Neo
From The Black Vault Encyclopedia Project
Neo, also known as Thomas A. Anderson, is the name of the central fictional character from the movie The Matrix and its sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. He is sometimes referred to as The One and within the Matrix discovers he has extraordinary abilities which he can use to further the cause of a free humanity. In all three movies he is played by Keanu Reeves.
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Neo and the world of the Matrix
- (For details of the plot and of the Matrix series itself, see The Matrix)
The character Neo lives in the world of the Matrix, an illusory construct in which humans are neurally connected to a gigantic computer system which simulates the world of the late 20th century. This system has been developed by intelligent machines to keep the human population as tools for the machines survival - the machines use human energy as their energy source, their previous solar energy source having been cut off by humans during the war.
Those who live their entire lives connected to the Matrix are unaware that their reality is not in fact real, nor that there is a human rebellion by the few 'free' humans in the city of Zion. From time to time, individuals are freed from the Matrix, a risky and complex operation.
There is a legend or prophecy amongst free humans (which some believe and others scorn) that there is a human who, when connected to the Matrix, can override its computer-created simulated rules, and perceive and manipulate its code directly, and thus seemingly, within the simulated reality of the Matrix, they would appear to be able to perform miracles. This person is called in myth, "The One." His (or her) finding is the subject of a lifelong quest by Morpheus, an admired ship's captain of the Zion fleet, assisted by Trinity and the rest of his crew. It is said in legend that The One will bring the perpetual war between Man and Machine to an end.
An interesting Fact is that the word 'Neo' is an anagram of the word 'One'.
In The Matrix
At the start of the series, Thomas Anderson is one amongst millions of humans asleep, neurally connected to the Matrix, unaware that the world he lives in is anything other than it appears. In this simulated world, he lives a double life. In his legitimate activities, he is a quiet programmer for a "respectable software company". Anderson is also a computer hacker who penetrates computer systems illicitely and steals information, and under his hacker alias "Neo", Anderson is guilty of "virtually every computer crime there is a law for."
Morpheus has after many years searching, identified Anderson as being the person within the Matrix he believes is The One. But the machines have tapped the line, and Anderson is therefore found, almost simultaneously, by the deadly Agents as well. The Agents are intelligent programs which appear as humanoid FBI-style government agents within the simulated reality. They enter the Matrix as needed, in order to protect it, by killing any humans who might interfere with it or learn of its true nature.
Anderson is contacted by Morpheus, but rapidly captured by the Agents. Refusing to co-operate he has an electronic bug implanted within his matrix-simulated body, so that his actions can be tracked and those seeking to make contact from the free world can be traced and destroyed. However they have underestimated his importance. He is re-contacted by Trinity, the bug removed, and taken to meet Morpheus.
Anderson, who they call by the name Neo, is offered the choice to remain in his everyday life, or to see reality, and learn what the Matrix is. Accepting, he takes a drug designed to disrupt his body's neural connect to the Matrix, and wakes up disoriented and alarmed to find himself weak and naked in a pod of liquid connected to many wires. The Machines having no use for awakened humans, he is swept automatically into the sewers to be processed into raw nutrients, which is where Morpheus and Trinity catch, retrieve and rescue these unplugged humans for the rebellion.
Neo's adventures begin shortly after he is rescued and his body repaired from years in the power-plant. He is taken to meet the Oracle, who has the power of foresight within the simulated world. She tells him that he has the "gift", but appeared to be waiting for something—"Your next life, maybe. Who knows?" Neo infers incorrectly that the Oracle has said that he is not the One. The Oracle warns him that an event will come where he will have to choose between his own life or that of Morpheus, and that one of them will die.
(It could be argued that at this point, it is Neo who chooses his own credibility as a saviour. It is not the Oracle who tells him he is not the One, but rather Neo himself, giving way to his doubt and disbelief. This is why the Oracle notes he is waiting for his next life, whereupon he will gain the true insight, faith and willpower required for him to become a Messianic/Enlightened figure. It could also be argued that this "next life" is making reference to the various incarnations of "The One", of which in the movies, Neo is the 6th)
The crew of Morpheus' ship are betrayed by one of their own, and in the battle, Morpheus is captured and held by Agents within the Matrix. Neo and Trinity successfully rescue Morpheus, a feat never before achieved, and Morpheus takes this as confirmative evidence that Neo is indeed The One, asking Trinity, "Do you believe it now?" dismissing the Oracle's words by saying that she merely told him, "exactly what you needed to hear, nothing more." He further elaborates, "Neo, soon you're going to realize just as I did. There is a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path."
(This can be interpreted to mean that because Neo thought he wasn't the One as the Oracle told him (knowing the path), he acted in a different way than what was expected and sacrificed his life for Morpheus because he believed he wasn't The One as Morpheus had. This led to an ironic chain of events that unwittingly made him The One because he originally thought he wasn't, or walking the path)
Exiting the Matrix, Morpheus and Trinity manage to return to the real world, but Neo is trapped by Agent Smith and his fellow Agents. Smith ambushes Neo and kills him by gunshot. When this happens to a person's mind and neural connections within the simulated reality of the Matrix, their body outside the Matrix also dies, too. Trinity, seeing Neo's body dying with his mind still in the Matrix, tells his apparently lifeless body that he cannot die - she loves him - and that the oracle had foretold that she would love The One. Slipping into death, Neo's mind realizes that he doesn't need to die. He doesn't have to believe in the compelling reality of the simulation or that the Agents have killed him. He can choose to realize it truly is an illusion, and that as a result, his death is an illusion. He rises, and the Agents, stunned, attempt to shoot him down again. But this time he doesn't believe it can truly harm him. He sees the simulation for what it is, simulated bullets in a simulated reality, his mind against the artificial mind of the machines. He simply holds out his hand, and the bullets stop, suspended in mid-air, and then coming to believe more fully in his newfound powers, he effortlessly fends off Agent Smith before diving into the Agent's simulated body to destroy him from within.
In The Matrix Reloaded
Approximately six months go by between the events of The Matrix and the second film, The Matrix Reloaded. Neo is now fully confident in his ability to manipulate the artificial world within the Matrix – he can fly, move with fantastic speed and strength, has no match in any fight, has telekinetic and healing abilities, and can withstand dramatic injuries. He and Trinity have become lovers. Dispensing with the long black trenchcoat and black shirt he wears at the conclusion of The Matrix, Neo prefers a long coat with a high-rise mandarin collar that greatly resembles a cassock.
Neo seeks more advice from the Oracle, unsure of his purpose, while Zion prepares for a massive attack from the Machines of over 250,000 Sentinels, machines who are able to fly and kill, and act as autonomous seek and destroy machines against Zion's fleet. The Oracle directs him on a quest to find The Keymaker, a personification of a matrix program that has access to numerous backdoors within the system. The Keymaker will be able to lead Neo safely to the Source, the programming heart of the machine world which actually contains the programs sustaining the Matrix illusion.
As the Oracle leaves, Agent Smith (now just Smith) appears, and a dramatic change becomes apparent. Somehow, in entering Smith's form from within, Neo discovers that he has separated Smith from the rest of the Matrix code, giving him a life within the Matrix systems independent of the machine's systems. Agent Smith is no longer an Agent of the Matrix, he has become more virus-like, able to insert his code into other systems, and infect other programs and human minds to make repeated clones of himself. Neo barely fends off an army of over 100 Smith clones, before he, Morpheus and Trinity steal the Keymaker from behind the back of his keeper, The Merovingian.
The Keymaker explains that two power stations elsewhere in the Matrix must be disabled in a short time window to disable the security system and allow Neo to reach the Source. "Only The one can enter that door, and only in that time frame." This task is accomplished, but not without the Keymaker being killed, another ship's destruction, and Trinity in mortal jeopardy by Agents in the Matrix—a vision that Neo saw earlier in his dreams. Entering the door, Neo finds himself confronted by the The Architect, a personification of the systems which create and design successive versions of the Matrix.
Neo finally learns the truth behind his existence. He discovers that he is actually the sixth "One". Zion has been destroyed by the machines five times before, and faced with the dilemma of allowing humanity to be destroyed, or allowing the machine's preferred status quo to be reconstructed, Neo's five predecessors have helped reload, or restart the Matrix, before being allowed to rebuild Zion with a handful of freed humans. The productive output of the Matrix is based upon this repeated cycle of destruction and recreation, to keep the human minds which power it in a stable structure. The Oracle is as much part of that self-perpetuating design as the Artchitect, Neo discovers, and the prophecy of the One is designed to ensure it runs smoothly each time.
The Architect warns of the annihilation of all human life in and out of the Matrix if he did not enter the Source door to reload the Matrix, but unlike his predecessors, Neo does not enter the door to the Source; he chooses not to believe the Architect's dire warnings of consequences, and to save Trinity, his love, from certain death instead.
Together, they exit the simulation of the matrix, and return to the real world, just as a Sentinel attack is occurring. But as the Sentinels approach, Neo discovers within himself a new talent, that he can influence them in the real world, just like he influences objects in the simulated Matrix world. He has somehow ended up with some machine compatible code or other unknown development, in his mind, and his perceptional and other abilities within the matrix are beginning to become available when dealing with the world of machines outside it too.
The effort is extreme, or the connection has an effect on him too: the Sentinels destroyed, he drops to the floor, unconscious. He and the crew are rescued by the hovercraft Hammer, who are dealing with a mystery of their own: Bane, a crewmember from another ship, who is the only survivor of an ill-fated attack by the Zion fleet. Unbeknownst to anyone, the body of Bane has become caught and infected by a copy of the Smith system, which has allowed Smith to survive and used Bane's connection to the Matrix to infect his mind, and bring the Smith program into the real world in Bane's mind. The film ends "To be concluded."
In The Matrix Revolutions
The Matrix Revolutions picks up immediately after the events of the second movie. As a result of his struggle with the Sentinels, Neo returns to consciousness to find himself caught in an isolated limbo only accessible by order of the Merovingian, on the fringes of the Matrix, from which his mind is unable to free itself. Told by the Trainman (a servant of the Merovingian) that he could be left there for eternity, he remains trapped until freed by Trinity who threatens the Merovingian in a Mexican standoff unless Neo is freed.
Neo determines, through his new foresight abilities, that in truth the Oracle's prophecy was correct: The One was determined to return to the Source to stop the war. However, it was the Architect that altered the prophecy and forced Neo's predecessors to end their path with Zion's destruction and the reloading of the Matrix. After a final visit with the Oracle, Neo learns it is not the approaching Sentinels that he should worry about, but Smith, whose clones are multiplying and will bring about a fatal crash of the Matrix, killing all humans and programs inside it, as well as seriously damaging the very power needed for the Machine City to survive. Furthermore, building on the Oracle's previous explanations about the nature of choice, Neo learns that the Architect's assertion that his choice to save Trinity would inherently lead to the extinction of mankind was incorrect. The Oracle states that, "You and I may not be able to see past our own choices, but that man can't see past any choice," due to his nature as a purely mathematical being. Informing Neo that he now has the power to choose to end the war and defeat Smith, she relates, "Everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo." Neo must return to the Source--in this case, the heavily-guarded Machine City, in hopes of stopping the Sentinels and Smith.
Neo and Trinity are given the Logos, a hovercraft commanded by Morpheus's former love, Niobe, in what seems to others as a suicidal journey to the Machine City. Meanwhile, Captain Roland and the surviving Nebuchadnezzar crew of Link and Morpheus in the hovercraft Hammer, attempt to return to Zion, now besieged and losing in the Machine's attack. Neo and Trinity are ambushed by the stowaway Bane/Smith, who blinds Neo, but is killed when Neo discovers he can still see Smith's aura with a mysterious third-sight granted by his powers. Neo, with Trinity as pilot, guide the Logos past the Machine City's defenses, but in the effort the Logos crash-lands, and Trinity sustains fatal injuries and dies, leaving Neo alone to face the machine city.
Neo encounters the Deus Ex Machina, a Machine construct, and barters for peace between Man and Machine if he can stop Smith, who has turned all Matrix inhabitants into clones of himself and threatens not only a Matrix system crash, but an invasion of Smith's infectious code into the Machine City itself. The offer is accepted; Neo enters the Matrix one final time, to find that the Smith program has cloned itself throughout the simulated world, and has turned it into a rainswept dark simulation where copies of Smith, and little else, exists. One of the copies of Smith steps forward to fight Neo, and appears to have finally achieved the greater powers within the Matrix to do so. The cataclysmic fight leaves Neo near exhausted and Smith apparently victorious until Neo realizes that fighting would not win this battle. Having nothing left to lose personally (with Trinity's death) and everything to gain for humanity and Machine, Neo intentionally sacrifices himself to Smith and allows Smith to seize victory by finally infecting Neo with the Smith program and turning Neo's mind and body into a Smith clone. But even as he succeeds, and the newly created Smith clone laughs with victory, suddenly the new clone begins to explode, and rapdily all the other instances of Smith in the Matrix do likewise. Finally, the virus-like Smith program is fully eliminated from the Matrix software.
(Two interpretations of what happens to Smith are possible, but not fully explained in the movie. One interpretation is, because Smith/Neo is directly connected to the Machine world, the Deus Ex Machina may have sent a deletion command through Neo's connection into Smith/Neo (or used its access to the Smith program in Neo to create an anti-virus program), destroying the copy of Smith in Neo's mind as well as all other instances of the Smith program in the Matrix. A second interpretation is based on the Oracle's explanation of what Smith was--Neo's opposite, like matter and anti-matter. When Smith and Neo fuse, the powers cancel and balance is restored in the Matrix through the elimination of both)
This process of Smith's destruction apparently destroys Neo's consciousness as well. Neo's body is taken away reverently by the Machines in the Machine City, while, below in Zion, the Machines stop their attack and retreat, in deference to the peace that Neo bartered. As well as peace, Neo had also negotiated that any human minds that become aware of the nature of the Matrix, will be allowed to be freed without interference.
As the movie ends, we see a black cat walking down a destroyed sidewalk. It stops, appears to digitize as the Matrix itself is reloaded or restarted, and repeats and resumes its business. (This was an allusion to a scene where Neo sees a black cat appear twice in The Matrix, an indication that something has been changed within the Matrix code. To Neo, it was a déjà vu experience.).
Sati, a young program smuggled into the Matrix, awakes, meets with the Oracle, and creates a colorful sunrise in honor of Neo. Sati asks if we will see Neo again. The Oracle says, "I suspect so". When Neo's body is being carried off by the machines after the battle, we get a glimpse of the yellow aura vision of the machine world. Unlike his earlier dark figure, Neo is shining brightly in this scene. This could imply that Neo has in effect ascended to a higher state of being, achieving oneness with the Matrix.
Other interpretations and connections
Plato's cave allegory, and its interpretation are a major part of the Matrix. Neoplatonism (Neo+Plato) is a Christian philosophy revolving on the oneness of the existence of an ineffable and transcendent One, from which emanated the rest of the universe as a sequence of lesser beings, similar to in the Matrix. The name Thomas can be viewed as a reference to Thomas, a disciple of Jesus (or a representation of Jesus' physical self in Gnostic tradition), who was famous for his doubting (he wouldn't believe in Jesus' rising until he saw the wounds; Neo needs to be Outside of the Matrix before he believes it exists).
The character's names are viewed by many to have intentional plot-related meanings; Neo- is a Greek prefix meaning new, and Neo is also an anagram of one and eon. The coming of "The One" marks the end of an eon in the Matrix. The name Anderson literally means "son of man", one of many titles of Jesus (the Messiah in Christianity). Also, "Thomas" literally means "two", and he is indeed living a double life as Mr. Anderson/Neo. It could also be a reference to Marc Andreessen, creator of the first web browser that allowed pictures to be seen on the internet, not code. Neo, on the other hand, sees code instead of people and things.
Religion is heavily referenced throughout the films, not only in names but also in dialog (the first character to address Neo in the film (Anthony) tells him "you're my savior, man . . . my own personal Jesus Christ") and in fleeting background images (the Nebuchadnezzar's nameplate contains a reference to Mark 3:11 - Whenever the evil spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, "You are the Son of God.")
In "The Meaning of the Buddha's Awakening" (Thanissaro Bhikkhu, 1997), the two crucial aspects of the Buddha's Awakening, much like Neo's, are the what and the how: what he awakened to and how he did it. Neo's (as was Buddha's) awakening is special in that the two aspects come together. He awakened to the fact that there is an undying happiness, (for Neo: the battle of The Machines vs. Zion) and that it can be attained through human effort. The human effort involved in this process ultimately focuses on the question of understanding the nature of human effort itself in terms of skillful karma (i.e., the up-loading of Neo's skills) and dependent co-arising or the true understanding of his powers and what his limitations are, and what kind of right effort (i.e., the Noble Path) can take one beyond its limitations and bring one to the threshold of the Deathless (the Machine World). The quality of Neo's views and his intentions determines the experienced result of his actions.
Neo's legacy
The Wachowski brothers keep a tight lid on official "Matrix" properties and spin-offs, but things do trickle out. Two places to look for more Matrix-derived entertainment come from the gaming world.
In the MMORPG sequel, The Matrix Online, the remains of Neo's 'RSI' (Residual Self Image) are encoded into a new form of false Agents made by an Exile named Silver.
Later, (in the storyline of The Matrix Online) Morpheus argues with the Oracle that the Machines have never returned Neo's physical remains (Thomas Anderson's actual body) to Zion, but at the same time they cryptically commented that they didn't "recycle" them (perhaps a reference to the first film, in which Morpheus tells Neo that the machines liquify deceased occupants of the Matrix to provide organic sustenance for its living inhabitants). On top of this, there was a newspaper clipping of a woman who woke up from a coma and left the hospital bypassing all security guards. The name of the woman was Sarah Edmontons, which was an anagram of Thomas Anderson.
It is also possible, though very slim, Neo might return as a program if any other exiles were to become as powerful as Smith, since he was assimilated into the Matrix, he would become its guardian, but that may be only if the brothers decide to make another sequel.
Copyright
"Original data received from Wikipedia on May 05, 2006. Credit given to original authors can be seenHere."
| The Matrix series (edit) | |
|---|---|
| Films | The Matrix | The Matrix Reloaded | The Matrix Revolutions |
| The Animatrix | Final Flight of the Osiris | The Second Renaissance | Kid's Story | Program | World Record | Beyond | A Detective Story | Matriculated |
| Games | Enter the Matrix | The Matrix Online | The Matrix: Path of Neo |
| Characters | Neo | Trinity | Morpheus | Smith | Agent | Oracle | Architect | Minor characters | Programs and machines |
| Locations | Matrix | The City | Club Hel | Mobil Ave | Zero One | Zion | List of ships in the Matrix series |
| Other topics | Matrix Source Code | The Matrix Character Names |
