Hacker News Reader

Comment by kemayo | Hacker News Reader

This article seems to be saying that two entirely separate plot concepts are incompatible, and I just don't see it.

1. Morpheus has found other people he believes to be "the One" before. He was wrong, and they died or otherwise didn't pan out. (I'm fairly sure this is still referenced in the movie? Just not the specific deleted scenes that the article mentions.)

2. There is a larger cycle of "the One" resetting Zion as part of the machines' system of control. This has happened a bunch of times now.

These are different things. They have nothing to do with each other. They are neither mutually exclusive nor mutually supporting.

View on HN

The fact that there were five predecessors in the shooting script, and five predecessors in Reloaded / Revolutions, very strongly suggests that they lifted and reworked that plot from the first movie, for reuse in the sequels.

From a narrative point of view, it would be confusing as hell to have five predecessors in this iteration of the matrix, as well as five predecessors across five previous iterations of the matrix.

Could both have been part of the same overarching, pre-planned plot? Sure. But is that likely? Not at all.

It could be something as mundane as the writer liking the sound of ‘five’ and ‘sixth’ in the script.

Almost like having false dragons in the wheel of time, and also many predecessors who are real dragons...

To be fair though I always assumed the second and third matrixes were retroactive revisions. They are just so different from the first one.

The number is only five in both cases because only one plot was eventually used.

Had the Morpheus 5 been kept in, it would have been trivial to use a different number of cycles (7, 10, 400, whatever) and avoid the confusion.

If Morpheus found 5 previous "The Ones", then I believe that there would still need to be 5 separate iterations of Neo, since after each iteration, the Architect wipes out Zion except for a small number of people that are used for repopulation. Morpheus would need to have been part of each of those genocides which he probably would have brought up in conversation.

no, the two things are completely unrelated

the matrix could have gone trought 5 iteractions of the one cicle that morpheus knew nothing about, each resulting in the destruction of zion.

yet in this current version of the matrix, during this cicle, morpheus could have find 5 previous individuals that he tough were candidates to being the one, all that were ultimately not the one and who died fighting smith, before finaly finding neo the actual one for this latest cicle of the matrix.

The coincidence of him being the 6th iteration in both cases is what's caught the author's eye, maybe the filmmakers liked the number 6 and used it in the 2nd plot thread after scrapping the first plot thread.

I guess I can see how that might have confused the author. I do feel that at some point in writing this article they should have noticed that they were conflating two entirely different concepts based solely on the number 6 being used in reference to them...

It would confuse most viewers, so either it was a terrible choice to have similar stories about "sixth iteration", or it was originally one plot then changed to another.

I agree with the author that Cypher would have been a more nuanced character had he more justification for his doubt.

I don't think it's a confusion on the author's side. It would be confusing and redundant to have 5 predecessors on two different levels in the movie. IMHO, they simply developed/morphed the ultimately unused predecessor idea from the first movie into a different variant in the second movie.

> two entirely separate plot concepts are incompatible, and I just don't see it

I agree with you, but I also agree with the poster that they didn't actually have any of this in mind when they wrote Matrix 1, any more than George Lucas already wrote Star Wars I-III and then started filming with part IV.

> they didn't actually have any of this in mind when they wrote Matrix 1

But the article fails to show that at all.

I think "The Animatrix" has some really cool stories that support these multiple concepts.

IMO, The Animatrix is the only quality work in the matrix universe other than the original movie.

The new Matrix seems like a spiritual successor to the Animatrix more so than the movies

I mostly agree, though I think the other movies are fun. But the Animatrix was so ahead of its time. Now Netflix has love, death, & robots - which to me seems directly inspired.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com