Read all of the comments so far and have a couple of observations and comments myself:-
1. Yes in the US they clap and hoot and holler if a movie is good.
2. Nope they don't do much of that in the UK (sometimes in West End (london) cinemas) because we're too damn reserved 😉
3. My view of who or what Smith was is simply that Smith was a virus that got out of control within the matrix. To eradicate the virus Neo had to 'fight' him but essentially I saw that bit at the end when Smith 'defeated' Neo and Neo's jacked in body started all that twitching was kinda like he was being patched by Nortons 😛 to eradicate the virus entirely.
4. Smith, the Virus, was created as a result of Neo (the anomaly) 'entering' him in M1, basically 2 programs (as when you're jacked in to the Matrix you are a program , a series of 0's and 1's) crashing into each other, the result being that a 2nd Anomaly was created (smith the virus).
5. Why weren't the twins there? I thought they got destroyed in M2 /shrug wasn't an issue...
6. The 'shell' idea was quite a novel idea imho, in the context of a computer program taking on another shell.
7. The concept of Choice is abound throughout the movies, all three of them and it is this concept of choice which not only creates the anomaly (neo) in the first place but also ultimately destroys Smith at the end as he lacks the 'humanity' to deal with the concept of free choice. No matter what Smith does he knows that he will never defeat Neo (the humans) due to this concept of Choice which is an alien concept to what is ultimately a string of 0's and 1's.
I have some more points to make but I need to think more about them.
I enjoyed M3 it did answer alot of the questions that M2 left.
The last 5 minutes of the movie left me with even more questions and that was ultimately annoying.
There were a number of inconsistencies also which were annoying.
For example when that young kid was trying to open Gate 3 at the Dock in the big battle, him and Z managed to get the gate open and literally seconds later the Hammer came blasting through the doors and yet both Z and the boy survived??
I could understand the concept of the 'Machine' calling a truce to eradicate the virus in the Matrix (Smith) but surely the 'Machine' would then just eradicate the humans once and for all after it had used Neo for its own ends?? Unless of course they are trying to make out that the 'Machines' finally learnt the lesson of compassion.
Or that , as the Architect alluded to in the M2, the anomaly (Neo) was as a result of the imperfections of the Matrix, i.e the anomaly and the whole prophecy thing being completed was like a kind of ongoing 'patch' to keep the matrix running.... Therefore the Machine even having used this 'Anomaly' to eradicate this virus (second anomaly Smith) realised that it was futile to continue down this path of eradicating the Humans (zion/anomaly) and therefore Choice.
/shrug
Lots of questions hehe I'm scratching my head way too much.
An enjoyable trilogy but leaves a hell of alot to interpretation and as this thread alone displays leaves alot to be said about us as human beings, and maybe that is the point? 🙂
Deep huh! 😄