Well, I finally got around to seeing the movie on Sunday. This is my guess.

There have been previous "ones" and other versions of the matrix. With as much religious symbology (what movie folks?) as the Bros. W. have put into this series, I have no doubt they are getting political with this one.

The matricies are not always necessarily computer-based like in the movie.



As I sometimes bring up Christianity being implemented by Constantine as a method to control the populace and gain power for himself (not unlike the machines controling humans and using them as batteries). This lead to the Roman Catholic church controling people, and martin luther finally becoming "a one" to stand up and show the people that it can be different.

And Jesus himself (or his real name Jeshua ben Joseph) saw how the jewish clergy had become corrupted and along with St. John the Baptist became the Kingly and Priestly Pillars of the Qumran (aka Essene or Nazorean). Jesus became "a one" as he tried to show the Jews that they have become corrupted over the years. THe matrix in this case being the corrupted priesthood controling the population in order to make money.

The matrix in this movie involves the use of a computer system hard-wired to people's brains. In Buddhism, Mara (the more powerful of the gods) sort of runs a matrix by trying to thwart Buddha and keep his worshippers in Samsara (the matrix) and prevent them from escaping (via enlightenment to nirvana) to the real world. There's an example of a matrix with Buddha being the one, as he helps people free thier mind.

The concept of Zion is just a group of people who try to free others. The Arhats who followed Buddha would be a Zion. The members of the Essene community would be a Zion. The early protestants would be a Zion. And in each case, Zion was destroyed.

Buddhism is approaching its Mappo (each buddha's teachings only apply to the world for a certain amount of time, as the world continues to evolve past them, the last buddha's teachings only applied for about 500 years...damn women). Zion is destoryed by time.

The essene community only exists in its original state in a small community in Iraq. THe teachings of Jeshua ben Joseph are forgotten for the most part and the catholics took over. Zion is destroyed.

Neo fails to go to the source, and chooses Trinity over Zion, the machines will win, Zion will be destroyed (supposedly).

MY PREDICTION:
Mankind will smith the machines in a big battleish scene. Afterword, the council of Zion will rule all of humanity (now freed), and will quash freedom for control of the populace. THe machines will be destoryed, but a new matrix will be put in its place.

THE MATRIX IS SIMPLY THE CONCEPT OF CONTROL BEING IMPLEMENTED, THE ONE IS THE PERSON WHO INEVITIBLY SEES THE MATRIX (because of human nature) AND TRIES TO STOP IT.

Zion is just a community of the Proletariet who rise against the Bourgoisie, only to become one themselves.

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Welcome back Rev.

So, where do you see this ending? Kind of like an Animal Farm, where the freed take over the matrix but go corrupt and opt to keep the matrix going for their own gain?

-WC-

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exactly. The humans will free themselves and another matrix will arise as a result (maybe not even intentionally). But my guess is that there will be green matrix code in the last scene just to make an artistic point.

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Interesting thought. I think I would go along with that except change it to be that the freed people meant to free everyone from the matrix, but decide that there isn't enough resources to free everyone - and they lose whatever gains they get from the matrix running (electricity, brain power, whatever).

But my only worry is that they only have 2.5 hours to work with in M3. They dug pretty deep in M2, they have to start closing points up and start heading out of the hole quick in M3.

-WC-

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Could be that too. Maybe the humans decide to plug everyone into the matrix for reasons of resources. The matrix is self-sufficient (in which case the matrix will continue to exist and so on and so on) and the humans will control it themselves.

Neo would be king, or god or something. Think of it, they could all have shirts without holes in them.

But I think the point will end up being more abstract than scifi. In which case it doesn't realy matter, the concept that I was talking about would surive and so forth (I'm running on coffee still, and can't quite think now)

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although I like your idea, it makes for a great 6 movie series.

How I think it may end is that they figure out how to get out of the layer of the matrix that contains Zion, find out that there's not much on the outside of the matrix other than coldness, hunger, gray - and they just close on thinking how hard they fought to get out only to find this.

Who knows.
-WC-

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I think it's time they add a disclaimer to the end of each of the Matrix movies:
"Relationships to any religion are merely coincidental."

These movies are science fiction, and with any good science fiction movie, a certain amount of non-fiction needs to exist. That's the extent of religious substance to the movie. Just an element of truth to substantiate the storyline. That's all. If it were anything more, we would have to hail the Woch. Bros. as some sort of twisted prophets.

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EtaPhase: indeed, very correct. The religious names and references to religion are only there to give what is a science fiction movie some more credibility. They are the details that make us accept it much more as being something that can actually happen.

But saying the religious references are the main part of the story would be stretching it. The Wachowski brothers are known for these things: their love for comics, japanimation and computergames They are not theologists as far as I know

i dont know i herd they were pretty religous in a mag. artical

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Well, let's see.

Neo ascends into the heavens at the end of the 1st movie like jesus after the resurrection.

And he brought trinity (<~~) back from the dead like jesus did to lazurus.

Key words like prophecy and things like that come to mind.

I think they are trying to push a religious angle if I'm not mistaken.

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Gnostic? Duh!!!

And you'll see the Matrix is conceptually plagiarised.

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