Zion
The meaning of the human city of Zion changes throughout
the Matrix trilogy. In The Matrix,
the city is discussed but not seen and works mostly as a metaphor
for a promised land of sorts, and a goal that makes the fighting
worthwhile. The Zion in the films recalls the biblical city of Zion.
In the Old Testament, Zion is Jerusalem, the heavenly city God promised
to the Israelites. The city sits on the top of a hill, commanding
a distant view of the kingdom—both for meditative purposes and for
safety. The people in Zion live in harmony and are unified in their
faith. The word Zion suggests safety, since the city became a religious
haven for the Israelites after years of wandering and enduring torture.
In the Matrix trilogy, Zion is still a promised
land as well as a safe haven, but the parallels end there. The Zion
of the Matrix commands not a vast view of land, but is instead buried
within the heart of the earth, and though it offers the illusion
of safety, in The Matrix Revolutions the enemy
infiltrates that safe haven and crashes violently through its borders.
The Zion in the Matrix trilogy contrasts
with the illusory program of the Matrix. The Matrix represents a
system of control that operates completely in the mind. As a complex,
machine-driven program, it appropriates any personal, political,
or ideological leanings and renders them wholly false. It allows
illusions but no action. Zion, as a promised land, represents a
real, tangible, human place fought for, worked for, and died for.
Zion is a living sanctuary and a memorial to the efforts and faith
of a chosen people. When Zion appears in The Matrix Reloaded and The
Matrix Revolutions, its symbolic connotations intensify
as its inhabitants fight for a true human community.
The Green Light of the Matrix
Everything in the Matrix is bathed in a green light, as
if the camera were capped with a green-tinted lens. (The green in
question is the color that characters on computer screens used to
be before the advent of Windows and word-processing programs that
used black-on-white color schemes to make the computer world look
more like the “real” world of paper and ink.) This color suggests
that, unlike in the real world, what we see in the Matrix is being
shown, or filtered, through something else. When Neo finally develops
the ability to see the Agents as code rather than as their fake
human shapes, he sees them in the same menacing green color that
saturates the rest of the Matrix. In all three of the movies, when
something is evil, green light is involved—Club Hell, for example,
is bathed in green light, and green flames surround Bane/Smith just
before Neo kills him. We might expect, then, that Neo will see nothing
but green when he approaches the supposedly evil Machine City. Instead, with
his second sight, Neo sees golden spires of light reaching toward
the sky—no hint of green. Whatever the machines are, they’re not
only embodiments of evil indulgence and selfishness as are the Merovingian
and Smith.
Three/The Trinity
The Matrix trilogy itself is, of course, three films,
and arrangements of threes and references to threes saturate the
films. The number three has strong spiritual significance, which
appears in the character of Trinity. The name Trinity suggests the
holy trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which represents
the divine nature of God. In the Matrix films, Morpheus, Neo, and
Trinity form their own trinity, as do Agents Smith, Brown, and Jones.
Three ships’ crews, another trinity, try to access the door of the
Source: Soren’s, Niobe’s, and Morpheus’s. The reappearance of the
number three perpetuates and emphasizes the idea of the trinity. The
Matrix begins and ends in Room 303 at
the Heart O’ the City Motel. Without the zero, the number becomes 33,
which recalls the purported age of Christ at the time of his crucifixion
and resurrection. Neo also has visions of three thick cables bound
together in The Matrix Revolutions, and these power
cables lead to his penetration of the heart of the city.
