I kind of liked the philosophical undertones of the first movie. It seemed to draw heavily on Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" and also had an interesting "Free Will / Determinism" dynamic going on. Add to that the whole implication in Neo being The One of the "geek deity" concept you see in a lot of the best cyberpunk and the brew was not too bad.
So you would equate Neo to Prometheus to an extent? Or a man following in his footsteps?
The first movie resolved all three - Neo chose to be unchained from facing the cave wall (the Plato's cave scenario), to embrace Free Will and achieved the "Geek Deity" status. The very end of the film made it clear he was going to demonstrate to the other people in the Matrix in ways the program could not cover up that their reality was indeed a dream.
Neo was flying around like a nut at the end of the film, he more became Icarus flying too close to the sun than a greek "hero", and he paid for his "sins", and so did "we" by Mr Anderson 2.0.
Really this should have been the end of it.
It could have been, sure.
Unfortunately in the next two films they introduce plot elements that serve only to confuse things and actually undermine the themes. For example, the notion of "upgraded agents" that can successfully fight Neo essentially invalidates the entire point of "The One".
No, they indicate a cost to his ego.
Also, the entire idea of and character of the Merovingian is not only dumb (programs can hide in the Matrix and the machines who build and operate it can't find them?) but ultimately purposeless. Really he only exists to provide action scenes in the process of finding the "key master" as do "the Twins".
No, they have a very real purpose. That even an architect does not have ultimate control over "his domain" Now, if you want to talk about what the characters were *used for* would agree with you Joe, but as to what they -represent-, I will have to disagree. They all but represent "non monotheism" existing within the framework of a monotheistic construct (the matrix).
Then we come to his chat with the Architect. Now, I admit on first hearing I kind of liked the notion that The One is a recurring feature of the Matrix meant to "restabilize" it. But the notion that The One will always look like, dress like, sound like and even have the exact same personality as Neo is silly.
Dress, look, and sound are functions of environment, personality is a function of the "eternal champion" ideal. King Arthur, "Once and future king" may look, dress and sound like a "modern person", but the personality, the desire to "do good" does not change. It's not the "same person", it IS however the same ideals and philosophy.
Then there is the notion of Neo's choice - the Architect makes it sound very much like each time the One has stood before him the exact same choice has had to be made - restart things and pick the people for the new Zion or save Trinity.
No, not save Trinity, save what he wants, or self sacrifice to educate the architect.
In order for this choice to be the same each time the Architect would need to control every action of every person in the Matrix, which is the exact thing he just said was what he tried that caused the first Matrix to crash.
The first one crashed because it was "too perfect", we were given what we wanted, not what we needed.
Things like this are why I said "pop philosophy" - they make noises about looking into questions of causality, choice and the like but the way the story is written it just falls apart.
There is a limit to what you can do in a movie dude, you use pop philosophy to introduce the idea's, you HOPE people take it further, but you can't force it. Think of t as a 2 hour sermon. You HOPE people want to learn more, but you can never force it.
Add in the poor acting in the sequels and the way overdone CGI action (the overcooking) and I can understand why the sequels went over so poorly.
I can get that as movie issue dude, I really can.