I convinced my teenage daughter to watch The Matrix with me yesterday (she’d never seen it) and at 1:17 (Oracle scene) I noticed Delay, Choice, and Preconception very evident in the Oracle’s lines. Then I realized Openness happens just before that, while Neo’s waiting to see her.
I figured this was IC Throughline since Morpheus brought Neo to her. Plus the whole thing with the Oracle was that she, as Morpheus later said, “told you exactly what you needed to hear” (i.e. to Change his Resolve in just the right way to become The One). And definitely Signpost 3, 1:17 out of 2:10.
Anyway, this morning I plugged the Matrix storyform into Dramatica and generated the PSR – sure enough we have:
THE IMPACT CHARACTER THROUGHLINE
…
Act three focuses on “basic drives and desires” (Innermost Desires) and is explored in terms of Openness, Delay, Choice, and Preconception.
Sweet! And they’re even pretty much in the right order…
###Openness
Waiting to see the Oracle, Neo talks to “Spoon Boy”:
Spoon Boy : Do not try and bend the spoon…that’s impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth…
Neo : What truth?
Spoon Boy : There is no spoon.
Neo : There is no spoon?
Spoon Boy : Then you will see, it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.
###Delay
When he enters the Oracle’s kitchen, she’s waiting for her cookies to be ready. (In fact she spends nearly the whole scene waiting for them. Obvious analogy to “baking” Neo here.)
Oracle : Almost done! Smell good, don’t they?
A bit later, she says:
Oracle : Sorry, kid. You got the gift, but it looks like you’re waiting for something…
Neo : What?
Oracle : Your next life maybe, who knows? That’s the way these things go.
###Preconception
Morpheus’s unwillingness to reevaluate that Neo is The One is obvious here:
Oracle : Morpheus believes in you, Neo. And no one, not even you, not even me, can convince him otherwise. He believes it so blindly, that he’s going to sacrifice his life, to save yours.
###Choice
And immediately after the above line we have:
Neo (astounded) : What?
Oracle : You’re going to have to make a choice. In one hand, you’ll have Morpheus’ life…and in the other hand, you’ll have your own. One of you is going to die…which one…will be up to you…
Note: Preconception and Choice appear flipped from the PSR order (which is okay; @chuntley has said PSR order doesn’t matter much). However, just before the Preconception quote the Oracle does ask Neo “are you sure you want to hear this?” which in a very subtle way might be bringing Choice into it first…
(I must be really sensitive to this quad. A while ago I found a similar scene in Collateral with that quad that also matched the PSR perfectly. Funny enough it was also under IC Signpost 3.)
