The Oracle is, according to the Architect, the “mother” of the Matrix. But another did: a program that would later come to be known as the Oracle. Frustrated by failure, the Architect could not find a solution to this problem. As explained by the Architect during the climax of The Matrix Reloaded, the earliest iterations of the Matrix failed to placate humanity, with many people outright rejecting these simulated realities and, as a result, dying. The machines created a program called the Architect to design the world of the Matrix and keep humanity sedated and unaware of the Matrix’s true nature. As a solution to this problem, the machines began developing a neural interactive simulation to house the collective minds of humanity in order to placate them while siphoning off their energy - a simulation that would come to be known as the Matrix. Naturally, the act of transforming human beings into living batteries was extremely painful, claiming the lives of many humans whose bodies and minds simply could not withstand the physical and psychological trauma of the process. With no other options and on the verge of extinction, the machines captured the remaining humans on Earth and siphoned the combined electric, kinetic, and thermal energy of their bodies for power. The machines won: All of human civilization was decimated, while the sun and sky were blotted out by a near-impenetrable cloud of nanites in a last-ditch effort to deprive the machines of the solar energy they needed to function.
#MATRIX ARCHITECT MOVIE#
As explained by Morpheus in the first movie (and depicted in the 2003 Animatrix short “The Second Renaissance”), during the early 21st century, a war broke out between humanity and a race of artificially intelligent machines created to serve them. To understand the Oracle, we have to go back to the very creation of the Matrix itself. In the lead-up to the release of The Matrix Resurrections, which seems to regard every bit of prior canon as essential - or at least relevant enough to mirror in new ways - now seems like a good time to look back at the Oracle, as her role became swept up in some of the denser aspects of the original movies.
#MATRIX ARCHITECT SERIES#
Understanding who the Oracle is, and her place in the grander scheme of the Matrix as a whole, is fundamental to understanding the series itself. She went on to play a pivotal role in Neo’s personal arc in The Matrix, and through the cataclysmic events of The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Played by Gloria Foster (and then Mary Alice in the third film, following Foster’s death), the Oracle was introduced as a mentor figure of sorts to Morpheus, and an ally in the human resistance’s ongoing war against the machines. Of all the characters seen throughout the original Matrix trilogy, few are as intriguing and consequential to the universe of the films than that of the Oracle.