Minute 27: “…like a splinter in your mind…”

Transcript

Transcribed automatically from the audio, and imperfect for it — names and punchlines suffer worst. Useful for finding a moment, not for quoting one.

0:00Welcome to the Matrix Minute, a podcast where we just discuss the Matrix Minute one minute at a time. Oh, you are very worthy. Hello, I'm Jake. Hello, I am Philip. Hello, I am Timothy. Welcome. Sorry, go on. Yes, and where I'm from, it's not called the Matrix, it's just called Matrix. Matrix. Matrix. That's a good trivia. And I was disturbed by the second renaissance when I watched it on DVD. Yeah, me too. Is that what the robots crush people's skulls? Yes. Oh, yes. It's magical. It's quite magical. It's magical. Speaking of magical, we have some alternate lines from the 1996 script.

0:40Well, I love the next one. It's a gold mine. It's a gold mine. With gizmo. It's a big mine mine. Which single-handedly saved our podcast. I think so. That script. Because otherwise we wouldn't have anything to talk about. But the script is always our bread and butter. Yeah. We can just go back to it anytime. We'll go back to the script. Alright, so here we are again. Morpheus is talking to Neo some more and now we get into some dialogue. And with that, you know, Keanu does a pretty good job acting and I will tell you what's happening at this minute. Morpheus tells Neo that he has the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he's expecting to wake up. And asks him about fate. To which Neo says he doesn't believe in it because he doesn't like the idea of not being in control of his own life.

1:26Ironic. Morpheus continues to tell him that he knows Neo feels that there's something wrong with the world. But he doesn't know what it is. But that's the feeling that brought him to Morpheus. All right. Can we just start by saying that Morpheus's coat, wonderful piece of work there. It's a beautiful leather coat. It's a good one. He looks like a monk. He looks like a bishop. Teaching people about the truth to wake up. Maybe I went too far there. Zealot. Well, it's fine. It's okay. There's many things in this movie. You can call him what you like. You can call him a, like I said, a monk, priest. Prophet. Zealot. A monkey. No. Here's, I want to bring back, I was, last episode, I said I wanted to say something.

2:11Ah, yes, you're here. I think I've already mentioned this. Yes, we are here. Now it is future. The day has passed. And to get to listen, well, maybe if it's the weekend, then I guess more. I don't know. I don't know when these come out. They don't come out on weekends. No, I mean, it's like maybe, you know, it's like one day between the episodes. Oh, okay. But if it's the weekend, then you must wait for the candy of the Monday. The bonbons. The bonbons. Yes. So, Morpheus, the man. The myth. The legend. Morpheus. There has been, so far, a lot of, sort of, I mean. Besides movie references and sort of art references, there's a lot of philosophy slash religious references.

2:54Yes. All in this mixture. And Morpheus, so far, well, not so far, but a lot of them were sort of Christian kind of thing. I mean, there's a lot of lines like, oh, you know, you've been looking for me, you know. Yes. I've been looking for you my entire life. Now, that's a sort of biblical kind of thing. And definitely in this speech, there's a lot of that. And you can have that sort of comparison of, you know, Morpheus being the god figure. Neil being the son figure. Well, no, you could be the son figure. I read one time Morpheus can be the John the Baptist guy. So, he's expecting Christ to come, right?

3:37Yeah. Yeah. I guess. Yeah. He is, I mean, classically, he is the prophet. Yeah. He's the one that's got, you know, he's got the wisdom from the gods. He's awaiting, you know, the Messiah to arrive. Which would be in this case, Neo would be that figure. But you can obviously read it many different ways. Yeah. I mean, I remember the philosopher's commentary and then one of them was going, oh, Paul, Paul, Paul Morpheus, you know. I think it's even a line. That's what the oracle says. Yes, he does. He is completely convinced in this and that's usually, that's the people who lead revolutions, people who change. What's interesting is that Morpheus's character, in a way, and especially if you watch the second

4:20and third films, Morpheus is very much a fundamentalist kind of guy because he is so convinced of sort of his truth or what he believes that he sort of, like you said, leads people, you know, to. Astray. Well, not astray, but he leads people, you know, into this belief as well. So however you want to look at that, it is a fact that Morpheus is very convinced. Like, he's not going like, maybe I'm wrong. He's like, no, no, no, I believe, you know. And that also plays into the idea of faith and things like that. Yeah, especially when things like when a revolution is happening, when you need to change a system or something needs to be changed with whatever community or whatever it is, you know, a group

5:01of people, usually these people are the ones who do it because they have absolute conviction and they have one idea that they follow. And then, you know, these people are usually absolutely terrible after they succeed, you know. After, you know, you convince the one that he's the one and he is the action and he changes everything, then your sort of perspective on the world as one-sided and one, you know, sort of dimensional as that sort of type of person, then it's completely useless because then you have a system that you need to sustain. But if you're that kind of person, you're just going to be hindraged to everything. So it's interesting. But it definitely, I mean, in movies, I think this type of character doesn't have such a

5:47presence as Morpheus and does a Matrix. Usually it's like a side character and maybe the first 30 minutes or something like that they guide. But I think it's very, it's really cool that we have Morpheus throughout the entire journey and see how his perspective on this whole issue kind of shapes. Yeah. And plus what's nice is that Morpheus, he's not like super classical mentor character. He is, obviously. But let's say he's not like an Obi-Wan where sort of Obi-Wan, you know, you kind of just dies. He just dies. Obi-Wan sort of, you see where he's coming from immediately and you can see that he's just sort of guiding Luke to this one thing. But I think that with Morpheus, I think we get a little bit more nuanced character where he's giving Neo choices.

6:28He's not like just nudging him like a little kid. He's just saying, okay, this is what I think. And, you know, you can accept this path or not. So he's like trying to convince him again, like what he believes to be the truth versus, you know. So according to the Matrix wiki, Morpheus's real name like is. Oh man, who made that though? It's from the Matrix Online. Okay. Yeah. I remember that. What would that be? There's like the website. No, the Matrix Online was an MMORPG that came out in 2004. Oh, I see. It was, you know, like there were a bunch of writers that were assigned to making stories for, you know, the multiplayer missions and stuff that came out every month.

7:10And the Wachowskis were part of it and they were actually, you know, reading it as well and, you know, making their contributions. So everything is canon, as it were, canon to the story. Okay. So it's approved. And in the game, in one of the story missions that happen, Morpheus has a, like this is after the Matrix revolutions, obviously, because this is going in the future in canon. Um, he has a front org. Can we guess? He has a front organization. Okay. I mean, you can guess if you want. I wish it was Darrell or Daryl. Um, but, uh, I guess not. What's your guess, Jacob? I'm so sorry. I was looking for the text of the Matrix to see because I wanted to say something, but what'd you guys, what are you guys talking about?

7:51We're talking about what Morpheus's real name is. Oh yeah, we talked about that before. Yeah, we did. We did. We did. What is the name on the Matrix Online? Well, he had a, he had a organization, he had a front, um, organization, Morpheus does in the Matrix Online, one of the stories. Mm-hmm. And it's called the Daniel Institute of Dream Interpretation. Wow. I mean, Daniel, dream interpretation, Daniel, blah, blah, blah. But people are saying that that might be his name. Whatever. I don't care. Where's the money, Danny? Okay. Well, we can talk about something else, which I would like to talk about. We have- Talk about it. Philosophy here as well. So, Morpheus asked Neo if he believes in fate.

8:32What's interesting is, classically in philosophy, you have a couple of different views on free will and fate. You have fatalism, which is what Morpheus is talking about. Not to be confused with feudalism. And fatalism is essentially the view that everything is fixed in the universe. Well, that's the Merovingian. The future is fixed. That means that, for instance, if there'll be a car crash on this certain road at this certain time, that's going to happen no matter what. That's fatalism. So, you can't change anything. You can't change the future. Everything is fixed. That's fatalism. That's one view. Causality. Causality. And then you have another view, which is libertarianism.

9:16That view is essentially we have free will and we can choose anything we want. So, you can make choices. Okay. Nothing's fixed. You can choose anything. That's libertarianism. And then you have... Is there something between? Determinism, which is that... Determinism is sort of similar to fatalism. I never figured out what the difference is. But determinism is essentially that we are bound by the laws of the universe. So, physical laws, genetic laws. So, like, however the universe is made, we're bound to that. So, that means you can't... Like, if you were genetically predisposed to, let's say, like, be a generally angry person, you're going to have a harder time.

9:57You're breaking out of that because there's a determinant already. Things like that. Okay. There's, like, some kind of laws that are not specific. Like, there's limits. There's limits to what we can... Like, basically, we're determined in some sense. It's a little bit confusing there. Yeah, and we're not talking about, like, oh, gravity will always put it down. We're talking about... Gravity! There are specific traits... We're talking about free will. That means how much power do you have to actually change things. And determinism basically says that the natural universe is the way it is, and that's the way of the future. But there's another one. There's a thing that came out in philosophy called compatibilism. I thought you were going to say... Which is that means that if we suppose that determinism is true, that means things are determined, you can actually still believe in free will while accepting determinism.

10:38I think that's what Neo's all about. And a lot of people think that's the case. Compatibilism. And I think a lot of people, naturally, without ever thinking about it, kind of that's the general sort of thought process of people. Because you hear a lot of people when they talk about fate, they talk about something not just sort of normal life. They talk about fate when something really bad happens or something good happens. You know, especially when it's maybe there's some irony or some kind of, you know, what us humans are really good at is spotting sort of connections. So that's when people talk about fate. Like, oh, you know, you met your love of your life. It was fate. You know, I tripped and I met that person. Or it's like, oh, you know, somebody, you know, like stabbed me in the stomach to the cinema ago.

11:27And it's like, it was fate. You know what I mean? But they still are like, you know, they, their day-to-day lives still make choices. That's the thing, though. But if you accept fatalism, you can't accept that there's free will. Yeah, I'm just saying that that's a combination of what most people don't think about it. But that's the kind of thing. Like, fate comes in for the grander things. But most of our lives, you're just kind of like, it's like of its choice. Because I think most people, if they thought about it that way, you know, that's predetermined. I think that would kind of hinder their day-to-day life. And you'd be like, oh, what's the point? Yeah, I agree. I'm not going to make a decision. But yeah, so anyway, those are the sort of like philosophical views on free will. And it's always a debate. Always and forever will be.

12:08So anyway, I thought it was interesting. Because like, they mentioned fate for a reason. Because that's something that I just think about. But it's funny how Neo says that he doesn't believe. Yeah, Neo doesn't believe in fate. But that's funny because he's going to be, he's the one of the prophecy. Ah, maybe it's irony. You know? And at the end, he obviously does believe. He's the one. Yeah. Well, that's still questionable. We'll talk about that later. I'm going to be filming. I'm going to be shh, shh, shh, shh. Okay, we're going to go shh, shh, shh, shh. No, no, no, we're not going shh, shh, shh. But, so what do you think? Morpheus believes in fate? I think so. Of course he does. I think he believes. Like, absolutely? I think he believes in something more going on above the surface.

12:49Because, you know, he talks about, remember later, about the guy born into the Matrix, who had a choice, right, to free other people in the Matrix. I think that Morpheus, I think he believes in something more than simply, yeah, I think he believes in some kind of course in the world that's moving towards something that, you know, like a prophecy. Could it be that he doesn't believe in anything? He believes in sort of like, he wants to free humanity, and this is the sort of junk he kind of chooses to, like a false prophet, he like chooses to show this to people to motivate them, but his end goal is just to free people, and this is just like the words that he uses.

13:32Yeah, it's like a shh. That's how he gets the people to go for it. But then why would he have so much faith in Neo? Yeah. Because, I mean, you know, like. Does he know, does he know that that makes no sense? The One is a. Why would he bother with the One? Why would he bother for Neo? He could just free anybody. Also, I think it would be the best argument, you know? I think he would have been more clear of mind to realize that there has to be something about this One, because the Matrix is controlled by the machines. How is this One happening? You know, how can Neo hack through the Matrix and, you know. How, maybe, maybe everyone can do it. How can he be so OP, you know? Well, that's, well, maybe everyone can do it on, you know, you know, like, they can take that route and be like, anyone can do it until they're, until they're, until they're, Any Saiyan can become a Super Saiyan.

14:13Yeah, you just have to be fully convinced. And to be fully convinced, you have to have your head full of crap like you're the one. But how would Morpheus live with himself? Well, that's the thing. Like, imagine. He cries every time he goes to his cubicle. Yes, yes. Every time, every time, you know, Nebuchadnezzar shuts down or wants to sleep, he goes to his room, he pours some of that cipher stuff. And he's just there like, come on, Morpheus, another day, you can do it. You can do it. You can write little notes. Keep lying. Tumbling down the rabbit hole, you know. He's done this like a hundred times to a bunch of people probably. That's so sad. You know, I'm going to play the devil's advocate. Yeah, yeah. It's possible, but I don't believe it. Because, yeah. I'm not convinced. I don't believe. I'm going to go that route, and I believe that's Morpheus.

14:55He's a charlatan. That's horrible. Morpheus, the biggest charlatan. I love it. Because he's doing it for it with good intentions. That's another conundrum. Good intention. He's a utilitarianist. He believes the greater good is more important than the small moral consequences. So he can lie if ultimately he's doing a better thing in the world. I think like once he was freed, he sort of came to Zion and everything. And he kind of didn't agree with everyone. He was like, you know what? I don't care. You are not working towards freeing these people. All these people are there. And I hate it. And just his, whatever his experience of being freed, just made up this character inside him

15:37that determined I'm going to free everyone. And I'm going to, you know, it finds a faulty program called the Oracle in the system. The Orifice. And then use the Orifice and uses her. Yeah, that's the story I'm going with. Wow, man. Okay. Wow. That's a new one. That's crazy. I never heard of that ever. I kind of like it though. That would be for like a more, like that's like a double matrix, you know, like where you have to think even harder. So as Morpheus is talking, he's really scary by the way. I have to acknowledge the fact that Lawrence Fishburne did a great job in sort of the Wachowskis with their subtlety of how this character moves, how he's talking, how he enunciates his words and how scary he looks like with those glasses and how he's talking.

16:17It's creepy as hell. He's talking. Can't see his eyes at all. And Lawrence Fishburne, you know, he said that when he watched the film, finally, like the premiere, he got scared of him. Really? Yes. Because he is very creepy here because you can see the excitement. Yes. Yes. Because he keeps smiling and he's just like, he's just like, let's get over with this. And Neil is just freaked out because he just had a rough week. And there's this man with glasses that doesn't show his eyes, just keeps like smiling at him going, hey, hey, hey. Yes. It's awesome. I love it. I love how they. It's really good. It's a really good scene. It really did that well. And then he starts talking about some stuff. And he also, he mentions, like he says, he says, let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it.

16:58You felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. And he says this. That was a good simile. And he says this, and it's great because it's not just, it's something, you know, more philosophical that you can think about, but it's also a reference to everything that happened before in this film. There's weird stuff happening in the movie. It's amazing that in this movie, people don't talk like in real life, you know, especially Morpheus and Trinity and Neil. Nobody talks like this in real life. This is like, like a hyper. But you could though. That's what many movies do. You definitely could. I mean, that's something I would love to do. It's funny. And not a lot of movies can pull this off.

17:41There's definitely writing, good writing, you know, something that you kind of pour hours, sweat and hours over to get the sentences to work right. And then it's definitely the performance also helps to sell that because these are really weird dialogue, especially in the intro when you're not even sure about stuff. It's just like, it's so. But see, that's what I love about it. It fits perfectly for Morpheus. You can tell it's very specifically crafted where the Wachowskis, they knew what they're writing and they wanted to make sure that they had intention behind the writing. Because, you know, sometimes there's a lot of movies that are written very sloppily and it's just like, get the point across. But this is very meticulous in terms of every line has a place.

18:22And like we're doing now, we can talk about these lines because they have. They made books about these lines. So, I mean, you know. It's really great because I remember, you know, you have quotable movies and you have like funny quotes. And especially when people are younger, you know, you always keep quoting stuff back, you know, like get to the choppa or. No! Get to the choppa! Stick around. 100 gigawatts. But to me, it was definitely all this Matrix stuff. Like me and my brother would just go back and forth and just have the conversation. The older, yeah, Njony, Stan, the older brother, we always talk about. Legendary man. He lives in legend. We just have to, I just have to mention that again. I know. Legendary to be on sometime.

19:03But we would just go back and forth, especially this conversation, you know. No, so you guys talked about the Matrix. We would just do the lines. We would just do the whole line of the dialogue. Just go back and forth, you know. Like walk to his house and we would just go. No way. Like just say, yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, like it's very, I don't know how to say it. It's very special. The sort of the presentation that Morpheus puts here. It's very important, but super cryptic at the same time. And it is essentially cool. You know what I mean? It's very like, maybe some people will be put off by it because it's so unrealistic and weird. Like how they talk. But to me, definitely the cool level was too.

19:44It's not going to work. Oh, at this point, you're either sleeping or you're like, tell me, tell me who is Matrix. You're either my mom or you're Tim. Yes. At the edge of my seat. My mom sleeps, our mom sleeps through everything, by the way. She sleeps through every fantasy film known to man. I remember watching Lord of the Rings. Remember that? Well, what do you mean our uncle too? Oh yeah, our uncle. He just, 15 minutes he's watching after that. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think it's anything to do with age or do you think it's personality or do you think it's all interest? Interest. Because my mom is not interested. Yeah. Some people just. There's nothing real. Nothing interesting in a movie.

20:25Like, what's the point? Like, it's something like for me, like zero interest in watching baseball. I just don't feel like watching it. Yeah. Like I would watch it and go, okay, okay. And I get bored. Baseball. Now that's a sport. I get it. But like, there's a specific line. Maybe not baseball. Like something like very not interesting. Like something so not uninteresting to you that you just can't stand it. You just listen to a few sentences and you're already out. I know. But like comparing, you know, eating cereal to watching baseball is different. And comparing watching a drama, realistic drama compared to a sci-fi is very similar. I mean, there's stories at both ends. I know, I know. I know. But I think some people just aren't interested in watching. Do you think it's because our mom has told us time and time again that she just cannot, like she's not interested. If there's like little short, you know, furry footed midgets running around.

21:08But no, but she's interested in like dramas. She turns off. Yeah. But if it's like a woman going, I can't live with him. Then. Okay. Yeah. Do you think it's like if they paid attention to the story for a little bit? Maybe. Do you think they would be hooked? Or it's just like automatic. Oh, this is not real. Shut down. Yeah. Because it's like fictional. It's boring. I still remember us watching with Stan again, watching Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Rings for the first time in 2002. We had the projector going. We had some great sound at Stan's place. And our mom was there watching the film with us. And I still remember when, you know, Gandalf and the Hobbit, Gandalf and the Hobbits. What am I talking about?

21:49Gandalf and the Fellowship. The Fellowship were in Moria reading the Tomb of Balin inscription. And then boom, boom, you know, the drums. Yeah. Right. And this is supposed to be one of those big, you know, this is a big buildup and this is getting even worse. Right. This is a tense moment. Everybody, you know, who loves this stuff is actually, you know, their attention is caught. And I hear my mom. Boom. Boom. They are coming. I think some people are interested. Yeah. There we go. And you want to go back to 1996, perhaps. But no, before that, I just wanted to say that the... I know it's funny, Sam.

22:29I know I'm a funny man. Like, you are the funniest man. In the land. In the land of... Yeah, that's all I have with these notes. So if you want, you can just... Look at these notes. This is a pretty long episode, so... Let's go to 1996. So how about 996 next... Okay. Okay. Next time. Yeah. Next time. Next time. That's it. Morpheus is just... Also Morpheus is playing around with this little... What is that little box? Cigarette. Poison dart. He also has this little cigarette. Poison dart. That's Tim's method. Yes. That's Tim's method. Well, we learned about Tim's method earlier, where Morpheus, instead of talking to Neo, he just finds him, beats him up, says, you're the one, come with us.

23:11Yeah. Exactly. Get him to the car. Works perfectly. Plug him in. Imagine that. Imagine Neo waking up then in the cocoons. Ah! Ah! What did you do to me? Curse you. What is this mad trick? I think he would be even worse, because... He would... Boy. He wouldn't recover. No, Neo would think that Morpheus conjured up this whole reality. Yeah. He would be like, what is this? Morpheus. You drugged me. You drugged me into some kind of world. He would never accept it. Okay. Well, anyway. Imagine getting into Nebuchadnezzar and Morpheus like, Neo, you're the one now. Do one thing. Come on. Fulfill the prophecy. Go. Go. What if we combine those? Do the bad now, dog. What if we combine those and Morpheus is the liar? Even worse.

23:51He's enforcing Neo to be the one. How horrible is that? Masterpiece. It's amazing. Making the Matrix worse. So anyway, hey, I'm Phil. You can find us on The Matrix Minute on Twitter and TheMatrixMinute.one and on our Facebook group and on our Facebook page. Oh, we forgot to mention last time our email. There's too many things. In our email, askatthematrix.com, I did not want to confuse the listeners. Sorry, I forgot again. Askatthematrix.one. Askatthematrix.one. No. Wrong. Askatthematrix.one. Oh, yeah. TheMatrix.one. We don't own that one, buddy. What is this? I'm sorry. Askatthematrix.one. I'm sorry. Askatthematrix.one. Don't listen to this fool. This Judas. This lying.

24:32This lying. The only guy who does research on the show. Don't listen to him. Listen to me and Tim who just laugh all the time. Listen to us. Who just laugh at poor Phil. Yes, he's trying hard and we laugh. So, do you believe? Do you agree with me? Is Morpheus a charlatan? No. That's a really good one, though. Yeah, seriously. I never even thought of that. Never thought of that. Please join us on the Facebook page. Thank you, everyone, for listening. We appreciate your listenership. Give us some ratings on iTunes. We love you all. Good night and good luck. As we said once before. This episode was brought to you by Crunchybomb. Ah, fuck!

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26:22That's the end.