SPOILER DISCUSSION
1.Instead of green, the movie seems to be tinted in shades of yellow and blue. The analysts office is shaded in blue and his glass frames are also the color blue. Blue is appeasement and the blue pills offered only offer comfort for feelings.
Yellow is the color of desire and the color is present in the sky, the domain where Neo wants to fly. In the flashback sequences chronicling Bugs’s first interaction with him, Neo walks straight off the building into a yellow skyline. The fake feeling of the “Matrix” world he lives in has shades of yellow reflected everywhere, which makes sense given that the Analyst is using Neo and Trinity’s (Carrie-Ann Moss) desire for another to power his systems.
Thus, the analyst’s new Matrix is green broken into its component elements. The two elements, blue and yellow, form a binary – a false binary. When that binary breaks and the colors “mix” you get the green of the original Matrix. The control of the artifice never left, they were just split apart.
2. Neo’s view of the world isn’t changed by the blue pill; rather his emotional temperament to his situation is modulated so he’s more comfortable being in a familiar setting rather than upending everything else. He ignores the “truth” of his past because accepting that would make him experience a severe anxiety. It’s easier to step away and accept solace in what he thinks he knows.
The red pill on the other breaks one connections with comfort and forces them to accept whatever is happening. It strips away one’s ability to remain ignorant and causes one to become out of step with complacency. This is exemplified in the visual effect of the pill. When Neo takes it, the camera adopts a shutter shot that’s disjointed and at odds with the flow of time. If the matrix presents a unified fantasy that he’s trapped to repeat, the red pill breaks his rhythm in relation to that fantasy and lets him step outside of it, embracing a new perspective.
3.Interestingly enough, this shift in perspective is the Analyst’s “answer” to bullet-time as well. The method by which he breaks Neo’s control of the situation visually recalls the effects of ingesting the red pull. There’s a shutter shot effect that visibly outlines the Analyst as he taunts Neo and pretends to shoot Trinity. The difference in their speeds is then directly tied to their difference in perspectives – the Analyst can “perceive” the “reality” of the situation more so than Neo so he gains control.
4.It’s not confirmed, but the set-up suggests that because Neo and Trinity are powering the Anomaleum they’re also inadvertently the ones who are generating the digital world inside of it as well. Neo in the guise of Thomas is made to push updates to the game, “Binary” he’s working on. But these updates are more likely updates to the world he’s living in.
The Analyst mentions that people can believe the wildest things as long events cohere with their emotions, so he can ensure that the simulation is consonant with people’s expectations by having not only a human, but the link between humans and machines, write the code that binds everyone within. To ensure that Neo stays motivated and within the system, the Analyst positions Trinity close enough to spur desire but far enough to ensure that nothing catastrophic happens. In this way, he creates a power circuit for the matrix – an image which is directly captured in the form of Thomas running on his treadmill day in and day out. He’s nothing more than gerbil generating electricity, producing desire qua energy as he’s made to live through the same loops over and over again.
5.The nature of loops is also why Neo designs the hybrid Smith-Morpheus in the modal. He’s training up his former best friend to be able to navigate the system effectively, subconsciously hoping that the curtains hiding reality can be ripped down once again with Morpheus’s help.
6.Trinity’s relationship with Neo in the first movie is of critical importance because the Oracle highlights that Trinity’s will be the One and will die. Neo initially dies to Agent Smith’s onslaught and is only revived when Trinity admits her feelings for him and then kisses him back to life. It’s her love and belief in Neo that allows him to muster the power to defeat Agent Smith.
Resurrections flips the script and has Neo tap into his love to “wake” Trinity up. His faith that she’ll choose their love over the façade of the domestic life offered to her is what allows the couple to reunite once again. If Trinity’s decision to love him is what helped him become the “One”, it makes sense that his love for her helps her ascend to another plane. Neo’s powers split between the couple as the two of them represent halves of the one – a binary, a couple unified into a singular entity.
I think this is why the third act focuses so heavily on Neo’s use of psychic reflection. It’s a core component of his move set and the film is setting the pace for the reveal of him flying next. Given Bugs’s statement about his earlier attempt, we’re led to believe that he still has his power and his excessive use of it in the chase sequence gives us no reason to doubt that his other powers are unavailable. But then he falls. What saves him is Trinity. She’s the one who can fly. It’s well-earned subversion.
7.The flying is also a sharp contrast to the Analyst’s final method of attack which involves using bodies as living bombs. He has multiple citizens throw themselves out of windows and buildings, plummeting downwards and exploding. They can’t reach new heights because they’re too invested in the system as it is which leaves them susceptible to crashing.