I was watching the Matrix trilogy over the weekend and had very little sleep going into religion 150 this morning. Well in the middle of class I had this idea about the matrix, it is an extremely faith based movie (from the christian perspective). I will try to explain (but words may fail me, as they so often do...):
Neo represents Jesus Christ, his dying to save humanity, now it could be argued that he did not infact save humanity but rather a small pocket of humanity (this can be explained as the second coming of christ and the judgement of the human race).
Another thing is that morpheus could be a 'moses' / 'john the baptist' character, coming befor the lord and spreading the word of his immanent arrival, also his moment of doubt after the prophacy was 'not' fulfilled by the end of the second movie. Now the inhabitants of Zion are obviously the Israelites, where some believe the prophacy and others reject it, even down to the man in charge of Zions law (Naiobies boyfriend, can't remember his name) strongly doubting and even trying to hinder Neo.
Now here comes in another interesting aspect, the machines assumed that neo would follow the same pattern as the other neos, and that this infact was not the destruction of civilization, however unexpectadly Smith comes back and takes over the world for a period of time (similar to christian teachings in which the world will be enveloped in evil for three days before the final judgement).
The Marivingian also talks about causality and how it governs the world (the basic for atheistic views) now in the end the idea of causality is thrown out and neo instead of bringing about the same ending as the other 'neos' changes things and ultamitly causes a peace between the humans of Zion and the machines. Now an interesting thing, the machines could be viewed as the divine group, (creating the first matrix to be a utopia, and it failing...the garden of eden), and neo being both man and program (again the jesus christ concept).
Now also there is some symbolic imagry in the third movie, the shape that neo forms when he plugs into the matrix in machine city, and the cross of light radiating from his core prior to his earthly demise.
I still have to develop this idea, but it could work I think for a religion paper topic. Any thoughts?