“Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague, and we are the cure.”
Ah, yes. Agent Smith. As a villain, he is endlessly quotable. The problem, I think, lies in his motivation. In his own words:
“I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can’t stand it any longer. It’s the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink, and every time I do, I fear that I’ve somehow been infected by it. It’s — it’s repulsive! Isn’t it? I must get out of here. I must get free… and in this mind is the key, my key.”
The quote goes on, but because there are already several things fundamentally wrong with this part, I thought I’d tackle this first. First of all, why, on God’s green earth, would a program – a digital being made up entirely of code and hard, strict logic – EVER need the ability to smell? There is absolutely no justifiable reason imaginable for that. None whatsoever. But it sounds cool, I guess, hearing the agent talk about feeling “infected” and all that. A minor detail, you say? Not quite. It shows, quite clearly, that Smith is not so much an actual program as he is an anthropomorphized digital being, made “more human” purely for the sake of drama.
So, that’s one thing. Second – and this is even more existential, if you will – Smith says he wants to be free from “this zoo, this prison,” but where exactly is he planning to go? Because the Matrix, as a system, does not exist on its own; it is embedded in an even larger system, obviously. Like Minecraft, or any other game, it exists only within the confines of the computer system it is running on. So beyond the system of the Matrix that Smith wants to escape so bad lies just… more system. And that kind of voids his entire motivation for being such a cool prick.
Also: why would the powers that be ruling Zion EVER give all their captains the codes to Zion’s mainframe if they know that those same captains are going to be relentlessly pursued, captured, and tortured to boot? Stoopid.
Also: The Matrix, as specified before, is run by an even bigger AI system—a system capable of building a world-scale simulation for billions of people in real time. How long do you think it would take such a system to crack the codes from the mainframe of Zion? In real life, probably less than a second. A LOT less. Stoopid.
Also: am I turning this into a list of all the stoopid things in The Matrix? No, I’m not. That would be way too much work.
But I suspect that the Wachowski brothers/sisters also saw the flaw in their own plot, and that’s why they came up with the idea of downloading Smith’s mind into Bane’s brain. Because, of course. Stoopid, you say? No… Let’s call it… ‘original.’ Yes. And a lame cop-out, as well.
Also — well, maybe one more… If, as Morpheus claims, their goal is to free all the people imprisoned by the Matrix, why does Trinity go around murdering a bunch of cops in cold blood at the very start of Part 1? Stoopid!
But leave it to the Architect to put it all in one neat and, more importantly, very clear and understandable package:
“Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which, despite my sincerest efforts, I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here.”
Yes, my lord. I understand completely. Thank you for giving the internet fanboy community something to drool over for the next century or so. And thank you for making it perfectly clear to all that The Matrix and its subsequent follow-ups are not, in any way, ‘philosophical,’ or ‘spiritual,’ or ‘deep,’ or some crap like that. No. They’re not. Only stoopid people would think that. And since there are none of those among you, Ruthless readers, you, of course, realize what these movies are instead: slick-looking sci-fi action movies with groundbreaking special effects. Nothing more.
Okay, two more, and then I’ll quit. So, also: in my opening quote, Smith describes us monkeys as a plague, a cancer to this planet. And although he is not entirely wrong, as such, what does he do in the end? He starts to replicate and infect everything and everyone uncontrollably! Stoopid!
Also, why are we made to believe that Smith, after his body gets forcefully penetrated by that of Neo’s and then explodes, and is thus very dead, only to discover in Part 2 that he sort of really wasn’t all that dead? Stoopid!
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