The answer seems to have much to do with a complex concep-tion of freedom that the character Neo moves toward in the
course of the film. Yet it is on precisely this score that the con-clusion of the film is highly ambiguous. Part of the problem here is that in many ways The Matrix opts for the typical Hollywood action-film ending, with the super-hero taking on a slew of evil-doers. Of course, the sophisticated technology of The Matrix renders its denouement more creative and more subtle than the endings of films in the Die Hard or Terminator genre. Still, the film has been rightly celebrated more for its special effects than its crafting of plot and character. As Neo comes to transcend the constraints of the ordinary human body and begins to exercise powers possessed by comic-book super-heroes, improved tech-nique overshadows the quintessentially human traits that Neo has had to develop to prepare to wage war against the Matrix.
Until the final battle Neo seems quite vulnerable, resisting and then only gradually accepting his role in the fate of human-ity. Even when he elects to risk everything to battle against the Matrix, the outcome remains in suspense. In the pivotal fight with the Agent in the subway, he is shot and apparently dead.
Trinity, revealing the Oracle’s prophecy that she would fall in love with the One, insists, “you can’t be dead because I love you.” She kisses Neo, and when he revives, she chides him,
“Now get up.” Although we have had hints all along of a grow-ing attachment between Neo and Trinity, the relationship is insufficiently developed to carry this sort of dramatic weight.
And this is a serious flaw in the film. Why? The way to overcome the threat of nihilism in The Matrix is through the recovery of distinctively human traits and ways of living. Central among these traits is the sense of human beings as distinct individuals capable of loyalty, love, and sacrifice. Whereas the characters of Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus are complex, different, and com-plementary, the Agents of the Matrix are impersonal, generic, and interchangeable. Is not this the significance of the name
“Smith” for the Agent who spends the most time on screen?
Whatever might be the flaws in the film’s downplaying of the human elements, it is Trinity’s love for Neo that not only revives him but also immediately precedes his manifestation of super-human powers. He stops bullets and transcends the rules of gravity; defying the solidity of bodies, he dives inside an Agent who then explodes.
Having won a crucial battle with the Agents of the Matrix, Neo warns them that he will reveal all things to all people and
then they will enter an uncertain and unpredictable world. As he puts it, “I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid. You’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come to tell you how this is going to end. I came to tell you how it’s going to begin . . . I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see . . . a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries . . . where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.” Here Neo ignores all sorts of complications: he underestimates not so much the continued opposition of the Matrix as the likely resistance of complacent, still enslaved humans. The lesson of Cypher seems to have been forgotten. One also wonders whether the more complicated account of freedom that the film spends a good deal of time developing has here been sacrificed to a shallow conception of human freedom as autonomous self-creation, whether the film falls prey to the facile transcendence criticized by Edmundson. In fact, Neo’s prophecy echoes the situation of humanity, described by Morpheus, at the end of the twentieth century, when a united humanity realized its peak moment of creativity and gave birth to artificial intelligence. Is Neo unknowingly promising yet another utopia?
Of course this may be asking too much in the way of con-sistency and clarity of a Hollywood movie. But this film, perhaps more than any other in recent memory, aspires to a kind of philosophical gravity. It wants us to take its philosophical mus-ings seriously. And this makes the concluding words especially disappointing. Rife with platitudes, the statement seems less apt for The Matrix than for some other film, perhaps called Neo’s Excellent Adventure. Alas, the ending does reflect a concern to which Hollywood gives much consideration in its crafting of endings: paving the way for a sequel.
Early in The Matrix the main character, Neo, is faced with an existential choice. This choice is encapsulated quite literally in a choice between a red and a blue pill. Neo is given the pills by the character, Morpheus, immediately after Morpheus tells Neo that what he believes to be the world is instead a fabrication
“that has been pulled over [his] eyes to blind [him] from the truth.” Morpheus informs Neo that if he takes the red pill the true nature of things will be revealed, whereas if he takes the blue pill his perception of things will remain unchanged. Given their opposite effects, the pills represent the means through which Neo can either elect to wake from his slumber or sustain his dream. Thus, Neo’s choice between the red and blue pills symbolizes the existential choice between living honestly and living in ignorance. Neo swallows the red pill and the plot unfolds.
Virtually all existential philosophers speak at length of the sort of choice Neo makes between honesty and ignorance, or truth and illusion. Though some use different terminology, they tend to describe it as a choice between authenticity and inau-thenticity. Existentialists define authenticity as a state in which the individual is aware of the true nature of the human condi-tion. In contrast, inauthenticity is defined as a state in which the individual is either ignorant of the true nature of reality or in denial with respect to it. The existentialist view is that existence
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