Smith technically saves Neo, Morpheus, and the Keymaker by ambushing them in the portal. The delay inadvertently provides Trinity enough time to disable the explosives the building is rigged with, allowing the heroes except for the Keymaker to reach the source.
I figured out that Neo really was The One after watching Reloaded several times. He's the real One - the person who will save humanity from the Matrix - because he's hard-wired to make a different choice than all the others. Previously, none of the Ones had been in love, so they were willing to follow the Architect's plan. The Architect tried to tell Neo that by defying him to save Trinity, Neo doomed all of humanity. However, Neo had to make the choice to return to the Matrix in order to break the pattern, and therefore had to love Trinity. This is why the Oracle made sure Trinity knew she would love The One, because otherwise, there was a chance that Neo would never break the pattern.
One of the things I loved most about the entire Matrix trilogy was the incredible special effects. Which is why I was so disappointed with the "Burly Brawl" scene in Reloaded. There was a very clear demarcation when the scene switched from being live action to become all CGI (right when Neo picks up the metal post and starts hitting the multitude of Smith clones with it). The faces suddenly become less lifelike, the clothing doesn't look quite real, etc. I later realized, though, that it made perfect sense in context. Everything was CGI, since the entire scene takes place within the Matrix. -Godzillatemple
It goes even deeper than that. Notice how in all the Bullet Time sequences in the film, the background becomes VERY simplified? No more loose debris, the slides on the guns don't go like they should, and all the little details get washed out. Ever played a large multiplayer game on a video game? The processing power needs to be taken up by the "main event" of running and shooting, so the computer will stop rendering little details like headlights on vehicles or individual blades of grass. That's why things look "less realistic" during the Burly Brawl and any other Bullet Time sequence. The processors of the Matrix stopped rendering fine detail in order to save processor power for all the other, more important aspects.
You can take this further. Who observes the Burly Brawl scene? Smith, who is a program and not dependent on detailed visual perception, and Neo, who is hacking into the matrix from an external feed. None of the observers are relevant to the Matrix; thus, the Level of Detail is reduced automatically.
This troper had a similar realization when I watched the movie with my parents, and my father pointed out that at a certain point that scene starts looking like a "badly programmed video game." That's essentially what it IS in-universe!
I just realized that the second movie is actually a Randian individualistic statement; when the Architect pushes Neo to do as all the others have done and go through the door to the right (or left, I forget) he is persuading him to join the mold of all the others and continue as it has always been. But Neo instead chooses to save Trinity and do the unusual thing that no one (ha- one) else has done. It's like Ayn Rand that he chooses to break the mold and be an Individualist. Cool.
But he's motivated by altruism, like a real hero...
Objectivism does not deny altruism, but for its own sake. Not because others want you to be altruistic. It is about doing what you view is best for yourself.
He's motivated by love, not necessarily altruism. Every time Ayn Rand uses the word "love" in reference to people, she sure makes it sound like a pejorative.
Throughout the franchise Neo is very clearly fighting for the happiness and well-being of every other human, culminating in a literal sacrifice at the end of the original trilogy. This is flatly opposed to the egoist morality of objectivism, which would tell him to only be concerned with his own self-interest and only engage with other humans to the extent that they could provide him value.
The fact the Neo has special abilities outside the Matrix bugged me for a long time, until my Brother-in-law told me his theory that the world outside the Matrix is a second virtual reality; blowing my mind. A second virtual reality solves all the problems that the machines have with the few people that reject the Matrix. This second virtual world could be a mirror of reality in the XX(X?)th century, just as the Matrix is based on the real world of the late 20th/early 21st century.
This is the Matrix within a Matrix theory, and it's a longstanding one. There's arguments there are Matrices 'all the way up'.
Ever hear the phrase "When you see Buddha on the road, kill him?" The most prevalent interpretation of that phrase is "When you think you've reached enlightenment, think again, because you haven't." Could also be a nod towards Karl Popper (I think he's been name dropped at least once) who proposed three layers of reality, the last one being totally objective and free of experience.
Alternatively, the machines have been breeding and cybernetically enhancing humans for a very long time he was "born," so it's not too far-fetched to think they threw a couple extra brain implants in there. Or that the standard brain implants work that way for whoever has the "The One" firmware.
Why exactly do the Agents, despite having upgrades, suddenly start getting the shit kicked out of them in the sequels? Morpheus got his ass handed to him by Smith in the first but in the second he conducts a fight on a moving semi against an upgraded agent and pretty much wins. Then it hit me that while the redpills like to think they are freed, when they enter the Matrix they are still bound by some of its rules, because only Neo can seem to have his mind completely 'freed'. Until Neo they believe that the agents are unbeatable and thus they are, Neo beats an Agent and suddenly everyone realizes that maybe they can be defeated. Your Mind Makes It Real indeed. When they believed that they could win, because a Messianic figure proved it was possible, suddenly they could. Woah.
Neo did say at the end of the first film that he was going to show everyone "a world without boundaries." Agents being unbeatable would be considered a boundary. Him defeating agents shows everyone else that they can be beaten. It makes sense.
Despite becoming something other than an Agent, Smith's fundamental combat style remains unaltered. In his previous fight with Neo in the subway before Neo came into his powers, he relied on brute strength and hitting Neo hard in contrast to his opponent's skills at hand-to-hand combat. This time around, when Neo proves powerful enough to defeat the first wave of Smiths (who presumably are no stronger than Smith was compared to Neo at the end of the last film), Smith's only 'solution' to that problem is to keep bringing in more and more duplicates to try and overwhelm Neo. Even 'free', Smith lacks initiative and imagination, only able to imagine solving problems by hitting them really hard.
Since the Matrix Cycle is suppose to end with a specific amount of males and females to rebuild the Zion — which according to the Architect, the previous One chose — the One referenced by Morpheus would be the 5th Iteration of the One. This could mean that those he freed were also the first he taught truth, and possibly neglected to mention certain details. Other details would probably be lost over time, as those initial founders of the rebuilt Zion gave way to later generations.
Ballard telling Bane to shut up when he tries to persuade his crew to locate the Nebuchandezzer makes sense when you realise that he recently spent some time in the Matrix awaiting a message from the Oracle, while disobeying orders to return home. Yeah, from his perspective, he's not getting dragged into Morpheus' bullshit again.
One that Breaks the fourth wall, when mentioned by The Architect that there were multiple iterations of The One, it opens a door for the franchise to be endlessly rebooted and for an endless amount of sequels to be made as desired. Allowing them to safely get away with the endless reboots and sequels of the franchise. Either with the same actors or with different ones.
Smith's complaint in the first movie is that humans act like a virus. When Neo "kills" him, he returns and acts exactly like a virus.
It gets worse than that. Smith, in the first movie, makes no bones about the fact that he hates the Matrix and everyone in it. His purpose is to act as an agent of that system, and he executes his duty faithfully, but once Neo kills him, it's implied that some of Neo's code overwrote onto Smith. The former agent, bound by rules, is compelled to disobey them and remain in the Matrix that he hates so much, and now has no purpose or function. Neo, in effect, damned a program dedicated to obeying and enforcing the Matrix's rules to an eternity in the Matrix without a purpose. No wonder he went nuts.
How about the "The Freeway is suicide" gag? They sure play it like one, with multiple characters talking about how suicidal it is, but when you think about it, when your enemy can take over anyone, a crowded freeway is definitely the last place you'd want to be...
I think one of the Wachowskis put it this way: that by going on the freeway, you were putting yourself in the middle of hundreds of potential agents, each one at the controls of a guided missile. And on top of that, as well as Morpheus and Trinity did, it would still have ended up with Morpheus and their target dead if it hadn't been for Neo.
That and the fact that the freeway generally has only two directions of travel (not counting off and onramps), meaning avenues of escape are incredibly limited, and any commotion will involve the police, who will no doubt make escaping much more difficult (sealing off on-ramps, etc).
A common Fridge Logic complaint is that the Agents' very existence doesn't make sense if the entire rebellion is orchestrated by the Machines. Why should the Agents exist at all when they're just interfering in the process? What if they accidentally kill the One before he can serve his role? It's not until you watch the Architect's scene a few times and parse out everything he's saying that this starts making sense; the more direct control the Machines exert, the more problems arise. The Agents aren't in the loop about what's going on, they have to be real and not just faking it for show. Besides, the One is powerful enough to stop the Agents and overcome death, so it's not that risky to set up a powerful security system to manipulate the heroes.
This troper's interpretation of that has always been the theory that the second and third movie were not genuine sequels of the first; but were primarily based on The Animatrix, which was created after the first film. In other words, you've got an Expanded Universe which is conceptually based on the first film, but isn't actually a direct continuation of the first film's events. This also makes sense, when you consider that the threat of the first film (the Agents getting the access codes to Zion's mainframe) is pretty much redundant when it is revealed in the second that the Machines are planning a frontal assault on Zion anyway, and that they've already destroyed it five times before, presumably without being able to get the codes on any of those occasions either.
You can also argue that it is another level of the illusion. The people who escape think like conspiracy theorists. When you believe conspiracy theories to the extreme, everyone becomes the enemy. The Agents are simply there because we would expect them to exist and if they weren't there it might break the illusion the machines have over us. If you think about it had enough, the machines allow people to escape the Matrix because those that escape wouldn't LIKE being there. They use the real world, which is a set up by the machines as well, as another layer of that illusion. So basically, not only is the Matrix internally a crapsack world, but the Agents provide more crapsack elements for the escapees simply because that is what the human mind expects to find.
I always figured the agents were in on the joke, and that part of Smith's madness was caused by knowing he could never fulfill his purpose - killing the One.
The problem there is that in this scenario, killing the One isn't Smith's purpose. His purpose would be to act as if he was out to kill the one, not to actually do it.
