The Matrix changed everything that people expected from blockbuster action movies when it hit theaters in 1999.
While tons of directors tried to copy the Wachowski’s style, and the aspects of the movie seems a bit old now, at the time it was revolutionary.
The Wachowskis couldn’t even reach the same level of success after the movie, even with two very brain-consuming sequels.
However, it wasn’t the action and bullet time choreography that caused the sequels to fall into the abyss — but instead, it was the overcomplicated storyline.
The biggest reason why people don’t look as highly on The Matrix trilogy as they did with the first movie was due to the Wachowski’s attempts at creating the world that was full of religious symbolism and complicated technological systems that seemed smart but much of the time made absolutely no sense when a person actually sat down and thought about it.
The best science fiction movies make people question everything, but when you are questioning why the filmmakers didn’t think of something obvious, that counteracts everything else in the movie.
While The Matrix is still a fantastic movie with a lot of positive attributes, here are some things about The Matrix that makes no sense and still bugs us when we watch the movie.
At the same time, we will also try to figure out if there is a reason for the madness lurking somewhere in the three movies.
Here are the 20 Things About The Matrix That Make No Sense.
HUMANS AS BATTERIES
In The Matrix, the entire system is powered by human bodies. As the people live within the Matrix itself, oblivious to what is really happening to their bodies, those bodies are kept as batteries to fuel the system.
The problem is that this makes no sense. When the human body is asleep, they produce little energy and make lousy batteries.
There is absolutely no reason to choose humans over something like cows, which are actually a better energy source.
Now, there might be the fact that using humans as batteries is only part of the reason they are kept alive down there.
There is a chance that, because the programs have to serve a specific purpose, they would have to commit genocide on the entire human race if they did not keep them as batteries to power their systems. At least, that is the only reasonable possibility.
EVERY PROGRAM HAS ITS PURPOSE
Moving further into The Matrix trilogy, what was up with Sati? She remains one of the most interesting characters in the entire movie franchise because she is a program built with no purpose.
Instead, she represents love, hope and sacrifice. She is one of the only machines that exists that is not programmed to have a specific purpose and that makes her very different than every other machine in the movie’s world.
However, the entire idea of every program having a purpose is confusing at best in the world of the Matrix. It is said that when a program faces deletion, it usually chooses exile over deletion.
With that in mind, Sati is one of the only programs in the system that can choose deletion, why did she not choose deletion and chose exile like every other program in the system?
CYPHER’S MEETING
In The Matrix, Cypher betrayed his entire team because he wanted to live obliviously inside the program where he could think that he is enjoying eating steak and living a good life instead of fighting every day to survive.
That makes sense and if he hadn’t betrayed every one of the heroes, it could be excusable.
Now, with that said, his entire meeting with the agents inside the Matrix itself made no sense at all.
When entering the Matrix, someone has to be on the other side so they can pull you back out. If Cypher had this secret meeting with Agent Smith — who was left behind to pull him out?
The Wachowski’s claim that he had an “automated script” to do it, but why didn’t everyone else do that to make it easier to make jumps?
BODY-JUMPING AGENTS
There are a ton of questions surrounding the body jumping agents inside the Matrix. Obviously, this comes in handy because the agents can take over anyone they need to use in order to fulfill their task.
If they need an FBI agent, find one and jump into their body. If they need a doctor, there are plenty to choose from. This is a great power for the agents to have.
Now, with that said, if they can jump into anyone, then why didn’t they jump into the SWAT team members that were attacking Trinity at the start of the very first Matrix movie?
For that matter, why not just take over Neo when he gets into the car with Trinity and use him to take her out? This entire power is inconsistent throughout the entire movie trilogy.
WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG?
Morpheus was sure that Neo was the One, he should have gotten him out of the Matrix as soon as possible. He sent Trinity to seek out Neo at the club and give him some of the information.
Then, the next day Neo went to work and was almost captured by the Agents before escaping and finally getting a chance to get out of the program and into the real world.
When looking at this, it is obvious that the Wachowski siblings were trying to get a lot of action out of the way in the start and that is where they introduced Bullet Time for the first time.
However, the fact that they made Neo jump through so many hoops and almost die before they finally pulled him out seemed an unnecessary risk for their survival.
WHY NOT TAKE OUT NEO AT THE START?
The answer to this Matrix question is self-explanatory but that doesn’t mean that it makes any sense at all. The agents are very worried about Neo once they realize that Trinity has targeted him.
They have him arrested and are ready to interrogate him inside the Matrix. They want to know what he knows — obviously.
When they realize that he is a pawn, they start to chase him around the Matrix — trying to kill him there.
Why do they do this? Why not just turn off the pod he is in and take him out instantly? That ends the plans of Morpheus, that eliminates the One, that wins their war.
However, that also ends the movie in about 15 minutes, so that is not in the question. It makes no sense that the system doesn’t actually try to stop things before they get out of control, though.
WHY WAS TRINITY IN THERE?
When The Matrix starts, Neo is curious and knows that something is wrong with the world that he lives in.
He can’t quite put his finger on it, but he knows that there is something beneath the surface that is bigger than just a regular everyday world that he is forced to live through day after day.
He then meets Trinity and his entire life changes.
However, why did Neo need to meet Trinity at all? Why was Trinity even in the Matrix at all?
Morpheus had been keeping track of everything Neo was doing and where he was at using computer codes. As a matter of fact, Morpheus saved Neo’s life through the escape and never went into the Matrix to do it.
Why did Trinity have to risk her life by going in there when it wasn’t necessary?
WHAT ABOUT THOSE CRAZY FIGHTS?
Looking at what the Wachowski’s accomplished in all three Matrix movies is a treat for the eyes. The Bullet Time, the massive fight scenes, the incredible spectacle of action was like nothing ever seen in a movie of this magnitude.
It was groundbreaking and changed the landscape of action movies for years to come.
However, the humans who are used as batteries for the system are living obliviously inside the Matrix itself. They go about their boring everyday lives and have no idea that they are living in a fake world.
However, they have to see these insane fights.
How can all this take place in front of the humans in the Matrix and they not start to put two and two together and realize that something just isn’t right?
WHY CAN’T AGENTS TRACK NEO?
Morpheus is able to use computer codes to track everything Neo does.
He has been doing this for a long time to make sure that Neo is the One and he is even able to use the codes to hack into the system and help save Neo when he is arrested and the Agents are coming to interrogate him.
With that said, it opens up a huge hole in the plot.
If Morpheus is able to hack into the system to track Neo — why can’t the system track him on its own.
The Agents put a tracker on Neo to trace his every move but there is no reason for that. If Morpheus hacks the system, the system should be able to track everyone in it natively.
Neo is actually plugged into the mainframe so this makes no sense at all.
WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE THE ’90S?
One of the advantages of watching a science fiction movie is seeing what the filmmakers imagine the future looking like. In The Matrix, that future is a dystopian world that is ravaged and destroyed.
However, at the same time, the world inside the program looks just like the ’90s — despite the movie taking place in the future.
Take a look at the computers that Neo is using and realize that the Wachowski siblings chose to use computers that looked dated instantly.
When searching for what the future might look like, they did not change anything.
However, the reason for this might simply be that they wanted to keep everything unchanged in the world so that the humans obliviously moving through life would never notice any change to alert them of danger.
HOW IS THERE A FRANCE AND JAPAN?
In The Matrix trilogy, people talk about things that are happening in France and Japan.
The problem is that the Matrix all takes place in a Mega City. This is one giant city that the humans left alive and serving as batteries for the system live in order to remain oblivious to their current predicaments.
If there is just a Mega City, then how do places like Japan and France exist? The answer to this is never given in the movies but it is slightly obvious.
They do not exist and are lies told by the system to keep people believing that they are still in the real world.
The system goes a long way in showing Arabic newspaper headlines and airports with exotic destinations — things that can’t exist in the system.
WHY DOES NEO HAVE POWERS?
Inside The Matrix, it seems that everyone who knows that the world is not real can develop powers if given enough training.
There is a huge sequence where Morpheus teaches Neo how to harness his powers and give him the tools needed to fight the Agents and help survive while inside the system.
The big question was when Neo showed up in the real world to fight and somehow had powers. He blew up robots with his mind and was able to use some sort of mind tricks to see even after blinded.
This is a huge inconsistency and made those parts of The Matrix trilogy make no sense.
The only answer is that Neo is still somewhat connected to the machines, but that was never explained fully in the movies.
HOW DID MORPHEUS KNOW NEO WAS THE ONE?
There was never a real reason given as to why Morpheus was so interested in getting Neo. In other words, why did Morpheus think that Neo was “The One” anyway?
Other than the fact that Neo is a hacker and knows somehow that there is something wrong with the world around him, there is nothing that makes him special.
The Oracle knows that there will be a Savior, but once again, what is it about Neo that makes Morpheus think that he has found the right guy.
There had been different people before that were supposed to be The One that ended up perishing, so was Morpheus just taking wild guesses here?
The Matrix never really says why Morpheus chose Neo, so maybe it was just supposed to be considered faith.
WHY NOT MASS RUSH THE REBELS?
The Agents can jump into anyone who is inside the Matrix, why do they always limit it to a few people at a time.
Honestly, if the Agents really wanted to squash this entire resistance before it started, why not send 100 or 200 agents, or even 1,000 agents, to take over a mass quantity of people and then bum rush the entire resistance?
This is a computer system so there is no reason to think that there is a limit to how many people the Agents can take over at one time.
The number on a system this big should be infinite, so why not just send in a giant batch of Agents and take out the entire resistance in one sweeping motion?
With that said, why did it take Agent Smith so long to just create multiple versions of himself inside the Matrix to fight?
It seems like the computer is not that smart to begin with.
WHY DO THEY TAKE OUT SO MANY INNOCENTS?
When Morpheus is telling Neo his plans to save the world, the entire goal is to release everyone from the control of the machines.
It seems, to Morpheus and his followers, that it is better to live freely in a world full of pain and suffering than it is to live in a world of happy bliss that is not real.
It all comes down to people not having the right to choose but having the right to live.
That made his actions inside the Matrix senseless. When fighting the agents and trying to fight the system, there is a lot of violence and carnage that takes place.
As the Agents jump from person to person to continue the fight, Morpheus and Neo just start a slaughter. They are taking out the people they are trying to save in the name of their mission.
HOW WAS THE UNDERGROUND CITY BUILT?
Zion is where the human rebels have set up. They built this massive city underground and made sure to build it close to the Earth’s core to keep them warm.
However, the war with the machines wiped out a lot of humanity, and most of the humans were used as batteries to run the system. With that in mind, who built this city and how did they build it?
If the system had all the resources to basically take over the planet Earth, how did the survivors have the resources to build this complicated system of tunnels, roads and infrastructure?
With that said, the core of the Earth is blazing hot and there is no way they can survive that close to the center of the planet. Nothing about Zion makes sense.
WHAT IS UP WITH THE PHONES?
If there is a way to get in and out of the Matrix by using telephones, why did the computer system not just eliminate the phones from the world completely?
Sure, that would throw a lot of people off to suddenly not have the phones anymore, but since it was pay phones that people used to jump, and those are almost extinct now anyway, looking back it could have worked.
With that said, why are the rules of the phones not consistent? Sometimes, a person has to pick up the phone to get transported out of the system.
Other times, they have to wait for it to ring before picking it up. Other times, they can just appear near a phone. Why is this so inconsistent throughout the movies?
WHY DID MORPHEUS GO INTO THE MATRIX?
Just as it made no sense that Trinity would enter the Matrix in the first movie when she was watching and contacting Neo, it made even less sense that Morpheus would enter the system.
In The Matrix, Morpheus proved that he could hack into the system to help Neo escape the Agents and survive until they could pull him out and save him from his pod.
If Morpheus is able to hack into the Matrix, why would he ever need to risk his life by entering the system?
Sure, Neo was The One, but Morpheus was also very important to the cause and risking everything to do something he could have accomplished as a hacker seems too big of a chance to take.
Morpheus getting captured before the climax was just a dumb move on his part and made no sense.
AREN’T THEY DEPLETING THEIR POWER?
When Agents take over people in the system, those people normally die. When people inside the Matrix passes away, they are then dropped from their pods — as they expire there as well — and these people are then basically fed to the living to keep the entire system working.
However, it seems a bit strange that the computer is using human bodies to power the system but then seems so negligent when it comes to keeping them alive inside the Matrix.
The more people expire, the fewer batteries they have to use to power their systems.
Doesn’t letting so many people pass away due to needless fighting mean that the lifespan of the entire system has a finish point eventually, meaning the computer is limiting its own lifespan?
WHY AREN’T THEY USING THE SUN?
With humans as a poor battery source to keep the planet running well, there has to be a case argued for why the sun’s power was not used to power the Earth.
There was Operation Dark Storm, where the machines were winning the war against the humans, so scientists found a way to block the sun from reaching the surface of the Earth to cut off the main power source of the computers.
This was explained not in the movies but in the special Animatrix DVD. Morpheus did tell Neo that man “scorched the sky.”
The problem is this — in the third movie, Neo and Trinity fly a spacecraft above the clouds and they see the sun, meaning that the computers still have a way to somehow get access to the sun, but chose not to for some reason.
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Can you think of any other aspects of The Matrix that don’t make any sense? Sound off in the comments!
