ura around these characters so that the Christian references would be more apparent to the viewers.The main plot of The Matrix is that Artificial Intelligence has taken over humanity. These human-created machines now harvest humans in crops in order to provide energy for them to survive. It is known that the human body cannot survive without the mind, so the Artificial Intelligence has designed a computer-generated world in which the human mind can live and survive. This computer-generated world is known as the Matrix. "It is a computerized simulation of life as we know it, or we imagine we know it. What the movies postulates is a version of virtual reality so vast and tentacular as to encompass the entire globe."3 The story line of this film suggests that humans are not really living a "real" life. It suggests that no human has every used their eyes, ears, muscles, or any other sense. As Laurence Fishburnes character, Morpheus, puts it; "the matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control, in order to change a human being into [a battery]."4 Realizing that the main characters of this film are a few of the only humans functioning in the real world as we know it now, there must be some form of artificially created authority. These authority figures are known as agents and the main agent in The Matrix is Agent Smith. "[The agents] resemble the Gnostic concepts of Archons or cosmic minions of a false Creator God, the agents are responsible for keeping order and submission to that reality. Morpheus says as much when he mentions how they guard all the doors, they hold all the keys. It is a zoo, a prison to them and just like the Gnostic Archons, they are the guards, the wardens."5 Agent Smiths character is a direct reference to The Holy Bibles Pontius Pilate. 6 "Whenever local rulers failed to keep the colonies in line, Rome appointed its own strongmen, called procurators or governors. Pontius P...
