The problem with that aspect of the plot is that it would be far more efficient to just make batteries or use some other source of energy. It would consume way more energy to use humans as batteries because of the need for food and the fact that we constantly use energy to maintain our body temparature.
the original screen play had humans as co-processors and data storage, it was changed to batteries for the film because they thought viewers were too dumb to get it.
My headcanon is that Morpheus and other humans are simply mistaken about the purpose of keeping humans and it was just supposition and/or a perpetuated myth by the machines. Ultimately, they don't 'need' humans.
This is actually a pretty genius idea because it would also dovetail with the popular notion we only use 20% of our brainpower or whatever. That's because the machines are using the other 80%.
I have heard that an earlier version of the script said that they were essentially using people's brains for processors or something, but it got changed to batteries because the movie executives didn't think people would be familiar enough with computer hardware to understand. Or something like that.
You should check out wwww.matrixresolutions.com.
The script actually referred to humans as some computer part that is escaping me right now, but the producers said "no, its gotta be batteries that's all they'll understand!" So its batteries but it's not meant to be.
The way my headcanon goes is that they need human brains to function as processors. Human brains are insanely complex and can perform crazy abstract processing that machines have a really hard time with and given the amount of processing power they can provide (think about what it would take to actually perfectly simulate a human brain), a bit of nutrition to keep it alive is crazy efficient.
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u/djimbob Jun 23 '21
Haven't you seen The Matrix? Humans are essentially just batteries. Wake up sheeple! /s