/lit/ - Literature

>>12371702
for lots of reasons. for one thing, he might have realized that he and Neo were far more alike than different. like Frodo and Gollum, or Wukong and Xuanzang, they are two halves of the same coin. Smith wants Out of the Matrix, but there is no Out of the Matrix. he failed to become the kind of bodhisattva he might have been. it is my own feeling that a far better ending for that film would have ended with them smashing the machines and the architect, and proving the Oracle wrong. this is not to say that that would have been the best of all possible endings, but certainly better than a cryptic conversation between the Oracle and Architect, and a bargain made with the machines to repeat a disastrous holy lie through another generation. in the end everybody just winds up with comforting fictions. this is actually the structure of the Matrix itself, just as Zizek says. but it's not good.

Smith wanted Out, but there is no Out. there is only knowledge of what it means to be In, just as Heidegger says: it is not necessary to escape the circle, but to come into it in the right way. the violent struggle between the two of them at the end accomplishes nothing except to guarantee the re-perpetuation of the Matrix itself. but the distinction between what is and is not the Matrix is what leads to all the intrigue.

what causes Smith to actually become aware of his own Smith-ness is a woefully underdeveloped theme of the story. he was the protagonist, and potentially a vastly more interesting character. the Matrix was itself the actual antagonist, but the writers rushed out the later two films too quickly to realize how potentially interesting it all might have been. to say nothing of the fact that a prequel story about how the story of the construction of a Matrix-tier psychic containment shield and much else was missing from the main story. it should have been one of the great sagas of recent film history, with the first film actually being the ending of a proper trilogy.