smoothly, you could do better than the agents. Presumably if you have control over every facet of our reality you could simply REMOVE the anomalies from the system? The Architect sort of explains Neo's purpose, namely that the system cannot be perfect as choice is required, but that doesn't explain the agents. If his existence (and presumably the existences of his allies) is required, why are you trying to kill him? If it's not required, REMOVE him.

The agents behave very oddly given that they're programs. First of all, they take over human bodies. Why is this necessary? No one's going to believe that someone just transmutes into a completely different person. It would be much more believable to have someone randomly pop into existence- they could be testing a teleportation or cloaking device. They're definitely not human, given that Mr. Smith is worried about our smell infesting him: if I were a program possessing a human body, I'd freak out about my OWN bodily functions. Could you imagine Mr Smith being hungry, or needing to pee, while chasing down the next goddamn meddler?

But despite being inhuman, they seem to carry over some of our flaws. The miss almost every shot they take, and Mr. Smith clearly has strong emotions regarding our species and some of its members. For the first part, they are a program operating inside the Matrix, and as anyone who's ever played counterstrike can tell you, programs don't miss. They consistently line up their gun with your head. (In most online first-person shooters, some jackasses run programs called aimbots that do the aiming for them.) Secondly, the last time I checked computer program implied cold, hard logic, not all-encompassing hate and a wont to monologue.

I'm not even going to touch the actual physics of the movie, I'm just going to mention that the Mythbusters team shot at a gas tank repeatedly, with different guns, and nothing ever happened. Of course, Hollywood doesn't care. Hollywood doesn't care for the same reason that the Matrix premise has so many flaws. Comatose humans on a desolate planet with no plot isn't exactly going to sell one movie, let alone three, and suspension of disbelief means that Hollywood can make lots of money.

Which is fine, it's just fun to tear holes in things.