Aeris is the one.
Shinobi wins. 
No! I don’t believe it!
<i>Jet Li <b>IS</b> The One</i>
God is the One.
no contest.
BEGIN: MATRIX FANATIC MODE
Neo is not the One until after Smith kills him and Trinity brings him back. Before that point, he only had the potential to be the One. If you’d paid attention during the scene where he’s first brought to the Oracle, he was shown other Potentials - that is, potential Ones. Neo stood out from them not only because he was an adult, but because he couldn’t do any neat tricks like telekinesis, and had to be shown how to bend spoons by the Spoon Boy.
END: MATRIX FANATIC MODE
THIS is ONE… of the biggest idiot conventions I’ve ever been a part of.
Matrix sucks.
Neo was a machine. He was part of the system organized by the machines and what made him “the one” and how he was programed to be the one, to be a machine in human flesh, was imprinted onto Smith and that made Smith become what he was and gave him those abilities.
Although Neo as the One, wasn’t the One until he realized he was and didn’t think about being and not being the one. Its like being in love. Nonetheless, this doesn’t invalidate what it is that you said about the next life, with him "resurecting’’ after Smith killed him. However, had he done so, there still would’ve been another him to come up later as it was a part of the system for the One to appear periodically and that would also have been another life. Either way works.
There shouldn’t be much debate on this topic. The Wachowski Brothers, having the whole “put religion into our movie because it’s cool and everyone will think it’s deep” mentality, modeled Neo after Jesus. Thus, in the same way that Jesus had to die to become our savior, Neo had to die to become the Matrix’s “savior.”
The Wachowski brothers simply aren’t creative enough for there to be any sort of plot twist or underlying meaning behind it other than that.
Why did my thread get moved. 
It’s because you’re Irish
This is probably the most fragile argument I’ve seen in my life that actually takes itself seriously. Your premise isn’t even relevant to your conclusion because you’re equivocating the word “potential.” You’re using it as having one meaning when it’s used twice differently.
When the Oracle is searching for potential Ones, she’s not searching for people who could potentially BECOME the One. She’s searching for people who potentially already are, that’s why her reception room was filled with people who posessed special abilities.
Neo also had special abilities far greater than any of them. Neo could see flaws and glitches in the Matrix through intuition alone whereas the other potentials could only float objects or bend spoons, and only because they were taught. That’s why Neo was chosen by Morpheus in the first place.
There shouldn’t be much debate on this topic. The Wachowski Brothers, having the whole “put religion into our movie because it’s cool and everyone will think it’s deep” mentality, modeled Neo after Jesus. Thus, in the same way that Jesus had to die to become our savior, Neo had to die to become the Matrix’s “savior.”
The Wachowski brothers simply aren’t creative enough for there to be any sort of plot twist or underlying meaning behind it other than that.
Ad hominem.
Neo was a machine. He was part of the system organized by the machines and what made him “the one” and how <u>he was programed to be the one</u>, to be a machine in human flesh, was imprinted onto Smith and that made Smith become what he was and gave him those abilities.
wasn’t the One until he realized he was and didn’t think about being and not being the one.
Buh? That doesn’t make sense. If he was programmed to be the One then his realization is inconsequential. I agree that he was “programmed to be the One,” so to speak, but I disagree that he wasn’t the One until he realized it.
And in case people don’t know WTF “ad hominem” means, it means “attacking” the person making the claim without actually examining the claim.