Matrix 4 / The Matrix Resurrections

[Saintheart]

The architect was merely there to close one door / path to give Neo the freedom to find his own path / way. No more oracles, no more architects, just a Kung Fu Hero tired of false prophecies and bad faith beliefs trying his best to save Zion, his people he has adopted.

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The Architect is no different than Ozymandias from Watchmen which I quoted earlier. He is a narcissist obsessed with his own creation / reflection. He may be “god-like” but he has killed thousands / perhaps far more to achieve his new world. That is a pejorative of a God “to see his creation move” whether it is Ozymandias, or The Architect, or He Who Remains from Loki.

What was that Roman historian quote about Caesars again (other Narcissists)

By making the KFC man, the Architect condescending and rude it taught us the viewers to stop listen to charismatic affect of the Narcissists like Smith and The Merovingian. We listened to the words which were true and we found them disappointing, philosophy is not always for enlightened and mystical experiences sometimes it is there to instill the reality principle. It taught us to act and save Trinity, or to be like Trinity and just threaten to shoot the French Man in his nightclub. To act not just to think or to feel.

That's an interesting take on the scene. But my problem with it is that the Architect quite literally presents Neo with no substantive choice, and making matters worse is that Neo chooses selfishness. Most conventional plots have the hero find a third path forward, but insofar as that happens, it happens in Revolutions, not in Reloaded. In Reloaded Neo chooses one of the two options presented. The Architect presents Neo with two doors: one leading back to the Source and the salvation of his species, the other leading to the Matrix to save Trinity and thus assuring the outright extinction of humanity. The only reason we don't find it predictable is because Neo flat out chooses to extinguish humanity rather than accept Trinity, like all human beings, is going to die ... if not today, then at some future date, and there's absolutely nothing Neo can do to prevent that fundamental truth. (This also ties into my model of the series as being about Neo's narcissism, but we'll leave that to one side.)

The Architect pretty much declares that Neo's in the same position as all the Ones before him, and the five previous iterations always chose the destruction of Zion for the sake of preserving humanity's existence. Neo, apparently unlike all the other Ones before him, has more of a thing for chicks who look like Carrie Anne Moss than his predecessors. And Neo doesn't even seek the refuge of the greater good to justify his choice, he just goes 'Nah,' and knowingly condemns the entirety of humanity to extinction, right then, right there, and no, he has zero plan for saving anybody, and to top it all off outright says he loves Trinity too damn much even to let her die in the Matrix. Neo is completely responding to feelings, the Architect outright commentates his chemical response to Trinity being in peril. Even now, after Revolutions papered over the issue by just going whole hog with the Messianic metaphor again, that scene leaves a bad taste in my mouth - it leaves the impression that Neo quite literally is more prepared to let the entire human race go out for the sake of one person that he, and no one else, has an emotional attachment to. Neo wasn't interested in saving Zion or his people, he knowingly consigned them to extinction, along with the rest of the human race.

I don't necessarily see the Architect as a narcissist. That requires a human biology and human-ish upbringing, which doesn't seem to have been the path the Machines went on when they started creating their own AI. But then we start killing catgirls if we look too deep into how the hell machines which gained AI and which can therefore advance or shift their intellectual advance/"evolution" free of biological constraints somehow are still acting a lot like humans.