»Purpose of the Merovingian«

neo's five previous incarnations represent the Five Books of Moses that make up the Old Testament. neo (representing Christ, and thus the New Testament) differs from his five predecessors in his capacity to love. In the work of Origen of Alexandria and other early Christian writers, it is love ("eros" in Greek) that compels Christ to come down from the heavens to redeem humanity. Furthermore, "neo" means "new"—as in "New Covenant."

- drumcode -

The other 5 ones were books! That doesn't make any sense does it?

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

What I meant was not that the Merovingian has the purpose to block all peace attempts. What I mean was that he CHOSE to do so. And again, we meet with what all this movies are about: CHOICE

I think the biblical comparisions are way cool, I must give yall props for that. Here's an alternative: The Merovingian is an AI which commands several other AI's and they do things prohibitted by rules of their environment. Regardless of selfish intent and a lack of manners, the Merovingian does keep his word and doesn't terminate programs or kill people unless it is deemed necessary. As with the Vito Corleon, the Merovingian helps people with problems the "system" won't properly address. Comparible examples: Sati and the little old lady being evicted from her apartment in GodFather II. Just like the Godfather, the Merovingian isn't interested in ruling the world, just having a nice spot in it and receiving respect.

drumcode wrote:

neo's five previous incarnations represent the Five Books of Moses that make up the Old Testament. neo (representing Christ, and thus the New Testament) differs from his five predecessors in his capacity to love. In the work of Origen of Alexandria and other early Christian writers, it is love ("eros" in Greek) that compels Christ to come down from the heavens to redeem humanity. Furthermore, "neo" means "new"—as in "New Covenant."

Perhaps the five previous ones represent the five ages of man, according to Greek mythology/philosophy: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Heroes and Iron. A little bit of extension would allow the current age, perhaps called the "Age of Silicon" or whatever, to fit into this scheme perfectly. Noting the Mythological reference certain characters in the matrix have (The Oracle, Merovingian, Werewolves, the Ghosts), the idea that the different Matrices represent different periods in humanity's history is very reasonable.

Of course, the Christian Old/New Testament and its relation to the Matrix cannot be denied. However, numerous non-Christian elements seem to me to indicate the whole history of the Matrix is not based soley on Christian scripture. Perhaps there is some ulterior myth or belief at work, a synthesis of different legends, faiths and stories into one "super religion". Or perhaps the Matrix is built around a more primitive belief, a "proto-religion" of sorts from which every other religion is derived (Holy Grail myth, anyone?), hence the correlation between the Matrix and so many other faiths.

bowchow79 wrote:

Perhaps the five previous ones represent the five ages of man, according to Greek mythology/philosophy: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Heroes and Iron. A little bit of extension would allow the current age, perhaps called the "Age of Silicon" or whatever, to fit into this scheme perfectly. Noting the Mythological reference certain characters in the matrix have (The Oracle, Merovingian, Werewolves, the Ghosts), the idea that the different Matrices represent different periods in humanity's history is very reasonable. Of course, the Christian Old/New Testament and its relation to the Matrix cannot be denied. However, numerous non-Christian elements seem to me to indicate the whole history of the Matrix is not based soley on Christian scripture. Perhaps there is some ulterior myth or belief at work, a synthesis of different legends, faiths and stories into one "super religion". Or perhaps the Matrix is built around a more primitive belief, a "proto-religion" of sorts from which every other religion is derived (Holy Grail myth, anyone?), hence the correlation between the Matrix and so many other faiths.

dude.... a bit off-topic arent ya? I think you should have posted this (what he posted in a dif. topic):

Quote:

The Architect then stated that a second Matrix was made, in attempt to better understand the "grotesqueries" of humanity. To a machine, such grotesqueries would be pride, ambition, revenge - all the vices of man. And, who embodies these vices more perfectly than the Merovingian? He loves fine wines, random women, wiping his ass with silk, so to speak, and he only seeks to gain more power. Another grotesquery to the machines would probably be the human concept of love, which Persephone seems to embody fairly well. Infact, the majority of her dialogue in M2, M3 or Enter the Matrix focuses around her concept of "love" and asking for passionate kisses. She is able to sense how the person kissing her loves someone else (Ghost, Niobe and Neo). My conclusion? Vice and Love are those grotesqueries of human nature the Architect tried to take into account in the second matrix. Considering that the Oracle was "an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche", it is not unreasonable to consider that the Merovingian and Persephone were initially created to investigate other such aspects, namely Vice and Love respectively. However, the machines obviously failed to fully understand humanity, as the Merovingian was dominated by ambition, rebelling against the system set up and forming his own underground empire of sorts. The Merovingian sees everything in terms of "causality" - there is too much reason to perfectly emulate human vice, the motivations for it and the effect it has. Persephone, perhaps created to temper the Merovingian, also failed as the Machines failed to understand Love - considering how mechanical and forced her concept of Love is (as seen from her dialogue, it's almost more robotic than Neo!), this is certainly plausible.

I think its most likely that the machines couldnt account for things like vice, desire, and ambition in the first matrix. And the lack of understanding of love by the machine programmers would be a huge factor in people regecting the reality of the "perfect" matrix world.

it would seem that the Merovingian and Persephone fit those roles.

although I was expecting a bigger confrontation with him, that would be unnessicary within the greater themes. The merovingian was one of the extra layers and ideas within the Matrix movies that made them have many different angels, but ultimately in M3 they focused on what was more important and more central to the entire triology.

Dan wrote:

dude.... a bit off-topic arent ya?

Sorry, I was refering to Drumcode's post above about how the Five previous ones represent the Five books of Moses, offering a different interpretation. I suppose that was unclear, and I've hopefully made it a bit clearer by quoting him in my post above. Thanks for pointint that out.

I'm not a biblical scholar or hebrew for that matter, but I think Hebrew symbols have double meanings as numbers and whole words. I heard somewhere else thatthe 6 symbol is also the symbol for Man. I also heard somewhere the the number of the Beast isn't 666 but 616. Anyway, I think that's how they came up with "the Bible Codes" and what not.

By the way, for anyone following this thread, Bowchow79 started a new thread about the Merovingian and Atlantis which is really interesting.