MovieChat Forums > The Animatrix (2003) Discussion > Who started the war?

Who started the war?

posted 17 years ago by BetaLyte
11 replies | jump to latest

**WARNING: SPOILERS**
I've you haven't seen The Matrix and/or The Animatrix, stop reading.
Unless you just don't care.

I watched The Animatrix recently, and in The Second Renaissance, we get to know that the war was started by the humans (right in the beginning of part 2), when United Nations bombers unleash a sustained nuclear bombardment on Zero One (the machine city), even though that the machines offered a peaceful settling on the economic crisis (right in the end of part 1).
And all of this is from the Zion archive - historical file number 12-1.

So, in The Matrix, when Morpheus is explaining to Neo about the war that devastated the real would, he says:

We don't know who struck first, us or them [...]

And both parts of The Second Renaissance is part of those four Animatrix scripts the Wachowski brothers wrote themselves.
So is this a plot hole, or is there something from the sequels I don't remember?
Because that The Matrix is from 1999, but both The Matrix Reloaded and The Animatrix is from 2003, with a few months difference (The Animatrix comes first).
Anyone got a clue on what could explain this, or is it just one of those things that happens?
___
We live in a system which kills adventures, but the only true adventure is to kill the system.

[–] extrenix 17 years ago

the war started somewhere in year 1999 (if im correct, been a while since I watch animatrix). The real world in teh matrix is set somewhere near 2199. We also know that the matrix restarted six times, so did Zion (a number of humans must repopulate Zion every time) So I guess it's fair to assume that after nearly 200 years and 6 generations of humans, they might not know who started this war.

[–] Artificial-Soldier 17 years ago

""the war started somewhere in year 1999""

Since when did we have killer cyborgs and super weapons in 1999?

""The real world in teh matrix is set somewhere near 2199""

Yeah, that's about when Second Renaissance takes place, better.

To the guy that made this thread, it's no plothole that the Nebuchanezzard and Zion didn't know if the humans or the machines struck first.

[–] jamiemcgrory 17 years ago

Either that or when Morpheus says 'we don't know who struck first' he meant that everyone who hadn't the security clearance to view those files didn't know.
Perhaps letting humanity know that they brought this upon themselves would be shooting themselves in the foot in terms of propaganda. And so the knowledge that humans had opened up on the machines in the first place was simply not told to anybody else.

If Little Red Riding Hood shows up with a bazooka an a bad attitude I expect you to chin the bitch

[–] LanSi 17 years ago

"""the war started somewhere in year 1999""

Since when did we have killer cyborgs and super weapons in 1999?"

It's a movie, dude. It's not real.

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] rbhardware_05 16 years ago

Remember, Zion was destroyed multiple times, so maybe those archives are from an earlier version?

Or, maybe it's from after the Truce, and the machines shared records with the humans.

[–] Liquidize105 16 years ago

The beginning of the 21st Century is when we achieve the a.i. singularity.

Also there was never any indication of who accessed those files or in what time period. It's not hard to imagine records would be lost to the humans after so many wars.

OH THE HUGE MANATEE!!!

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] 16 years ago

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[–] mstrainjr 12 years ago

You have to understand that the story "The Second Renaissance" is being told by an outsider, a "watcher" per say. This being is telling us the story from the point of view of someone who transcends time. Now, it is quite possible for the humans who broke free of the Matrix to not accurately know these events in their history. How would Morpheus know all the facts? Just because no human in his time period may have all the answers, this doesn't present a plot hole.

[–] calvinl 10 years ago

Introduction

I would say it's pretty evident that man started the war.

There are so many instances where man could have done something to prevent war, but chose the lazy and selfish route, there were so so many chances provided by the robots to have peace. Greed and Sloth got the best of us.

Some Instances

- Out of laziness we create a machine to do our lowest bidding, which doesn't seem that bad but the act of creating said robots is a direct reflection of us being lazy, we basically got so lazy we had to make robots to work for us.

- We didn't appreciate and treat the robots with respect. Like the robots, many poor and working people today are not appreciated. They get minimum wage, are systematically given the worse of pretty much everything, and get very little sympathy when they are pushed over the edge and break a law. They do something out of desperation and because they have no income are given crap lawyers and lose very simple lawsuits most wealthy people could walk out of. They are stuck in a loop of not having enough money to leave their position in society and most people still treat them like they are the scum of the earth. The amount of times I've seen upper class people make disgusting faces when needing to touch or be near poor people is astonishing and quite sad.

- We began to destroy robots systematically with no judicial process; very similar to the lynchings of many black people. We basically kidnapped many black, irish, asian people from all over the WORLD and gave them no options. We did the same to the robots.

- We then forced the robots to move to the Middle East, when 01 started to make a lot of money through legal methods (being great at producing goods) we continued to knowingly purchase their better technology (which we didn't have to do).

- We got selfish and angry that they started to make more and more money in the economy, they then wanted to join the UN peacefully, which would have probably solved most of the tension, but NOPE we just blew them off and took their ambassadors.

- We then decided to BOMB them with nukes because we didn't want them to progress more, FINALLY the robots decided to really fight back. This is when the war actually started.

With his greed and selfishness, "man was the architect of his own demise".