The absurdity that the machines in The Matrix were harvesting human bodies for power. An interesting theory is that the machines were using human brains as a cluster of computing power. Cool article.
Actually I don’t think this was even a theory. This was the original intent but the studio thought it was too complex for the GA to understand.
It was spelled out more clearly in the comics. They even trained human minds to do tasks that the machines could not/did not want to do.
The Animatrix shows that the robots keep humans alive likely because they like us, and feel bad about what happened. They want us to keep living, as their creators and “parents”, but understand that if we were free to be all awake and understand reality we’d try to destroy the world again.
Humans are terrible batteries/fuel cells. And Orpheus said the machines had fusion power. It makes far more sense that the machines were using humans for computing, not basic metabolism. It’s been mentioned that this was the Wachowskis’ original intention but the suits made them dumb it down for audiences to understand but I haven’t found any direct quotes about that.
