»What is Smith's Ph***ing problem?«

I've come across a few good essays while reading some of the posts here. They've pretty much helped me see what I think the W bros. were trying to tell us through alot of their characters. The one I least understand is Smith. I know he's Neo's opposite, I know he represents evil and sin and mankind's baser traits such as greed and powerlust. What I can't understand is why he's the way he is in the first place. In M1, it was Smith that met with Cypher, I don't remember seeing other agents there. It was Smith that interrogated both Neo and Morpheus(where we hear his famous revelation, machines aren't supposed to have revelations and then be so proud of them). After Morpheus' escape, when Johnson(? Stark from Farscape) told him the trace was complete, Smith wasn't satisfied with that. You'd think a machine would accept the escape and settle for destroying the ship and ,therefore, the targets. Not Smith, he had to destroy this Mr. Anderson. It was Smith in the subsequent chase after the fight that knew instinctively where Neo was going. Why weren't all 3 agents waiting in the room to gun down Neo? It's the same room Trinity was in at the beginning of the film, you'd think that would be stored in their databanks. I'd mention the hallway leading to the source but the examples above all occured before Neo jumped into Smith. There was no....human residue on Smith when he made the "decisions" he made. So what made Smith different from the other agents in the first place?

You are very narrow minded aren't you...
Not everything is black and white...

Actually, the better question is: Why does it bother you that someone can't stand Mr. Aderson and choses to oppose him?

Maybe the answer to your question is in you and not in the movie...

omega wrote:

You are very narrow minded aren't you... Not everything is black and white... Actually, the better question is: Why does it bother you that someone can't stand Mr. Aderson and choses to oppose him?

Jaysus - s/he asked a question. At least try and answer rather than dismissing him/her.

Agent Smith does not appear to be simply an Agent - that much is clear from, as you rightly said, his revelation, his obsession with destroying Mr Anderson, etc.

Smith could be the 'head' Agent - explaining why only he meets Cypher. However, this has no evidence.

He might also be a part of the Equation - the negative, the opposite, which will make it all balance out. If you think of it mathematically, this makes more sense.

The Architect is trying to irriadicate the One phenomenon (do doo dododo...) , therefore he will not simply be trying the same equation with each Matrix. Maybe this time he tried adding an extra negative, to see if it would balance out?

Also it's an important plot point... >)

Quote:

You are very narrow minded aren't you... Not everything is black and white...

Omega you are the narrowminded fuck running around saying that everyone else is narrowminded. shut the fuck up and dont try to sound all smart by saying "nothing is black and white" you just sounds retarded. The poor person asked a question and your like...oh your narrowminded and im better than you cause im not so go away....you are the biggest walking oxymoron on the planet. listen carefully....SHUT THE FUCK UP and learn to see hey..it was a question that someone took the time to ask and put his thoughts down. you brought the person down by saying they are narrowminded. this is a forum where the ideas freely flow no matter what they are but to say someone is narrowminded? you got to be some sort of retard. This person brought up some interesting points...why was smith programed differently then the others...was he programed specifiacally to be oppisit of neo because if the arch knew about neo his whole life then why wouldnt he create a more fre thinking program but it comes down to the fact thats its AI and can think for itself....oh and fuck you omega

In my humble opinion,
Smith is/are the sum of all those voices in your head which say:
"I must look like everybody else. I must not behave weird. I must obey the laws, stay in line, do not upset the others, let the show go on..."

So, for instance in the final scenes, we see lots of Smiths. But every one of those Smiths has inside a different person, they each swallowed/took over a different person and now look and act the same, because the obedience took over those poor weak individuals.
So, Smith and Neo are not opposite in the way that "+" and "-" are opposite, they are in each of us, and manifest themselves in different degrees.
Neo is the unique individual. Everybody is different, there was never anybody like you or me and it will never be.
But we must work together, so part of the common ground of making it work is the "Smith-s".

Agent,
I am so happy you are showing your real asshole self...
It is nice to know for everyone what kind of rude fuck you really are...

In the first movie he tells morpheus about his views on this world.
He hates the matrix and the zion and he obviously doesn't want to be here any longer.
He cares more about morpheus than Neo... Morpheus has computer codes to zion.... This is what SMith needs... Neo is simply standing in his way...

But when they merge and copy into each other things change slightly... Agent becomes free of the system and he can just do whatever to end the matrix... and again Neo is the only one standing in his way...

Agent Zero wrote:

Omega you are the narrowminded fuck running around saying that everyone else is narrowminded.

omega wrote:

Agent, I am so happy you are showing your real asshole self... It is nice to know for everyone what kind of rude fuck you really are...

Oh come off it, both of you. Although Zero kind of has a point - when Omega said Prometheus was narrow-minded, it backfired, because Omega's failure to explore the issue simply labelled him as narrow-minded.
Just so you know where you went wrong.

Noname - intesesting theory. I've not looked at it like that before...

Quote:

Noname - intesesting theory. I've not looked at it like that before...

Thanks.
Another point is that Smith is not a "him". He is an "it".
The really tricky part of the Matrix movies, in my opinion, is that human actors are playing (or "impersonating") software.
There are two kinds of scenes in the movies: ones which take "place" in the Matrix, and ones which take place in the real (or "real") world. It is really hard to switch between contexts and keep track of what is going on. In the real scenes, the people you see are people like you and me. Inside the Matrix, the people you see may be animated by real people, or they may have "behind" software.

Smith is a piece of software.
Kind of a virus, maybe more complex than one of our operating systems.
In the beginning, he/it was Ok, doing his job in keeping the Matrix from falling apart. Sorry. "Its" job.

And I should correct myself

Quote:

But we must work together

We must compete "toghether".
Smith was an agent in a competitive Matrix.
An expert system on competitivity gone out of control.

one thing i need some help with. the machines are A.I. and they wanted equality with their human creators (?) if this is a fact, then shouldn't both man and machine cherish their respective life as it were? as smith said in m1, "it's our time.", but in m3 he says "the purpose of life is to die..." this dichotomy has me puzzled. i will gain more clarity on my own theories when i can get past this paradox, if it is one. please have patience with me for i have not had exposure to any of the animatrix or other peripheral matrix material other than the trilogy. if i missed something, please be kind enough to point it out. thankx

NoName wrote:

Smith is a piece of software. Kind of a virus, maybe more complex than one of our operating systems. In the beginning, he/it was Ok, doing his job in keeping the Matrix from falling apart. Sorry. "Its" job. And I should correct myself Quote: But we must work together We must compete "toghether". Smith was an agent in a competitive Matrix. An expert system on competitivity gone out of control.

No, he wasn't ok in the beginning. When he catches Morpheus he unpluggs himself from the earpiece and shares his thoughts with us about this world... He hates this place more than anyone...
I know a lot of people want to ignore this... But that's what makes smith so interesting... He was full of hate for the matrix even before he met Neo..

For him Neo is nothing but an obstacle...

so after neo "defeated him" in m1, would he not have gotten what he wanted, out of the matrix by returning to the source? hmmm. caught myself there. he would have to be deleted then. awe crap! now i'm really screwed up

He killed Neo all right... But did neo actually kill him? I don't think so, they just swapped code...
Maybe it is not possible to go back to being an agent after you become so human...

omega wrote:

No, he wasn't ok in the beginning. When he catches Morpheus he unpluggs himself from the earpiece and shares his thoughts with us about this world... He hates this place more than anyone...

Wow! Colors! They work!

omega wrote:

No, he wasn't ok in the beginning.

What I meant is that Smith was ok from the point of view of a stable Matrix. Smith was not a threat for the machines. Only for humans who stepped out of line.

"Ok" is relative. What is "Ok" with me can be "not Ok" with somebody else.

omega wrote:

When he catches Morpheus he unpluggs himself from the earpiece and shares his thoughts with us about this world...

Ok. So, software can have thoughts.

omega wrote:

He hates this place more than anyone...

Ok. So, software can hate.

Software or not - it is irrelevant...

In the first movie - he hates the system and the only way he sees for his to escape the system is to destroy Zion... He says is: "as soon as Zion is destroyed, there is no need for me to be here". He can't fight the matrix itself, because he is bound by its rules and limitations.

When Neo and him swap code, neo becomes part program and Smith becomes part human and now Smith can try to destroy the matrix because he is unplugged...


By the way, neo is part software too....

omega wrote:

Software or not - it is irrelevant...

Hate or not - it is irrelevant...

It's not the fact that he's out to kill Neo that bothers me, truth be known Smith is my favorite character in the films, I'm asking why is he different from the other agents(and I'm talking about M1 before Neo jumps into him)? A machine isn't supposed to feel, just do it's job yet Smith seems to be filled with hate from the start. I know the machines are A.I. they comprehend emotions but do they really feel them? And if they do, why is it that Smith is the only one to show it, Brown and Johnson are cold as ice. I realize that Smith is Neo and Neo is Smith and the Super Burly was Neo's fight against his baser side, his superficiality, in order to acheive enlightenment. My question is how does Smith have emotion before Neo imparted some portion of humanity upon him. What made him different than the other agents in the first place? What's his major malfunction?
I'd be inclined to say Comet may be onto something with the Architect hypothesis, but these things happened before the anomoly showed itself, before Neo began to believe. Smith's actions seemed to be those of human reasoning. Machines are analytical. That's why it's artificial intelligence, not artificial emotion yet Smith felt imprisoned by the Matrix, he felt he was infected by the "smell" of humanity, Smith wanted out. What made him different? What gave him emotion?

Prometheus wrote:

What gave him emotion?

Body.

In humans, the emotions are not generated in the brain.
I mean, they are triggered by the brain, but their source is in the organs of the body.
If there is no body, there are no emotions.

Technically, Smith could have an artificial body created for the only purpose of sustaining, let's say, hate, no need for human shape or even bones or muscles. It could be created, maintained and kept somwhere by the machines, and connected to the virtual human face of Smith in the Matrix, so that it can power it with hate.
And if other emotions are needed, other such emotion generators could be used at the same time.

Lets just say he is machine and trying to explain something to Neo I bet he can only use human language to explain it.
Cos I think hitting without a reason wouldn't make much sense.

Smith: "Am here to take you out;"
Neo: "Why dude?"
(then Kaboooom)

prometheus has asked the final question i cant get past either. all i can see is brown and johnson looking at smith and saying "what is he doing?" and "he doesn't know". smith looks suprised when they find him unplugged and talking to morph. but to be fair, smith told them to leave and they did which defines smith as something higher than the the other agents. but prometheus is right. there is no sufficient explanation for smiths extraordinary complexety that makes him ironicly more human than his contemporaries. i too enjoy smith as a character, but the more you delve into the character, the more discontinuity you will find.

The answer to Smith's behavior before Neo jumped into him is the problem of choice. This is what the architect later explains. For the Matrix to run smoothly the humans plugged into the matrix must be given choice, or the illusion of choice, depending on which side of the philisophical coin you are looking at (determinism vs. free choice); and this includes all the software as well. In order to adapt to problems the human outlaws (those who have freed their minds and are hacking back in) running around the matrix create the programs must be free from any set forms of predetermined paths. Because nobody can see past a choice they don't understand, they can only react to it.

Thus all agents are given "free choice," which gives them human qualities. Smith now is able to make his own choices independant of any other agent. He chooses to hate the matrix and his job. Smith is not only a program, but a program with A.I. A.I. want to be human, thus they created a symbiotic relationship with the humans. It has been discussed elsewhere that the machines could have found better and easier ways to create energy, but in reality, they need humans to progress. There might be some A.I. that want to eradicate all human life, but others don't see it that way.

So, Smith can think independantly and make choices. Although he is not human, he has been around humans enough to understand their emotion and the only emotion he comes into frequent contact with is anger, hate, rebellion; the very emotions that he starts to pick up before Neo jumps into him. Smith is the disgruntled employee that wishes to only do the task to leave the office, while the other agents are the employees that like what they do and take satisfaction in their job. Killing the rebels is what they do. They enjoy it. Smith soons realizes this is not what he wants. (Its like he wants to kick back and live on welfare the rest of his life; he seems to have lost all desire to work.

And Prometheus, Smith shows feelings because he suddenly chooses to. Like I said, he starts to feel only what he has been exposed to. Does he really feel it? I don't know, but he understands it and expresses it. The other agents just don't care (for lack of better term). Why do some people cry in a movie and others don't? Is the one that cries any more human than the one who doesn't? No. Certain experiences causes the emotion. Cause and effect. Why do you cry? Why don't you cry? Cause and effect. Smith is effected by his surroundings so he chooses to react to it. Smith simply upgrades himself to deal with a situation that never seems to end. The upgraded agents in M2 show more human emotions than M1. Were they upgraded by the source or did they upgrade themselves to deal with Neo?

Something to think about.

Prometheus wrote:

...what I think the W bros. were trying to tell us...

How do you know they tried to tell us something?
Guess they did their best to do a great movie, but this does not mean that they tried to tell us something.

omega wrote:

NoName wrote: We must compete "toghether".

It was not a mistake.
Can we compete alone?