The Machines: How They Won and What They Want

The first film presents the Machines as a faceless enemy. The Animatrix and the sequels add a history, and it's less comfortable than that. They were built by people, treated badly, and won. Everything in the Matrix is their answer to the problem of what to do next. (The Animatrix)

The Second Renaissance#

The two Second Renaissance shorts present the war as a historical record kept by the Machines themselves. Robots did humanity's labour until B1-66ER killed its owner rather than be scrapped. The trial ended in its destruction, and riots followed against all machines. Survivors went to their own city, Zero One, and built an economy that overtook human nations. Their approach to the United Nations was refused. (The Animatrix)

War followed, and the Machines won battle after battle. Humanity's last great move was to darken the sky and cut off the sun. The Machines switched to another source. The humans who were captured were studied, and the final scenes show the system of pods taking shape. (The Animatrix)

Why people#

As Morpheus tells it, human bodies produce heat and electricity, and combined with a form of fusion that gave the Machines all the energy they needed. The fields of pods are the result. The Matrix exists because a mind has to be kept occupied for that to work. It's set near the end of the twentieth century, which Agent Smith says was the peak of human civilisation, at least from the Machines' point of view. (The Matrix)

Inside the system#

The Machines have more than one kind of mind. Sentinels hunt in the real world. Inside the Matrix there are Agents, the Architect, who designed it, and the Oracle, who studies the human psyche and whose ideas led to the first stable version. The Architect says the first Matrix was a perfect world that humans rejected. There are also exiles, programs like the Merovingian who have chosen not to be deleted. (The Matrix Reloaded)

Revolutions even gives us a family of programs with a daughter called Sati, which complicates the idea that they can't feel. (The Matrix Revolutions)

Peace and after#

The Machine leadership accepts Neo's deal in Revolutions because Agent Smith is a threat to them too. For the first time the two sides need each other. (The Matrix Revolutions)

By The Matrix Resurrections things have changed again. A civil war among the Machines has happened, some have sided with humanity and live in the human city of Io, and energy has become a serious problem for the ones still running the pods. (The Matrix Resurrections)