Pretentious, ponderous, and patronizing. If I had to confine a review to a matchbook that would be it. As the third of a trilogy, The Matrix Revolutions suffers from the effects of The Law of Threes when it comes to movies.
The Matrix was a triumph. It was unlike almost anything moviegoers had seen when it was released in 1999. The story line played into humanity’s innate fear that we are not in control of our world, that we are some how missing “the big picture” of life. The existential poking into the meaning of life and man’s place in the world was wrapped in a package that combined neo-Gothic stylings with Hong Kong cinema’s gravity defying stunts. It was also a classic mono-myth: hero leaves comfortable surroundings to pursue a quest that seems impossible, makes friends and finds love along the way, encounters impossible odds and tragedy, and, in the end, overcomes those odds to achieve part, if not all, of what he set out to do. The Matrix was also a screen writing triumph in that the story stands on it’s own as “complete,” ie: Neo accepts his “fate” as The One, and it also contains an incredible hook for, yes, a sequel.
The Matrix Reloaded was a bit slow second chapter in this series. It took the whole “Neo as Messiah” theme just a bit too far, and the absurdity of the “welcome the warriors back to camp rave in the temple scene” can not be overstated. However, what Reloaded did do was carry through the existential pondering of man’s existence. The end of the second film left us, or at least me, wondering if “the real world” outside the matrix wasn’t, in fact, yet another construct built to keep malcontents inside the matrix quiet, to give them a purpose while the machines still harvested their energy. All signs pointed to this, including Agent Smith “infecting” the crew member who ended up in the infirmary with Neo.
Revolutions picked up, with a time lapse of slight but unspecified duration, where Reloaded left off, in the infirmary of one of two remaining ships, the Nebuchanezzer having been destroyed and the machines rapidly digging their ways to Zion. With Neo (Keanu Reeves) in a coma, trapped between “the real world” and the matrix, the crews of the remaining ships are forced to make decisions on a military footing while back in Zion, Lock (Harry Lennix), ostensibly the third leg of a Morpheus (Laurence Fishburn)- Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) love triangle, rallies the troops and reports to the council on the best plan of action to defend the ship dock (a structure that is protected, seemingly, by a concrete sphere that is 100 stories tall).
There is so much wrong with this film it is impossible to know where to begin. Revolutions is nothing like its two predecessors for it contains virtually no thought at all about the nature of humanity’s place in the universe. Yes, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) does have a wonderful rant about the frailness of human beings and the absurdity of those impulses that we dub “emotions,” he is particularly hard on love, but this doesn’t constitute the resolution of any of the questions brought up by the theme of constructed reality that is the heart of the first movie, nor does it answer any of the questions brought up by the plot twists at the end of the second movie. Why does it do none of these things? The disappointing fact is that The Matrix Revolutions is, essentially, a murder the bastards movie, and what is most disappointing is that it is a not very good one at that.
Characters are introduced with little or no fanfare, such as the infantry soldier who is assisted by Zee (Nona Gaye), the wife of the Nebuchanezzer’s new operator, only to be killed in the space of ten or fifteen minutes. The rousing speech given by the grizzly, old, Marine commander to the under-aged volunteer is so hoary that, yes, I think I saw mold dripping out of the speakers in the theater. The other, incredibly disappointing thing about this movie is the characters that The Wachowski Brothers have spent so much time building up and making us, the audience, care about, both die in the end.
Given the path this movie starts on there is no way either Neo or Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) could survive to see the end of the film. After all, the messiah must sacrifice everything in order to become the martyr that we know he is destined to be. What is most scary, though, is not that the audience is left at the end with the idea that the whole thing has been one big game of chess between The Architect (Helmut Bakaitis) and The Oracle (in this installment, Mary Alice). No, what is most scary is that, despite all assurances that Revolutions is the last of this series, The Wachowski Brothers have left themselves open for a sequel.
With all the hype, the compounded disappointment from the second film, and the fact that I know The Wachowski Brothers can do much, much better (Bound), I’m giving this two and a half out of five.
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