Under the Analyst's new Matrix, a significant percentage of synthients' power comes from Neo and Trinity alone:
Sati: Neo's escape has destabilized the Matrix. The Anomaleum draws its current from Trinity alone now. A fail-safe has been triggered to reset the Matrix back to the previous version. But the Analyst halted the reset. He's convinced the authorities that you will soon return voluntarily.
|
The Analyst explains that this is made possible when Neo and Trinity are kept close, but not too close. This creates endlessly unfulfilled hope, which, he also explains, is almost identical to despair in code, much like the conditions created in a nightmare. This has the real-world effect of "maximizing output," which we can assume translates to maximizing "human battery" power output.
Remember that in M1, Morpheus explains that machines were able to generate all the power they needed from humans in their pods "when combined with a form of fusion." To me, this is the only line in all of the four movies that even begins to provide an explanation for why Neo and Trinity are, all by themselves, able to act essentially as their own nuclear power plant for machines. This was only mildly dissatisfying in the first three movies - most people I know didn't have any problem overlooking this since it took millions of humans to generate the power that machines needed.
But in M4, two humans are providing the same power that thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of humans would normally provide. This "combined with a form of fusion" phrase was already doing some heavy lifting in the first three movies, but in M4, this explanation is stretched beyond our most forgiving suspension of disbelief. Additionally, in M4 there was no emphasis, reminder, or even hinting of this "form of fusion" concept from M1 by the scriptwriters, even despite the presence of 43 other flashbacks in of scenes that weren't even half as necessary as a flashback to this "form of fusion" concept would have been. The emphasis was clearly on the emotion of hope and despair, not the actual scientific grounds for turning hope and despair into megawatts.
Also, the Analyst says, "Every sim where you two bonded... Let's just say bad things happened." We are then shown a couple of Analyst flashbacks of Neo in his pod electrocuting a machine, and Neo and Trinity in their pods, causing an impossible-to-believe real-world explosion when their hands touch. It's tempting to focus on the Analyst's use of the word "sim" here: perhaps the real-world explosion didn't literally happen? Maybe these flashbacks themselves were simulations, and the flash of light was just a visual representation of the crashing of the simulation?
This doesn't appear to be the case. The real-world explosion takes place precisely in the one place that most clearly tells us that it is not the Matrix or even a simulation of the Matrix: inside their pods. This suggests that we are seeing Neo and Trinity in their pods after the simulations had already crashed. Evidently, they woke each other up like we see in Kid's Story or, perhaps even more likely, like Dan Davis in World Record, and they started doing what little they could with their atrophied muscles to fight back in their pods.
I was thinking about the Oracle from before, when she said that the power of the One comes from the Source. Maybe when the One is in the real world, the wireless connection to the source does more than merely enabling Neo to have control over machines; maybe machines had harnessed some way to transmit power itself wirelessly over long distances, like what Nikola Tesla tried and failed to do? Maybe the Oracle was being literal about power itself when she talked about the "power" of the One?
Unfortunately, all this does is kick the can down the road. This still means that machines are draining their own cumulative power supply in order to feed Neo and Trinity the energy required to produce a real-world explosion. At best, it's a break-even scenario where no power is lost or gained.
As I articulate in my Introduction: The Matrix Resurrections page, this plot device is, by far, the weakest aspect of the movie. The suspense of disbelief required to go along with this far exceeds what most good science fiction demands of audiences.
We also see that Neo has a lot more machinery in his body other than just his headplug: he has something on the back of his neck. I assume this must be a power socket to allow the Anomaleum to extract enormous amounts of power from a single human. Trinity probably also has the same neck socket.
I've seen one YouTube video that shows the image of Neo with machinery all over his right eye as an example of Neo being "mostly machine," but I think this misinterprets that scene: I think the human biology of Neo's burnt eyes were simply being rebuilt by machines. That gigantic mechanical "eye patch" we saw was probably more of an eye cast, an environment in which the eye can be rebuilt.
| Back to Neo's Powers |
 Neo's Powers: Blind Sight |
 Neo |