10 Movie Scenes That Unexpectedly Confused Audiences

6. Neo Meets The Architect - The Matrix Reloaded

No Country For Old Men
Warner Bros.

Though the original Matrix works through some heady and thought-provoking concepts such as the nature of reality, it's never once a confusing film and has a total clarity of vision from start to finish.

The sequels? Not so much.

Even with its more philosophical approach throughout, The Matrix Reloaded ends up swallowing its own tail during the climax, when Neo (Keanu Reeves) crosses paths with the "father" of the Matrix, the Architect (Helmut Bakaitis).

Though the cliff notes of the Architect's exposition dump aren't all that complicated - that the One is an intentional part of the Matrix's design, and this is its sixth version - his dialogue is such an excessively verbose word-salad that it feels like the Wachowskis filtered every word through Thesaurus.com.

Here's a small sliver of the Architect's needlessly highfaluting blabber:

"Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the Matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here."

To audiences in 2003 the sequence was a major head-scratcher and, honestly, it still is.

While it's certainly in-character for the Architect to speak in such loquacious terms, when it ends up pissing the audience off through their inability to comprehend what's going on, it was probably a mistake.

Contributor
Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.