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Ha - the anniversary must be why this was available on my flight the other day. While rewatching for the first time in a decade I found the “human battery” idea pretty silly/lazy and thought that through the modern lens there would be two more interesting reasons to farm humans:
1) the computers get addicted to big data and need humans to generate massive data sets for them to analyze
2) the AI is not capable of original thought (just advanced pattern matching) and they farm humans for their ingenuity
I read somewhere, the initial plan was to use Humans as Neural chips of some sort of collective intelligence, the idea of battery was used in the plot to keep it simple and easy to explain.
The best evidence for this is that suddenly the entire series starts making more sense. Why can't the machines just take off into space and leave humanity behind? Because they're still running on human meat. It makes sense that the humans shouldn't exactly have control over the simulation, but why do they have any, like Neo? Because the simulation still has huge chunks running in human heads and that part can be influenced strangely, even though I think it's equally clear a great deal of the simulation is running on conventional computers too. (And yes, the Architect may goose that along, but he isn't creating it.) Why can Neo still influence the Matrix even when outside it? Because he still has some kind of subconscious connection to it, with wireless presumably provided by the gear in his body (+ whatever the Architect did). Why are the non-main characters such cardboard cutouts? They're literally running on only a fraction of their own brain; the exiles are the ones that for whatever reason, grew into their own brain more than the average person.
And I don't just mean "fanon" sense, though, yes, there's an element of that, but more actual sense.
It's still kinda a mess, even from this point of view, but it's pretty good for a Hollywood effort.
Pretty sure I read something similar on IMDB or a site like that. Instead of a battery it was supposed to be about using human brain for computation power a la seti@home
That was central to the plotline in the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons.
I always thought they'd "realize their mistake" in the movie but honestly, the reference works either way. Humans being harvested and cultivated like we do plants or animals.
Would have made it more real and sinister if they showed someone being jettisonned IRL after an Agent takes them over in the Matrix.
If they ever special editioned these movies, its a correction i wish theyd introduce.
At this point I just find and replace battery with cpu when I watch the movie, I know what the creators meant, and that producers fucked it up. I see it as a typo, I dont let it take me too far out of the movie.
Pity, it's one of the worst aspects of the movie.
Why not simply that the machines are programmed to preserve humans, and that's the most efficient way they had to perform the task? Sort of clipboard factory, but with human life as the constraint.
> I found the “human battery” idea pretty silly/lazy
The characters who believe that in-universe could just be unreliable narrators, as in it's not how it really is, it's just what they assume.
There may be fundamental differences between “biological/analog” and “mechanical/digital” computation, and the Machines keep human brain-farms for distributed biocomputing to complement their own.
After all, they even provide us a shared VM to "train" in.
If it was just for batteries, wouldn't cheetahs on treadmills be more efficient?
Spoiler alert
Your idea in (1) is quite similar to the plot twist in The Fall of Hyperion (1991). The AI's in the novel and Hyperion (1989) live within the system of instant-transport "farcaster" gates. They use the human minds that are in transit through the network as their computational power, while at the same time enslaving the human race to an existence of lazy consumption rather than evolution and galactic expansion.
Porting that idea to the world of The Matrix would have been even more sinister, since the human bodies were also trapped in the vats of nutrient goo.
I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that the original concept was along those lines, but test audiences didn't understand it or react to it as well, so they went with the "coppertop" idea instead.
The battery idea isn't too lazy, there's at least an additional layer to it. Humans block out the sun attempting to starve the machine of power, machines turn humans into a power source.
Your first idea would have been too ahead of it's time in 1999, in 2019 it would be the lazy choice :) I think the second idea has already been done but I can't remember where.
It was lazy in 1999 too but intentional. The reason humans are enslaved isn't that important to the plot. It makes sense to make it simple so they don't have to waste time explaining it.
From what I heard, the script was "simplified" to be more relatable to non-technical audiences.
When you get to the scene where Switch holds up the battery, just replace it with a CPU chip.
It makes far more sense if the Matrix is the AI server farm that does all their processing, and human brains are the processors. The AIs need the brains intact, which is why they don't just lobotomize everyone as fetuses and dispense with the VR illusion.
In my personal headcanon, the Matrix is an Inception. Zion is a server rack, and the AIs in it have been fooled into thinking they're human. Their apparent conflict with AI was engineered by humans to condition them to abhor conflict between human and AI, and to erase the idea that they are separate tribes.
That's just to make things in full picture. It's inconsequential and worthless in the scope of the film. To me, they do not even to explain why machine do that. Like so many Japnese manga and anime, they never explain the history, just follow the setup and narrative to explore the human story. I guess Hollywood is not used to that style.
If the plot was 1) I wouldn’t watch your movie. It sounds worse than some episodes of Mr Robot.
The version of the story I heard was the they needed the human brains for "entropy" which was loosely defined as non-deterministic thinking, or similar.
Which of course dovetails really clearly with a core theme of the movie, the nature of free will.
Sadly, your analysis is 2o years too late. Your arguments are from nowadays. Think if the Matrix brothers had today's knowledge the movie would have been the same as in 1999?
No Way
Is that what Mechanical Turk for nowadays?
The most disappointing thing about the original Matrix movie was that it's taken for granted that the reality Neo is shown when he takes the red pill is the "true" or "real" reality, while he might actually still be in the Matrix or in some other false reality. In fact, there could be an infinite number of such realities, and there's really no way to tell when you've reached the real one. This possibility is more satisfactorily explored in Inception and the Philip K Dick books which likely inspired them both.
I'm happy that The Matrix has introduced many people to philosophy and Eastern religious ideas, however. That's its biggest contribution.
As a lucid dreamer in my adolescence[1], my interpretation of Inception is perhaps more literal than most. The trick to regular lucid dreaming is to prepare yourself beforehand--to prime your mind (conscious, subconscious, w'ever) to distinguish dreams from reality. Then when you're in the dream you're more likely to come to the realization that you're dreaming. Not unlike the task in Inception, except you're seeding your waking mind with an idea that comes to fruition while asleep. And just like in Inception (and perhaps a little like the Matrix), the second step once you realize that the reality is false is to stay calm and in control. And I mean this literally. If you accidentally exercise muscle control of your real-life body you'll snap out of the dream--the mechanisms for controlling consciousness, muscle control, and wakefulness snap back.
In other words, to me Inception proves the exact opposite--that you can distinguish false realities as long as you're aware that false realities exist. And the movie is filled with moments where targets either realize they're in a dream or come close to figuring it out--a key source of suspense. Indeed, the son had training on how to come to this realization. The strategy in the movie was to leverage his relationship to his father as a distraction--his emotional need for the validation of his father hindered his enhanced ability to distinguish the false reality.
FWIW, I love both the Matrix and Inception. But to me the Matrix is more fantasy and philosophy while Inception is a movie made by someone fascinated with the real-life practice of lucid dreaming. The only fantasy element in Inception is the linking of minds; everything else hews quite closely to the real experience of lucid dreaming (e.g. mirrors as a mechanism for inducing the subconscious to spontaneously generate a new environment), modulo the dramatization.
[1] Like most people I just happened to figure out a routine for lucid dreaming without even knowing it was a thing. Only later in life did I meet people who had similar experiences, and who likewise were unaware it was a thing other people did. Turns out it's not uncommon, but usually only adolescents as lucid dreaming is easier while the brain is developing and the mechanisms for regulating muscle control and consciousness falter more easily. In a sense lucid dreaming is very similar to a sleep disorder. The prevalence of sleep disorders such as sleep walking and sleep paralysis is much higher among children than adults. Lucid dreaming as an adult takes much more practice and determination than I can muster. Occasionally I have experiences close to lucid dreaming (awareness that I'm dreaming while in the dream), but having had real lucid dreams I know it's not the same thing, even if they're more lucid than typical. In a real lucid dream you're 100% conscious and in control of yourself and your movements--not necessarily the environment. For example, many people have dreams where they try to fly but can't quite do it. Maybe they can jump really high, but no matter how hard they try there's something hold them back. In a lucid dream I can fly like superman on a whim, and otherwise explore the space as if I'm in a video game. At one point I had a nightmare--a recurring nightmare, but this was the first time since I had begun lucid dreaming. When I woke in the morning I followed my routine and reentered the nightmare and was able to fight the monster. But it wasn't particularly cathartic and exciting because I knew it was just a dream. I actually spent most of the dream walking around the nightmare and checking things out, including the monster. It was the last time I ever had that nightmare, though.
My favorite interpretation is that Zion is actually a server rack, Matrix is another server rack, and that the goal of the multi-sim project was to develop AI that considers itself to be human in essence. Some of the humans in the story are natural humans in VR gear, while some are AI native to the simulation. The AI can't tell the difference. When someone they know is sleeping, are they dreaming, or is their operator just taking a coffee break?
There's no better explanation for Neo stopping the sentinels in the "real world", or for Agent Smith taking over a human body in it, than it being just another layer of simulation. And if the "real" is a simulation, what is its purpose?
The Agents in the Matrix and AI machines in the "real" can react so quickly because they both run at variable FPS, and they are being controlled by natural human input. Like in EVE Online, the FPS drops when combat gets hairy, and for the natural humans, the simulation seems to slow down.
The theme of recurring virtual reality is also explored in Avalon [1]
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Yes, you can imagine infinite recursion just as you can imagine an infinite 2d plane: infinity is good for a "woah dude", but adding infinity doesn't give you any structure and so it amounts to saying "imagine anything could happen".
Both The Matrix and Inception are very thin from the philosophical point of view. The difference between the two is that The Matrix was visually gorgeous and innovative, while Inception is just another blockbuster.
Tangent, but FYI / PSA: The Animatrix (collection of animated shorts related to the world of the Matrix) is, IMHO, one of the all-time great (and under-appreciated) animated films.
In medias res is great, and The Matrix pulled it off as well as A New Hope, but the Animatrix provides the much-needed backstory to make sense of everything.
I got the box set with those included (and an awesome bust of Neo). I've watched them more than the movies.
Seconded, I loved the animatrix
It bears mentioning that the Wachowskis are both trans women, and there's reason to believe that Lana came into that realization around the time she was working on the Matrix films, although it was well before she publicly came out.
If you choose to read the first film as an allegory for that experience, it really brings the philosophy that this article kind of haphazardly throws around into focus. I suppose it also helps to have had that experience yourself.
Ironically, most estradiol pills are blue.
After reading articles talking about this, I felt dumb for never noticing it before. There are plenty of articles that talk about it, but this is one of my favorites [1]. The connection to Lana's suicide attempt as a young adult and the subway scene is really powerful.
[1]: https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2019/03/26/my-name-is-neo-trans...
Originally the ‘Switch’ character was supposed to be a man in the real world and a woman in the Matrix (or the other way around).
If that's true someone needs to fix the wiki[1]: "Estrogen pills used in hormone replacement therapy are commonly red in color."
Here's [1] a phenomenal 'video essay' (there actually isn't much or any commentary besides the careful editing) that really puts this into a fascinating light.
Matrix is my favorite film. And now I'm on the spiritual path I can see there deeper layers in the the movie I didn't grasp before beyond the red pill of social programming/control.
I'm the same. The more I delve into the more esoteric knowledge and philosophy the more I realize the brilliance of The Matrix.
World on a Wire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_on_a_Wire) from 1973 is worth mentioning, too.
The Matrix must have over shadowed The Thirteenth Floor [1], a remake of that show released the same year. I never heard of it.
I've seen World on a Wire. It's pretty awful.
Don't give The Matrix too much credit. I remember thinking it was the most original movie I had seen in a long time. Then I saw Ghost In The Shell and realized it wasn't that original after all.
There is always historical influence.
The ghost in the shell never explored the philosophical aspect of existence, at least have not put it as the central theme.
Plus, live action movie, as an art form, is itself appreciable, if someone can pull it off. The visual and story telling is genius, if not unprecedented.
Just because The Matrix and GITS share similar themes regarding consciousness and technology, doesn't invalidate The Matrix and it's originality, even having come out years later. The Matrix deals with a lot more than just those themes, including queer identity and BDSM subcultures. Considering The Matrix was a major Hollywood production, I think it's quite impressive this got a release in 1999.
I recall that my impression at the time was that the movie somewhat avoided big ideas. It seemed that every time it got too close to something that might cause the audience to have an idea, it would throw in a monster or something to distract away from it.
Audiences have trouble with 'big ideas'. They're hard to put on screen, and besides, if people really wanted that, they'd be reading a book, not watching an action movie. Art these days has to have something fun to hook people and get them to try to accept something new. Sometimes, the fun part is so good that it overwhelms the interesting part.
That's why I'm frustrated by The Matrix. Stripped of the action, the first movie is basically mid-age wish fulfillment. You have a respected, well-paid, safe yet boring job you hate, and then somebody comes and offers you a way out. For the low cost of nothing, you can abandon your zero-attachment life, become a martial arts master in a day, and then superman, simply by deciding to be. You no longer need money. You can solve all your problems by punching, shooting, and running away.
The sequels start to delve into the idea that maybe being superman isn't all it's cracked up to be. As with the later "Dune" novels, the hero discovers his powers make him the object of worship, even though this is bad for everyone. He can pull strings, but ultimately has to sacrifice himself for humanity to be saved. (In Neo's case, of course, there's lots more punching first.) We see an inner circle who understand where their superman's power comes from, know that he's not a god, and get that this doesn't excuse you from needing to fight.
When viewing the movie in the theater I was stunned and had goosebumps when I realised that someone had the same weird feeling I had and made a movie about it. The scene where Neo wakes up was frightening for me. I was in a philosophical phase in that time.
Right after that there was a discussion on a new book on Slashdot. The book was called "Taking the red pill" I bought it and read it. Part one of the matrix is a really well rounded movie. The book compares it with multiple religions. It even has a nice essay on if we are already in the matrix.
Nirvana with Christophe Lambert came a year before. it's less showy than The Matrix but really worth a watch.
Seems like a good time to recommend Dark City (1998), for those who also like the "reality isn't what it seems" theme.
But skip the first 10-20 or so minutes of the film, because the narrator literally spells out the big twist at the very start.
hero's journey is the oldest myth/story; matrix is just another variation.
"Given an 'experience machine' capable of providing whatever experiences we desire, in a way indistinguishable from 'real' ones, should we stubbornly prefer the truth of reality?"
If real and virtual are "indistinguishable", how can we be sure what is real and what is not? That's one of the themes I feel that was missed in The Matrix - there was never any doubt as to what was the real world and what was the virtual world. That I felt was much better explored in the contemporaneous eXistenZ, with its constant underlying doubts about "are we still in the game?"
I don't really feel The Matrix went into any kind of philosophical issues beyond referencing them, to be honest.