The original Matrix was a masterpiece - it knows hows to push the buttons of its audience because everyone that ever lived at one point felt small and helpless at the mercy of a big world operating on interlocking systems we cannot begin to wrap our minds around. However, its message of extreme positivity of accepting one's identity is also equally a narrative about inflicting brutality on those who deny acceptance of said identity.
If we look at the plot of The Matrix without the specific details it may look problematic: You are a special person obviously held back deliberately by a world that forces conformity. There is a system to keep us all down to feed the machine and the only people that can tell are the cool enlightened kids like us. So let's fight the power by blowing it up with guns and bombs. It's okay because woke and enlightened people like us are the only ones that count as people. Everyone else is still a part of the system and that makes them our enemy. So don't worry about collateral damage or killing anyone, because it is the system and we got to fight the power... See how that may sound?
Not to say that The Wachowski Sibling intended this message, but when the opportunity to make two more movies -The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, this became an opportunity to put the middle finger rebuke to the message of the original film. Here's how they did it.
The Architect Scene Tells Us the First Movie's Message Was a Lie
The scene with The Architect is not everyone's cup of tea - A heavy exposition dump that does not arrive at the right time and place. What makes it all the more of a letdown is that it is supposed to be an incredible moment. Because what is being revealed here is that the entire moral and philosophical ideals of the original movie were all a lie. If we try to get anything out of all the tedious word vomit, what The Architect told us is that the prophecy of The One, Zion, the rebellion, the entire idea of the freedom fighters liberating themselves from the Matrix by being more aware and enlightened than other humans, are all a big fat lie engineered by the machines many times over as a fail-safe for the inevitability that a number of humans will reject the simulation.
There will always be people that will try to rebel, so the machines did what any authoritarian do with rebellion, they coopted it and set the parameters for it to be another level of control.
To the characters, this is devastating because this means Neo and the gang have been dying and sacrificing for nothing. But what this scene means to anyone who adopted the philosophy, fashion, and outlook of The Matrix, the Wachowski Siblings are telling them they are wrong. No one is really a rebel, no one really swallowed the red pill.
If you came out of the original film hyped up to burn all things down, guess, what? Your fashionable rage against the machine brand of anarchy is just one more level of social control. Conforming to a narrative of rebellion coopted from its original intent by the very system it was meant to resist so it can be purchased by you straight off the rack from Hot Topic. Still the sheep who tricked themselves into believing they are more.
Matrix Revolutions Includes a Scene Telling Us to "Quit Complaining, You Crybaby."
There is a scene in The Matrix Revolutions where Neo is trapped in a train station, a world between the Matrix simulation and the machine world. In this train station, Neo came across Rama Kandra and his family, a family of self-aware programs who want to immigrate from the machine world to the Matrix at great personal risk. The implication is that the Matrix is preferable to wherever they came from. This scene is heavily coded to parallel the immigration and refugee experience in real life.
Rama Kandra and his family are symbolic of foreign immigrants traveling to American western civilization. The western civilization, in this case, is the place where all the hot topic anarchists want to burn down everything because it is all phony and plastic. But unlike the anarchists who always want to rebel against the system, these immigrants would be grateful to live here, even if it means going through illegal channels. They would be thrilled to have Neo's original problem of working at an office unfulfilled without purpose but have a steady job that paid enough to live in a thriving metropolis.
This is The Matrix Revolutions telling you instead of fighting the power, to quit complaining because there are starving people all over the world who would love to be in your shoes.
The Ending of the Trilogy Says Raging Against the Machine is Not the Solution
Neo did not end the machine world by being the bigger badder dog in the playground. In fact, he did not end the machine world at all. He just made a deal with them so the humans and the machines can co-exist. It is not about taking down the system with guns and explosions, after all, it's just trying to find a compromise. The compromise, in this case, the truce that Neo only thinks of after encountering the immigrant programs' perspective, is that if people do reject the simulation and so want out of the Matrix, they can. If so, Morpheus and the other rebels will stop trying to tear the simulation down. After all, if no one is being forced to live in the system, then what business does the "smash the system" fashionable rebels tell the people they should not live ordinary normie lives if it works for them?
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