The Matrix Reanalysed

Adam Roberts' take on The Matrix Reloaded can be found here. It's an interesting read, and not a take I've come across before:

But this, I think, is a deliberate device: by shifting the climax of this movie back towards the narrative midpoint the Wachowski brothers articulate in cinematic terms the experience of existing post-climactically.
[...]
A theological shorthand for this might be to characterise The Matrix as a Jewish and The Matrix Reloaded as a Christian film. For Jews the messiah is yet to come, and can be looked forward to as the moment when all injustice, misery and dissatisfaction will be overcome. Christianity is based on a radical revision of this powerful human yearning - so radical and unsettling, in fact, that it may be the case that many Christians prefer not to think it through: what if the messiah comes and nothing much changes as a result? Judaism, theologically, operates in the space of moving-towards-climax; Christianity operates necessarily in the space of post-climax, which is to say, of anticlimax. The common Christian story of the second coming of Christ is a desperate attempt to fill the psychic gap left by this radically anticlimactic theology, by co-opting Jewish theology to its own ends: but it is deeply flawed. If the messiah comes more than once, why only twice? Why not a hundred, a million, or an infinite number of times? And if that is the case, then doesn't it fatally dilute the actual appearance and sacrifice of Christ?

The Horror

( spoilers for the end of Buffy S7 )