Six months after the events of the first
movie, Neo wakes up after a
nightmare where Trinity had been shot by an Agent while falling from a
building and begins to plummet to the ground. Morpheus receives a
message from captain Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) of the Logos
calling an emergency meeting of all Zion's hovercraft ship fleet. She
has successfully recovered the information left by Captain Thaddeus (in
the Animatrix short film "Final Flight of the Osiris,"
recovered in the video game Enter the Matrix): 250,000 Sentinels are
tunneling towards the underground city of Zion and will reach it in 72
hours. Commander Lock, the ranking military
officer of Zion, orders all ships and their crews,
including Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, and new operator Link, to return to
Zion to prepare for the onslaught of the machines. Morpheus asks a ship
to remain behind to contact the Oracle, in defiance of Commander Lock's
orders. The Caduceus receives a message from the
Oracle, and the Nebuchadnezzar, also in defiance of
Lock's order, ventures out to allow Neo to contact her. Meanwhile, one
of the Caduceus crew members, Bane, encounters
Agent Smith, who takes over Bane's body. Bane/Smith then leaves the
Matrix via the nearby hard line.
After returning to Zion, the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar
attend a meeting in Zion's temple where Morpheus announces the news of
the advancing machines to the people, but his positive attitude and
stirring speech gives them courage. As a dance breaks out, Neo has
recurring nightmares about Trinity being shot by an Agent during a
gunfight down the side of a building and falling to her death. Neo
receives a message from the Oracle the next morning and he soon meets
her and her bodyguard Seraph. Seeing that the Oracle is a part of the
system Neo asks how can he trust her if she is just another form of
control. She responds by saying that only he can make the choice if she
is ally or enemy. The Oracle explains that she is an exiled computer
program and instructs Neo to reach the Source, by finding the Keymaker, a prisoner in the
home of the Frenchman program the Merovingian. The Keymaker, as his
name implies, can make keys that can transport anyone to any where in
the world provided there is a door at the other end. As Oracle departs,
Agent Smith appears despite his apparent destruction in the first film,
although technically he is now just "Smith" without the "Agent" prefix.
Missing his earpiece (which he sent to Neo in a package as a sign of
his survival), Smith tells Neo that after being defeated by him he knew
that he was supposed to return to the Source to be deleted but he
refused and now he is no longer bound by rules or a duty to remove
threats from the Matrix. Following that line of reasoning, he states
that he is "apparently free", but then subsequently asserts that
because he no longer has a purpose, he is not actually free. He
demonstrates his ability to clone himself using the people of the
Matrix as hosts (even assimilating the body of an Agent), prompting a
battle between Neo and many clones of Smith. Neo defends himself with
his martial arts proficiencies, but is eventually overwhelmed, covered
by a massive pile of Smith clones. However, he manages to throw them
off and fly away, leaving the Smith clones to disperse.
Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity visit the Merovingian and ask for the
Keymaker, but the Frenchman refuses them. His wife, Persephone, tired
of her husband's attitude and infidelity, turns against him and leads
the trio to the Keymaker, at the cost of a passionate kiss from Neo.
Her desire to have her husband know of her treachery becomes apparent
when she shoots one of his assistants, and then instructs the other to
tell the Merovingian what happened, or meet the same fate as his
comrade. While Neo battles the Merovingian's skilled guards, Morpheus,
Trinity, and the Keymaker escape onto the nearby freeway with the
ghostly Twins, Agents, and the police in pursuit. Morpheus defeats the
Twins by destroying their car, and tells Trinity to escape with the
Keymaker on a motorcycle. Pursued by Agents in a dangerous highway
chase, Trinity gives the Keymaker back to Morpheus, who then saves the
Keymaker from an Agent with help from Niobe. Both Morpheus and the
Keymaker are then retrieved by a flying Neo.
In the real world, the remaining ships at Zion prepare for a battle
with the machines. At a building, the crews of the Nebuchadnezzar,
Vigilant, and Logos
help the Keymaker and Neo reach the source's door. The crew of the
Logos must destroy a nearby power plant in order to prevent a
destructive security system from being triggered by the Keymaker's
keys, and the crew of the Vigilant must destroy the backup power
station. However, the Vigilant's mission goes horribly wrong when a
Sentinel throws a bomb at their ship and all their members, including
the ones plugged into the Matrix, instantly die. Trinity (staying in
the Nebuchadnezzar because of Neo's wishes to prevent his vision of her
death from coming true), upon seeing this turn of events, decides to
destroy the back-up station herself. Although a success, her escape is
inhibited by an Agent and a duel occurs. Meanwhile, back in the
building where Neo, Morpheus, and the Keymaker attempt to reach the
source, the Smiths invade and try to kill Neo, Morpheus, and the
Keymaker. The Keymaker manages to unlock the door to the source but is
shot by the Smiths and dies.
Neo enters the source and meets a bearded man in a suit, the Architect,
revealed as the creator of the Matrix. The Architect informs Neo that
there have been multiple versions of the Matrix, and with it, multiple
versions of the One. The One is a computer anomaly chosen by the Matrix
to be used as a tool of control. Because humanity rejected the
"perfect" Matrix, the world that has come to be accepted is flawed and
remains an unbalanced equation. The One is therefore the sum of the
remainder of that flaw. The prophecy is that the One must reach the
source in order to destroy the Matrix and free humanity. However, the
One's actual purpose is to return to the source, which will reset the
Matrix back to its prime program. Afterwards, he will be asked to
choose 16 females and 7 males to rebuild Zion after the inevitable
final battle, which in turn repopulates the city to provide the next
round of humans for the "rebellion" and the next iteration of the
"Prophecy", a confirmation of Morpheus' statement from the last film
about The One who previously freed himself and others. Failure to do so
will cause the unresolved Matrix error to spiral out of control, and
result in the death of every human attached to the Matrix. Along with
the final battle at Zion, this would mean the extinction of the human
race. Neo retorts that, since the machines need humans for their power,
they will not allow this, but the Architect calmly replies that without
the humans, "there are levels of survival we are prepared to accept."
After conversing, the Architect gives Neo a choice of two exits from
the room - one way will lead to the rebuilding of Zion, the other to
Trinity's rescue, and, through this, the downfall of humanity. Neo
explodes out of the building in an attempt to save Trinity from death
as it was played out in his dreams. Trinity is shot by an Agent as they
fall from a building and is caught by Neo just before she hits the
ground. Refusing to accept her impending death, Neo removes the bullet
lodged in her chest and manages to revive her by starting her heart. In
the Nebuchadnezzar, Neo explains his findings to
the crew, revealing the prophecy of the One is false and that Zion will
be destroyed in twenty-four hours. Sentinels approach and destroy the
ship, leaving Morpheus stunned by the revelations. Neo saves his
friends from being killed by the Sentinels by using a new ability which
causes the machines to instantly shut down, but the exertion causes Neo
to suddenly fall unconscious. The crew is picked up by the Mjolnir (referred
to by the characters as "the Hammer"). The crew of the Mjolnir
explains that they were to lead a pre-emptive attack on the army of
Sentinels advancing on Zion. The strategy was to use the ship's EMPs,
and stay out of each other's range. However, an EMP was detonated by
the Caduceus before the ships could get into
position; multiple ships were left without power, with only a handful
of survivors escaping, the Sentinels having destroyed any ship that
could not get away. Only one survivor was found aboard the Caduceus:
Bane/Smith. The film concludes with Neo lying in a medical room - with
the Smith-possessed Bane lying opposite him.
(Wikipedia)
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