Behind the Scenes Tank's actor, Marcus Chong, reportedly demanded to be paid more for appearing in the sequels; a breakdown in talks between him and the Wachowskis ensued, leading Tank to be written out and replaced by Link.
Tank's absence in The Matrix sequels was due to a heated conflict between actor Marcus Chong and the producers. Chong made shocking allegations against his former colleagues, leading to legal battles and career downfall.
They countered that the actor made repeated threatening phone calls to Warner Bros and the Wachowskis after a breakdown in talks over his salary (he was offered $400k and he wanted $1m for the films). Thus, his character was written out of the series.
The in-universe explanation for the change in the Oracle's appearance between The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Reloaded was that her outer shell was destroyed by a villainous program called the Merovingian.
Because the Wachowskis knew they wanted The Matrix to be a trilogy, they filmed the next two installments side by side and then released them within a few months of each other. Reloaded was released in May 2003 while Revolutions came out in November 2003. Surprisingly, The Matrix phenomenon did not end there.
The Real Reason Tank's Character Was Killed Off In The Matrix
Why did Matrix 4 fail?
The absence of Lawrence Fishburne as Morpheus in The Matrix 4 frustrated fans who adored his portrayal of the character in the previous films. The Matrix Resurrections had lower stakes and a more somber tone compared to the original trilogy, which may have turned audiences off from the movie.
Screenwriter John August has diagnosed that the problem with the Matrix sequels was that they were “playing obscurity for depth”, i.e. obfuscating the internal logic of the characters' choices in order to make the audience fearful of dismissing it, just in case they were missing something that they just didn't get.
While Neo is successful in reaching the Source, he meets with the Architect, who tells him that The Oracle, a sentient program designed to understand human psychology, is the Matrix's "mother", for lack of a better term.
Hence, when she apologizes to Neo, saying that he, in fact, is not the One, she is subtly planting the idea in his mind that to assume the mantle of the One, one needs to earn it through sacrifice, which is ultimately what she nudges Neo towards when she says that he needs to either save himself or Morpheus from ...
The Prophecy was a prediction made by the Oracle and, as told to Neo by Morpheus, stating the coming of The One and that it will herald the destruction of the Matrix and the freedom of humanity from their oppression by the Machines. Once The One enters the Source, he will have the power to destroy the Matrix.
In the Matrix, Cypher can have anything he wants — juicy steak, expensive wine, a rare cigar. Even though it's not real, the Matrix offers creature comforts and peace of mind. As Cypher tells Agent Smith, "Ignorance is bliss." Cypher's desire for a rich life is one of the major factors in his betrayal of Morpheus.
Tank was the operator of the Nebuchadnezzar. He was born naturally in Zion, brother to Dozer and Zee, and died young, sometime between his final appearance in The Matrix and the start of The Matrix Reloaded, of unspecified causes. He is succeeded in his shipboard duties by Link.
It is presumed that every major city on Earth was destroyed by conventional or nuclear bombardment or otherwise rendered virtually uninhabitable over the course of the Machine War. The only place where humans can live for more than a few generations is Zion, located close to the core which provides warmth and power.
The idea is that the world is “sick,” and the filmmakers communicated that in a visual way. The colors can also be interpreted as a reference to older computer monitors that displayed monotone green text. The monotone color grade may reference the monotony of life in a prison.
In order to prevent the entire system from crashing, the machines must periodically destroy Zion and "The One" must reboot the Matrix and choose a group of people to rebuild the city. Neo discovers that this cycle has occurred five times in the past and is about to complete its sixth repetition.
However, neither Neo nor Morpheus knew the whole truth – that The One was part of an endless loop set in motion by the machines themselves. It was thanks to this cycle that Neo became the one, having be predestined to do so.
It's important to understand that even though The Oracle helps, understands and perhaps even empathizes with humanity, she isn't entirely their ally, since she too is a program complicit in the cycle of destruction and rebirth.
Near the end of the first film, after he is killed by Agent Smith inside the Matrix, she speaks to his interfaced physical body and reveals that the Oracle told her that she would fall in love with The One, a prophesied individual capable of manipulating the Matrix to an unprecedented degree.
Smith soon assimilates the Oracle, gaining her power of foresight, and later manifests reality-bending powers equivalent to Neo's, such as the ability to fly. Meanwhile, in the real world, Bane (now under Smith's control) stows away on a ship being used by Neo and Trinity and tries to kill them both.
Traditionally, the oracle first belonged to Mother Earth (Gaea) but later was either given to or stolen by Apollo. At Delphi the medium was a woman over the age of 50, known as the Pythia, who lived apart from her husband and dressed in a maiden's clothes.
The Equation by the Architect, to balance itself out and the new Neo, creates Agent Smith, which is why Smith calls The Oracle "Mom". She didn't know exactly how it would all go down but she believed it would ... and it did.
The Matrix Revolutions shifted the bulk of the focus from the Matrix to the real world, and the conflict taking place in Zion. This was a mistake that robbed the narrative of its most ingenious plot device. When the action finally does revert back to the Matrix, the magic is already gone.
'The Matrix Revolutions' is widely considered to be a weak conclusion to the 'Matrix' franchise. Many criticized the film for feeling like a drawn-out final battle that didn't add anything new to the story.
Following the release of Resurrections, producer James McTeigue said that there were no plans for further Matrix films, though he believed that the film's open ending meant that could change in the future.
