The Matrix Trilogy and the Revolutionary Drive Through the Desert of the Real

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A / ^ / r / V T r i l o g y a n d t h e R e v o l u t io n a r y D r iv e

t h r o u g h T h e D e s e r t o f t h e R e a l

Reviewers, critics, and audiences alike were stunned by visual and philosophical imagination

rendered in The Matrix (The Wachowski Brothers. 1999). Consequently. The Matrix Reloaded

(2003) was one of the most highly anticipated sequels of 2003.

Reloaded

did not live up to

the hype; it fnistrated many an audiences' desires.

The Matrix Revolutions

(2003) frankly left

audiences disappointed. Many argued that the final installments lost the metaphysical and

romantic insights ofthe original. The trilogy starts with a bang but ends with a whimper. The

transcendental vision that we viewers vicariously receive through the mind-bending e.\periences

of N e o Trinity, and M orpheus's journey down the rabbit hole in T h e atrix are not only eclipsed

but effaced by the drive through the desert of the real in Re vohttiotis. Our insight was blinded

and our hope was emptied; and that is precisely the subversive point o fthe trilogy. The sequels

fail to recapture the spirit o ft he first film because they surpass it. Although a great film.

The

Matrix

by itself is psychologically naive. Considered as part of

a

trilogy, each succeeding film

supersedes the previous in a dialectic that drives in circles arottnd the desert of die real,

subsequently hollowing out the heroic pleasures of salvation and sustained chase scenes in the

first two

films

To understand the true nature ofthe imaginary world of T h e

Matrix

that film must

be viewed alongside the worlds o \ Reloaded m^ Revolutions. I assert that although (he trilogy

may disappoint our desire for satisfactory conclusion, it does not deviate from its philosophical

trajectory of existential psychoanalysis. Instead, it appropriately carries itself through the three

realms of psyche corresponding to psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan s topology of Imaginary,

Symbolic, and Real. First, 1 will show how

The Matrix

has been critically mined for its themes

regarding the relationship between the Lacanian Symbolic and Real; and then I will argue how, as

part ofthe trilogy, the film should rather be conceived as the Imaginary step toward the Symbolic

Reloaded a n d Real Revolutions.

h e atrix

is neither Sym bolic nor Real but maginary

The Matrix

introduces us to Ihe realm of the Lacanian Imaginary, but not vi'ithout imaginary

conceptions ofthe Sy^mbolic and Real. What captured the hearts of general audiences and the

minds of academic critics was the film's literalized conceit that the world we live in exists only



266 The

Matrix Trilogy

and the

Revolutionary Drive

through

"The D esert of the Real"

Real worid action is tied to ideological ac tion, but the two are stretched out of syncopation as our

culture becomes more concerned with the ever-expanding bureaucracies of rhetoric and internet

works of language. Words lose their reference to reality and symbolic thought supersedes direct

action. The reliance on the Symbolic affects our psyches. In Seminar V Lacan proposes that our

innermost being is an efiect of language : "The unconscious is constituted by the effects of speech

on the subject, it is the dimension in which the subject is determined in the development of the

effects of speech, consequently the unconscious is structured like a language" (149).

The

atrix

realizes such a psychoanalytic philosophy of symbolically constituted subjectivity

in celluloid. The film follows Mr. Thomas Anderson as he grow s steadily more worried that

the worid he thought was Real is in fact a game; perhaps

in his wildest dreams he even imagined it to be what it

is. a Symbolic construct. By day. Mr. Anderson puts on

the guise of the game and leads the life of

a

confonnable

corporate computer programmer, however, by night.

he defies the system as a criminal computer hacker and

dealer of illegal experience simulations who goes by the

cyberspace name of Neo. the new one. When Neo leams

from an anonymous hacker that "The MatrLv has you."

he seeks out uber-hacker Morpheus with the hopes that

Morpheus can answer the question which haunts his

dreams, "What is the M atrix?"

In his heart of hearts. Neo feels that the conventional

world is a facade, a veil covering an enigma. His paranoia

proves reasonable as M orpheus explains the reality of the M atrix:

M O RP H EU S. Let me tell you why you are here. You have come because you know

someihing. What you know you can 'l explain bul you fee it. You 've felt it your whole life,

felt that something is wrong with the world. You don 'l know what, but it's there like a splinter

it your mind, driving you m ad. It is this feeling that brought you lo me. Do you know what

I'm talking aboul?

N E O . The Matrix?

M O RP H EU S. Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everywhere, it's all around us,

here even in this room. You can see it out your w indow or on your television. You feel it when

you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over

your eyes to blind you from the truth.

N E O .

What truth?

M OR PH EU S. That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyotie else, you were bom into bo n d ^e , kept

itiside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for yo ur mind.

What Neo thinks is Real is merely a symbolic construct, a virtual reality designed by what used

to be our civilization's machines for the purpose of pacifying the human mind as the human body

is harvested as a battery to run the machines.

The film physicallv realizes the Real, a psychological realm that Jacques Lacan defines as

"too transparent, too concrete," "what resists

symbolisation absolutely" {Seminar I 66-67).

3iid "that which is excised from the primordial

symbolization" Ecrits 324). Once Neo swal-

lows the red pill, he becomes immersed in



The Matrix Trilogy and the Revolutionary Drive through The Desert of the R earV267

from the Symbolic Matrix into the Real world, whose Zionist inhabitants actively resist the virtual

order Once Nco's mind is disconnected from the Matrix and his body is ejected from the pod.

his psyche is forced to acclimate to the Real, in the film's case, a world in which the artificially

intelligent machines that served as the apex of human thinking have ironically overrun civilization.

enslaved humanity, and sent the only free minds into hiding undei^ound. literally, underneath

the earth. Being unplugged from the Matrix and forced lo be free in the Real wodd is trying, as

Morpheus attests to Neo: 1 teel that I owe you an apology. There is a njle that we do not free a

mind once it reaches a certain age. It is dangerous. They have trouble letting go. Their mind turns

against them. I've seen it happen. Deprived of Symbolic security, the Real floods the psyche.

This cut through the Symbolic chain of signification and submersion in a Real realm that

underlies everything we thought we knew is precisely that which provides such stimulation to

postmodern critics.

The Matrix

plays on cultural theorists' concerns that postmcxiem culture

has lost contact with tangible reality because it surfs a sea of signifiers. as exemplified by Jean

Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation.^, which just happens to be the hollowed out book in

which Nco stores his illegal sim discs. The science fiction element o f the film serves as backdrop

for the psychoanalytic philosophy of mind The M atrix steps outside of the conventional world,

questions its ontology, and deem s iis presence virtual in an effort to free the mind of its Symbolic

bonds, or at the very least render the psyche self-conscious of the Symbolic constructs that

permeate our relationship with the Real.

Jacques Lacan posits another psychological register that structures the human mind prior to its

exposure to linguistic culmre or its tm ying witli hard reality. His topology of mind is not dichotomous

(Symbolic/Real), but tripartite (Imaginary/Symbolic/Real). The Imaginary

refers

o the child's primal

Identification of self in a cohesive, specular image, in other words, the first and thus unparalleled

self-image. The Imaginary engenders one 's aboriginal feeling of ontological essence t)ver against the

bureaucratic existence within the Symbolic and the sublime submersion of self by the Real:

Imaginary

here

refers—in

the

first nstance, to

the

subject's relation

to its

formative identifications,

which is the true meaning of the term image in analysis—secondly, to the relation of the subject

to the real whose characteristic is that of being illusory, which is the facet of the imaginary most

often hi^lightcd. Seminar / 116)

In other words, prior to becoming disillusioned of our sense of self by the riddles of Symbolic

queries and ruined by the contingency of the Real worid. we all felt whole, unique, and one.

The original Matrix plays Into this primitive state as it enthralls its audience to identify with

Neo. who journeys on a quest into his very unconsciousness. Although virtual reality plays a

major role in the Symbolic/Real binary of the film, dream work constitutes The Matrix s deeper

method.

The Matrix

itself controls its subjects by plugging their dream life into its grid, such

that Neo inquires. You ever have the feeling that you 're not sure if you're awake or still

dream ing? Morpheus offers Neo the chance to follow his dreams: You take the red pill and

you stay in W onderland and I show you bow deep the rabbit hole goes. Soon, Neo leams

from his trip down the hole that he is the most important whole; be is the One. The first film is

less about the Symbolic Matrix having Neo than it is about Neo entering the dream life of his

ftindamental fantasy, an archetypal being of oneness and the savior of humanity, which he can

never consciously admit because the supposedly Real worid has robbed bitii of his uniqueness:

NE O. Why? So I can hear some old lady tell m e. what? That I'm this guy that everybody's

been waiting for? The one that's supposed to save the world? Come on. How do I respond

to that? I can'i. It's ridiculous. I mean w ho am I? I'm nobody, I'm just a guy. What did I do,

Morpheus? Why me

MORPHEUS. Faith is beyond the teach of whys and why

nots.

These things are not a matter of cause

and eflfect, Neo. I do not believe things with my mind I believe them with my heart In my gu t



268/The atrix Trilogy and the Revolutionary Drive through The Desert ofth e Rea l

Order, he language and culture of patriarchal authority that constnicts. determines, and codes human

existence as if we were simply cogs (or batteries) in a machine. Agent Smith is the representative

programmatic enforcer, the superego voice of authority that would punish the nonbelievers who

question or challenge the law ofth e land {or mind); the M atrix actually equates w ith the Imaginary,

the realm of primary image and unconscious imagination, Morpheus guides Neo and the viewer

into the underworld of our unconscious tnind; the Nebuchadnezzar is the dream vessel, dreams

being regressive pathways back to the primary images of being when we were at one with the

tnother-world. And this vessel takes Neo to the old lady that Neo m entioned, who is in fact the

Oracle, the mother ofthe Matrix who verifies his transcendental status. We like to imagine that

there really is an alienating matrix that controls us so tbat we can escape our present predicament

and journey back to a state of authentic identity if someone offers us the red pill.

2

The atrix Reloaded is Symb olic

The atrix Reloaded traverses the Symbolic register. While the first film establishes Neo as the

messiah. the second film fially integrates the Imaginary One into the Symbolic Matrix. Now that

he recognizes that he is the One . doing as Link suggests, his Superman thang. Neo needs to

understand how to master the Matrix: I wish knew what was supposed to do. In thefirstfilm,

the mother ofth e Matrix, the Oracle, prophesied Ne o's unique distinction; hence, in the second

filtn, Neo m ust seek out the father of the Matrix, the Arch itect, in order to tlilly compute his

role as savior. The mother imagines the child's particularity within the universe while the father

ushers the child into the symbolic world.

On the surface, the middle movie is one long chase, with the highway scene at the

center. However, on a deeper level, the film represents tbe chase for the key to meaning, the

master signifier that will unlock the doors to perception, to God and m etaphysics. In order to gain

access to tbe master ofth e Matrix, Neo m ust master the key codes ofth e world; he must journe y

bebind and beneath the Symbolic virtual reality.

NEO. These are back doors, aren't they? Programmer access.

SERAPH, (nods.)

NEO.

How do they work?

SERAPH. The code is hidden in tumblers. One position opens a lock. Another position opens

one of these doors.

Neo leams from the Oracle that she herself is a program, just like the Arc hitec t



The atrix Trilogy and the R evolutionary Drive through The D esert of the Reat'7269

Thus. Neo's goal, as is the psycho-philosophical motivation of the film, is to chase down

the transcendental meaning behind the Matrix and reverse the trilogy's initial hierarchy. By

confronting the father (the Architect) in an attempt to acquire his masterful knowledge of the

system, the Matrix will no longer have Neo. but rather Neo will have the Matrix.

When he fin lly confronts

the

Architect, who looks

lot like Sigmund Freud, with the question,

Why am I here? Neo leams.

Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of

the Matnx. You are the evcntualJtv of an anomaly, which, despite my sincerest efforts. I have

been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it

remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure ot

control. Which has led you, inexorably, here.

Neo's Imaginary status has fully entered into the Symbolic realm, for he discovers that he is

unique and not unique: he comes from a succession of aberrant saviors. As Imaginary superhero

in the first film, he represented salvation for others within the Matrix; as Symbolic savior in the

second film, he must rescue, if not redeem , the Matrix itself since The function of the One is now

to return to ihe Source, allowing temporary dissemination of the code you carr>-. reinserting the

prime prog ram, otherwise the system will crash, killing all the people in it. This raises many

questions (for instance, the contradictory nature of Neo 's m essianic status) and necessitates that

the third film answers the call.

Although inspired by the pure good of the imaginary demand for ontology' and teleology, for

first and final causes.

The atrix Relnadedin

fact weds the dual Sym bolic desires of the chase

for meaning and mastery of discourse. Moreover, the film blends the formulaic codes of action

genre movies with psycho-philosophical inquiry. It gives its return audience what it most desires,

enthralling action tied to Imaginary identification, while nonetheless frustrating and subverting

those desires: the highway chase is much too long and the Architect's answers cryptically

inconclusive if noi altogether mind-

boggling and confounding. This middU-

movie represents Lacanian desc

within the Symbolic at its purest.

Reloaded is the metonymy of desire

that will never achieve satisfaction

because it can only chase down the

highway of special effects, the great

chain of signifiers that no longer



270/The Matrix Trilogy and the Revolutionary D rive through The Desert oft he Real

3 . The Matrix Revolutions is Real

The Matri x Revolutions crashes us off the adrenaline-Hie led highway chase of desire for sym bolic

mastery and drives us directly into the realm ofthe Real battle for Zion. While a pursuit within

virtual reality constitutes the midpoint of

Reloaded

an impossible battle for the human species

comprises the focus of Revolutions For Neo, the film begins in Limbo, where he is trapped

between this world and the machine world in a train station called Mobil {antonymic anagram

of Limbo) Ave.; and I would like to suggest that, for us. the film ends in Lim bo because the Real

is the purgatory of ineffable and indefinable action that underlies and underscores the Sym bolic

quest ibr final, transcendent meaning.

In The Matrix Neo fulfilled

our imagination's deepest de-

sire: his mastery of virtual

reality crowned him the chosen

One. In Reloaded he chased

down the key to tlie program,

thus accomplishing our desire to

unlock the eode of transcendent

meaning behind the symbolic.

In Revolutions Neo becomes

able to contrcil the Real world

sentinels

w lioiil

being jacked into the M atrix; he does not need to physically plug into the Matrix,

for his Real mind tarries with the Symbolic world of the machines and their virtual reality. The

Oracle explains. The pow er ofthe One extends beyond this world. It reaches from here all the

way back to where it came Irom. Neo 's power has spread from the Imaginary into the Symbolic

and finally emerges in the Real. The terminal world of Revolutions is neitlier a visionary game nor

a philosophical pursuit; it constitutes the onslaught ofthe Real. However, before we can appreciate

this we must first separate out the Symbolic cover from the Real undergirding o fthe f ilm.

At first glimpse, we are

led to believe that this Real

moves toward balance and

harmony. If Neo is Christ,

Smith is the anti-Christ. As

the Oracle further explicates:

He is you. Your opposite.

your negative, the result of

the equation trying to balance

itself out. Just as Neo first

establishes power within the

Matrix and subsequently gains control over the real-world sentinels from outside the Matrix,

from the space ofthe Real, Agent Sm ith m ultiplies himself like a virus within the M atrix, taking

over humans and p rograms alike, and then gains control ofth e mind of a real-world Z ionist, from

the space of the Symbo lic. The two opposing forces bring balance to the equation by canceling

each other out. Such erasure does bring hannony to the Matrix; however, it also evacuates their

unique identities: they become nothing more than positive and negative poles. Moreover, just as

Smith multiplies exponentially, we ieam that Neo

is

just the latest version ofthe previous seven

supposed the On es designed to bring hannony to the Matrix. The paradoxical reality of th e

situation is that Neo is no less a program matic copy than Sm ith. They are filial codes. The Oracle

is mother to both Neo and Smith, and both are illegitimate sons ofthe Architect. When Smith

infects the Oracle, she calls him a bastard, to which he replies, You would know. Mom . If

Smith is a bastard, so too is Neo, for both are bom ofthe Matrix (the illegitimate sense ofthe

term) and both seek to destroy it (the malefic sense of th e term). Our Imaginary identification



The Matrix Trilogy and the Revolutionary Drive through The Desert ofth e RearV271

film, we are left w ith a conflict between Symbolic and Real: The M atrix seeks to envelop the real

world while the real world strives to undercut the Matrix.

Although we no longer identify with Neo due to the shifiing and expanding levels of prophetic

code in the final film, we nonetheless assume (because we have been programmed to by the

Matrix's narrative structure) that the revolution will play itself out in a final battle between man

and machine, between the One and the Other, between Symbolic and Real, Neo and Agent

Smith: and in fact the film does plot toward such a Manichean conflict resolution. The battle

royale between Neo and the hundreds of Smiths lays the figurative foundation for Zion's last

stand against the overwhelm ing sentinels. If Reloaded fi highway chase—if not the whole

film—is impossibly long, deferring completion in order to extend the tense pleasure as long as

possible, then Revolutions^ three epic battles among Neo and Smith and Zion and the sentinels

are impossibly true, as all hope is evacuated by the ever-multiplying, never-stopping Smith and

the ever-advancing, never-ending swanns of sentinels that rip through man and loading dock

alike. Humanity's numbers are limited; the machines are infinite. Zion faces an impossible battle

as immeasurable hordes of machines comprise a deadly mathematical subUme. Revolutions

shifts from the desire to overthrow the machines to the need to simply siuvive, sans prophecy

and philosophy, the machines.

Neo makes a deal with the Source, the real world Machine-God; destroy Smith to save the

Real w orld human city of Zion, The film theorizes two paradoxes. First, the Real world battle for

Zion stiggests that humans in reality can never defeat the overwhelming swarms of machines;

they require a savior to jack into the Symbolic M atrix, the virtual reality machine from which

they are struggling to fi ee hemselves: the human Real requires the Symbolic machine to exist,

even if the Symbolic seeks to destroy the Real, Second, Neo defeating Smith in the disintegrating

Matrix ironically preserves the Matrix; after all is said and done, the Matrix still has you, the

One: humanity has hollowed out the virtual but nonetheless still engages and immerses itself in

its envelope.

Neo has saved the Matrix and Z ion; however, both Sym bolic and Real salvation are tentative.

ORACLE. Well, now, ain't this a surprise.

ARCHITECT, You've played a very dangerous game.

ORACLE. Change always is.

ARCHITECT. Just how long do you think this peace is going to last?

ORACLE. As long as it can, (Architect starts walking away. What about the others?

ARCHITECT. What others?

ORACLE. The ones that want out.

ARCHITECT. Obviously, they will be freed.

ORACLE. 1 have your woM?

ARCHITECT. What do you ihink 1 am? Human?

Peace has broken out and the One has died. But the peace will not last for both sides need to

destroy the other: the human mind struggles to free itself from the virtual prison ofthe Matrix

and the machines cannot exist without enslaved human batteries. The Architect may free those

who want out, but they will only disseminate the ut^e for salvation, which must be destroyed by

the machines in order for the machines to survive. A new On e. technically the eighth One in the

succession of anomalies w ill be bom and this war will break out again.



272/The Matrix Trilogy and the Revolutionary Drive through The Desert of the Real

is precisely to claim that, behind the incomplete/inconsistent reality we know, there is anotlier

reality with no deadlock of impossibility structuring it" (246). The second and third films of

the trilogy, however, subvert this imaginary desire, first by reloading us into the Matrix in the

second film and then by proving the pursuit for salvation, symbolic or otherwise, to be futile in

the third film. Redemption becomes Imaginary as Symbolic and Real oscillate in a never-ending

revolution, which is llindamentally unsatisfying from the standpoint of the first film's super-

beroic trajectory but was nonetheless prepared for by the second film's seemingly endless (and

ciiff-hangered) chase. The Real offers no Symbttlic resolution, only endless revolution.

In the final analysis, the trilogy hollows out both the choice of the red pill and the choice o f the

blue pill. The conclusion of the ilm proffers that no matter which side wins the b at tl e^ b e it Agent

Smith or Neo (or the Oracle): be it the demand for a godlike life of unadulterated, otnnipotent

being in a metaphysical, artificial intelligence or the desire for excessive and gratuitous simu lation

stitnulation via an explosion of filmic codes and conventions regarding chase scenes; be it the

Imaginary or the Symbolic—neither imaginary demand nor symbolic desire will ever really

"win." Revolutions shows us that neither the pleasant dream of being inside the Matrix nor tbe

ideological struggle against the wodd of the machines outside the Matrix is tenable because both

imaginary identifications and symbolic desires are undermined by tbe film's revolutionary, yet

decidedly non-dialectical and rather circular logic, which negates Neo's messianic originality and

sacrifice. All we are left with is "the desert of the real" that has now been doubly desened: while

M orpheus disillusioned N eo of his Symbolic O rder by introducing him to "the desert of the real"

in

he

Matrix he enthralled Nco (and us) in a dream of tbe stmgg le for atithenticity over against

our symbolic reality. Revolutions finds Morpheus winning, or at least surviving, the battle in the

Real wo dd ; however, not only does the Matrix still exist but the dream dies for us as we leam the

Matrix saw at least seven such messianic battles before Neo . Moreover, Sati (another offspring of

programs no less ) makes sunlight, which should provide a satisfactory conclusion, but it cannot

because on the one hand, the conversation between the Oracle and the Architect sugg ests that the

peace is tentative, and besides, the rainbow-colored dawn is at best an entertaining but hollow-

spectacle and at worst a false covenant with tbe Matrix, with the Machine-God. This is the Real

desert of the real, the realm in which the subject's dreams of being and symbolic struggles are

hollowed out of

ll

hopeful investment. Revolutions accomplishes nothing but more Sisyphean

revolu tions; satisfaction is supplanted by the drive toward d ivestment. We are perpetually driven

to choose between the two, imagination and symboUzation, in an unending revolution of thought;

however, neither the Imaginary nor the Symbolic wins, for the Real trumps both by hollowing



The Matrix Trilogy and the Revolutionary D rive through The D esert of the Re ar72 73

Works Cited

Lacan, Jacques.

Ecrit.-<.

1966. Trans. Bruce Fink. New Y ork: Norton, 2006.

. The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis. 1953.Trans. Anthony

Wiiden. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1 981.

. The Seminar of Jacques Lac an. Book 1 : Freud s Papers on Technique. 1953~1954. Ed. Jacques-

Alain Miller. Trans. John Forrester. New York: Norton, 1988.

. TTie Seminar of Jacques L acan. Book X I: The Four Fundam ental Concepts of P.sychoanalysis.

1964.

1973. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1981.

The Matrix. Dir Andy and Larry W achowski. Wamer Bros., 1999.

The atrix Reloaded Dir. Andy and Larry W achowski. Wamer Bros., 2003.

The atrix Revolutions. Dir. Andy and Larry W achowski. Wamer B ros., 2003.

Slavoj, The Matrix: Or. The Two Sides of Perversion. The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the

Desert of the Real

Ed. William (nvin. Chicago: Open Court. 2002. 240-66.

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