Fans’ rekindled love for Keanu Reeves has pretty much reached its highest point now that The Matrix Resurrections has completed filming and been given a release date. The trailer has revealed a slew of new characters along with some very familiar faces in not just Reeves, but Carrie-Anne Moss as well.
However, fans of the sci-fi series noticed that there were some beloved Matrix staples missing from the fourth installment, like Agent Smith, played by Hugo Weaving. So will Hugo Weaving be in The Matrix 4?
Who is Agent Smith in the ‘Matrix’ movies?
Playing a computer algorithm with a singular purpose is a pretty tough role for an actor to pull off in an interesting way. But Hugo Weaving managed to do it in the Matrix series. While in the first movie he serves as an “agent” tasked with destroying rogue programs, in the follow-up films, he becomes an “exile” program, a full-blown computer virus.
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What audiences were presented with was less of a cold, calculating computer program and more of a deranged, sinister, and self-serving individual who, by virtue of attempting to enact his own free will, basically contradicts his very hatred of Keanu Reeves’ character Neo. Whoa.
Interestingly enough, Smith’s character becomes a metaphor for “conformity” and living one’s life for others.
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He carries a hidden emotion. And that emotion is hate. In the first film, he has a hatred for humanity; he describes humans as “self-replicating viruses” whose only goal is to destroy their environments and move on to the next ecosystem to repeat the pattern.
This is pretty ironic, considering what happens to Agent Smith.
He becomes a computer virus and copies himself ad infinitum to different programs and “blue pills” in the Matrix, basically rendering them copies of himself. He becomes the very thing that he has criticized humanity for, but the difference between Neo and Smith is the singular characteristic that distinguishes humans from machines — a potential for love.
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Smith’s hatred comes from either his unwillingness or inability to love, which is why he wants to destroy that emotion for others, hence his work in the Matrix to destroy everything around him.
Neo, on the other hand, is full of love, not just for the fellow humans he’s attempting to rescue, but in the relationship with Trinity. The only thing Neo’s trying to get people to “conform” to is a life full of love.
It’s real hippie stuff for a movie all about machines and gun violence.
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