Namely, why was Smith created? His purpose was to defeat the one, but didn’t the machines need Neo to keep the humans in both worlds under control? What exactly was the agent program? if Smith’s purpose was to take over Neo, then doesn’t that contradict Neo’s purpose which was needed by the machines?
The function of the agents is to track people who can bring trouble to the matrix and either silence or terminate them. However, they are very advanced A.I.'s, so one of them (Smith) started getting too much “human”. He got obsessed with a few ideas, and made up his own agenda. His idea is that if all humanity was destroyed, then machines would get into a golden age or go to some kind of heaven. I don’t know what he planned to use as power source if humans should be eliminated. Maybe he’d try cleaning the skies to use sunpower again?
What ever happened to that Tank guy? Was it stated?
Tank guy? I don’t remember anybody in a tank.
What was the Merovingian’s purpose? The keymaker? My details on M2 are sketchy.
What was Seraph’s purpose again?
Merovingian is a leftover of a previous version of the Matrix. The current Martix is the 6th or 7th one… In the previous, the world was different. It was less realistic, and everybody could do more fantastic things. The previous matrixes were destroyed, but a few programs got to escape from deletion. Merovingian is the leader of these guys. That’s why his staff can do some incredible things… They come from a fantastic era, before the Matrix got too realistic.
Seraph was one of Merovingian’s thugs. He later got to see things by his own and went to the good side. He then gathered with the Oracle and became her personal body guard.
Why was Smith replicating in the first place? How did Neo know how to give himself to Smith in the end?
Smith was doomed to deletion. The only legal way to avoid deletion is the exile. But Smith didn’t want to be deleted nor exiled, so he rebelled. He became a virus, or rather a computer worm. The replication is his strategy to gain power. With replication, he could be in more than one place at the same time, and he had more arms to do any job.
Neo carries a code which makes him a small God inside the Matrix. He must have found out in the end how the Matrix really works. He saw that he couldn’t defeat Smith directly because he was just everywhere, like a spammed worm. So, in order to defeat Smith, Neo had to infect him with a destructive code.
What does M3’s ending mean? That more humans will be freed?
The ending means that the existance of the Matrix will no longer be a secret to unawaken humans, and that those who desire to go out of the matrix will be allowed to.
Humankind and machinekind have made a peace treaty after centuries of war. What comes after it, no one knows.
How did this all happen? Like M1, my details on that movie are sketchy. I seem to recall hearing Morpheus state what year it was, and how they came to be dominated by machines and how there was a war that lead to this domination.
Go watch the Animatrix. It is composed of nine short movies telling the story before M1 and between M1 and 2.
If you don’t want to rent/buy the DVD, you can download a few of the movies free. Yes, they were distributed free on the internet.
http://www.intothematrix.com/
They are about as big as the Animix.
If you want to know how it all started, you should download The Second Renaissance, parts 1 and 2. M2 real start is in the movie Last Flight of the Osiris.
What is the deus ex machina? Was that the head of the machines?
Deus Ex? You must be thnking of a game that has nothing to do with the Matrix. And that head was simply something cool they used to make a show for Neo. Come on, everybody likes a head… Er, disregard what I just said.
If the machines hated Smith so much, why didn’t they just delete him? Or how did he get so out of control?
I already explained his loss of control. They hated him, yes, but they couldn’t delete him because deletion in the Matrix involves tearing the program’s body apart. They have to get him and destroy him like they would destroy a wall or some other object.
How can Neo be a machine?
He isn’t.
How did Trinity resurrect Neo in the first movie?
People die from damage they take in the Matrix because their body believes the damage and opens a similar wound IRL. What she did was to give Neo a dose of faith when he was about to die. With the firm belief that he was the chosen one, he could negate the damage he received. It is like telling your body: “hey, this damage is not real, cut it out!”. Not only that, he also pwned Smith. Smith had to be recovered from a backup later.