Fate and Films

Fate in the movies. Just a few thoughts off the screen to share. No commentary from the audience here. (Of course, your comments are always welcome below.)

Morpheus: Do you believe in fate, Neo?
Neo: No.
Morpheus: Why not?
Neo: Because I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life.
Morpheus: I know exactly what you mean. Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Neo: The Matrix?
Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch—a prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides those of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the ring, in which case you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.
Galadriel: This task was appointed to you, and if you do not find a way no one will.
Frodo: Then I know what I must do. It's just I'm afraid to do it.
Galadriel: Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.

Professor Dumbledore: I see that you like so many before have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised. I trust, by now, you realize what it does. Let me give you a clue: the happiest man on earth would look into the mirror and see only himself, exactly as he is.
Harry Potter: So, then, it show us what we want, whatever we want.
Professor Dumbledore: Yes, and no. It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest and most desperate desires of our hearts. This mirror gives us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away in front of it.

Oracle: We're all here to do what we're all here to do.
Neo: Are there other programs like you?
Oracle: No, not like me, but… Look, see those birds. At some point a program was written to govern them. A program was written to watch over the trees and the wind, sunrise and sunset; there are programs running all over the place. The ones doing their job — doing what they were meant to do — are invisible. You'd never even know they were here. But the other ones, well, you hear about them all the time.
Neo: I've never heard of them.
Orcale: Of course you have. Every time you've heard someone say they saw a ghost or an angel. Every story you've ever heard about vampires, werewolves, or aliens, is the system assimilating some program that's doing something they're not supposed to be doing.
Neo: Programs hacking programs. Why?
Oracle: Well, there are reasons. Usually a program chooses exile when it faces deletion.
Neo: And why would a program be deleted?
Oracle: Maybe it breaks down. Maybe a better program is created to replace it. It happens all the time. And when it does, a program can either choose to hide here or return to the source.

The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy
Harry Potter Years 1-6
Matrix-Trilogy