A Nutshell: The Matrix Reloaded

(Originally written June 10, 2003)

As the lights came up on The Matrix Reloaded, I already knew what I thought of it. I was curious what my wife would think. I didn't have to wait long. "That sucked" she said.

"Really?" I said. "I thought it was pretty damned all right."

"Really?" she asked.

"You didn't like the ending." I asserted.

"No, I didn't."

"He was saying things I think a programmer would understand best."

By now we're in the parking lot. "Explain it to me then."

My wife and I met while doing the same job, computer support at a university. But she doesn't hack for a living at this point in her life and she doesn't want to. Point being, she has enough technical background so I think I can sum this up quickly:

"You're a programmer. You're working on a pretty big, pretty important program. And it works, mostly, 99 times out of a hundred. But you can't nail down that last corner case and it's driving you crazy. So there's this girl, let's say she's your girlfriend-"

"Programmers don't have girlfriends," my wife interrupts.

"Some do. Some even get married. Bear with me. Your girlfriend is also a programmer-"

"Ah. That explains why she would date a programmer."

"Fair enough. Your girlfriend is looking over your shoulder and says 'So what? Just let the 100th case fail.'

"'That's no good,' you say. 'First it's 1 bug in 100, then it's 2 in 200, then 3 in 300, then eventually we'll have a quarter of a million bugs.'

"'Big deal,' she says. If it gets that bad we'll reboot.' You don't like her solution, because you're a perfectionist. But you've got a deadline, you need to get this thing in the can. And you really don't have a better idea anyway. 'Okay fine,' you say. 'If it comes to that we'll have to reboot.'"

"So they destroy Zion, and that's like a reboot?"

"Right. They take 16 women and 7 men and restart the human race, inside the Matrix again."

"But why do they need Neo for that?"

"Well, there was some handwaving about that. They may or may not explain it sufficiently in the last movie. We'll see."

"But then Neo took the other door, so now everyone dies."

"Right. The machines are in trouble because they can't restart the Matrix. The humans are screwed because there's like 12 of them left."

We're in the car pulling out into the street. "So when the Matrix gets messed up they reboot. So... the Matrix is like Windows."

"Exactly."