Are the robots we create alive?

I watched The Matrix last night.

The premise is absolutely ridiculous, but the action scenes are okay.

lol.

I didn't like it when it first came out. I thought it was just a flashy rehash/mangling of a lot of cool sci-fi concepts from William Gibson and others, and the "battery" premise was a complete turn-off for me. But I dug the sequels, and eventually softened my criticism of the first one and now I really dig all of them.

Yeah, why humans and not electric eels? And electric eels wouldn't require a ton of processing power to provide a simulation environment...

I found Dark City much more gripping, and creepy in the 'what if it's actually happening?' kind of way.

Why electric eels and not specially designed bacteria? Or, even better, direct harvesting of geothermal energy? Or, just leave the "burned" Earth and get solar power straight from the source?