> Just as clarification, I don't "claim" this, merely advance it as a theory. I'm not really sure what I believe about the movie, honestly.
> -- Dave

This seems as good a place as any in this thread to plug in a request for additional clarification about the movie. I'm trying hard to remember what the two choices were that the Architect offered Neo. I *think* it was something like:

Door #1: Voluntary surrender. The current rebellion will be crushed, but Neo gets to take several human beings to seed a new Zion so the cycle can begin anew (with improvements).

Door #2: Up yours, Architect! Neo is given a futile opportunity to save the rebellion. If he fails, humanity will be obliterated.

There are several things I don't get about this scenario. First, why would the machines wipe out humanity --their alleged power supply-- if Neo chooses Door #2? I think I must be misunderstanding the choice here; maybe only the Zion rebels are being threatened.

Second, when Neo predictably chooses the path of True Wuv™ and takes Door #2, all the screens in the room show his predecessors making the same choice. Or are those in fact his predecessors? The screens kept switching back and forth between showing the current Neo and showing what his predecessors had done, so at the moment of his choice I wasn't sure whether all the Neo's before number 6 had made the same choice or not. I'm assuming they all did.

By the way, if you're a Hebrew numerologist, you'll note that "our" Neo is the sixth one, and number six is the symbolic number of humanity. This is, of course, the Wachowski brothers once again demonstrating how DEEP and PHILOSOPHICAL their movie really is.

So anyway, the way it *looks* to me is that all the Neo's, from first to sixth, have chosen Door #2. The effective difference between those two choices seems negligible, since either way the machines destroy Zion, the Architect takes what he learned from the last iteration of the Matrix and improves it a bit, and then reboots the construct. The Architect explained (I think) that the chaotic, imperfect nature of humans makes any simulation of which they are a part inherently imperfect and unstable, so Zion eventually arises anew every time. But the machines' approach is to make it a controlled failure, more and more so each time the cycle plays out.

Is this what other people got out of the Architect scene? I'd really like to know if I totally misheard or misinterpreted what was said and done in there.

Iss "k thx bye" achar