Neo Versus The Architect in “The Matrix: Reloaded”

Every scene in The Matrix trilogy is breathtaking, but this particular one at the end of the second movie says a lot about us as human beings and the range of emotions we’re capable of. Recall that Neo has a rendezvous with The Architect of the Matrix; a seemingly futile interlude, where the hope of the world is about to be destroyed, if we believe the Architect.

Read on as the scene plays itself out in the studio of The Architect:

The Architect: You are here because Zion is about to be destroyed. Its every living inhabitant terminated, its entire existence eradicated.

Neo: Bulls..t. (The monitors [portraying all of Neo’s possible responses] respond the same.)

The Architect: Denial is the most predictable of all human responses. But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.[1]

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The thing I found most interesting about this scene (at another juncture) is all the hundred or so monitors showing the momentary flurry of confused emotion in Neo. It recognises that we’re all like this at any given moment, and especially when we’re under pressure. Who can tell how we’ll respond to given situations?

And over our lifetimes we’ll have responded in a vast range of ways to an infinitely too-hard-to-grasp amount of circumstances.

How can we begin to attempt to fathom the depth of the human psyche; mentally, emotionally, and spiritually? But, the point is we have to. We have a huge fascination for these things of philosophy, psychology, theology and spirituality in the context of one single human being. Yet, it’s a mystery that will never be solved.

And The Architect, in his own clinical anti-human way, hits the nail on the head, finally. One of the commonest responses to the stimuli we face is rampant, unchallenged denial. It’s the root cause of many psychological and spiritual ailments.

How many of the myriad of responses we’re capable of, I wonder, are hampered by and defaulted to the response of denial? How much would we hence miss out on in the sphere of life, emotion and reason?

Copyright © 2009, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved.

[1] Source: http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000770/quotes