How I Would Do It: The Matrix

So, I'll admit, up front, that I haven't actually seen any of the movies, making this entire setup more than a little suspect from the get-go. However, people on the internet love to discuss the movies, so I've got a bit to go on. Some of these ideas are taken from Film Forensics.

So, obvious changes: originally, the humans provided computing power instead of electrical power. This obviously makes more sense, and, as the comments there noted, sets up some more interesting conflicts.

The general sentiment there was against the mysticism that apparently pervaded the series like sweat in a locker room, but I think there could be a place for it. Scads of confusing, possibly contradictory symbolism would be fine, as long as it's confined to the Matrix. There just needs to be a way to establish that the original programmers used... interesting naming practices (

marypoppins = ( superman + starship ) / god

And all.)

I'm still a bit giddy from reading The Man Who Was Thursday, so maybe my ideas about the Matrix being regulated by the musings of a bunch of poets in a coffeehouse shouldn't be taken too seriously, but I actually think they make perfect sense.

Because the Matrix seems to be the only sustainable way for people to live in that environment, it makes more sense for the main character's job to be fixing problems rather than tearing down the system.