*** Official THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS Review Thread (1 Viewer)

[Scott DeToffol]

I just saw it tonight (Monday) and my first impression is -- meh.

Not a good movie. It has a mess of a plot. I was hoping Revolutions would redeem Reloaded, but it failed.

I'll still buy the DVD, but not the inevitable Extra Loaded Box Set (ELBS).

 

[Doug Pyle]

The Matrix trilogy, culminating in Matrix: Revolutions, confronts fan's expectations for answers, with a finale whose reply is, answers are not the point. What matters most are our questions, as they define who we are, what matters to us, how we relate to one another, and how we may choose to be.

Some suggest faith is the final answer, but perhaps not. Neo is not sure of the outcome of his final mission, only that he must pursue it. The oracle could not predict what change might come of her "dangerous game," but only that it is the only thing to do, to take a chance, to bring about change.
The end of the film does not even define what change has come. It is hard to give away the ending, because it is not clear what is the ending. Yet, I left satisfied that this is exactly how a film, whose architecture was founded in questions, should end: Unsettled, ambiguous, full of doubt, yet hopeful. The trilogy opened with the tease, what is the Matrix? By the end we understand the Matrix, if at all, by asking, What is the real world? For the line blurs between the real world of the film, and the unreal world of the Matrix.

Of course this trilogy is allegory. It is not a film about people we care to see through a melodramatic story arc. It is not about Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, the Oracle or Architect. With such character names, perhaps we have been given a clue? Caring too deeply to see the rise or fall of the Merovingian or Persephone, from one film to the next, invites disappointment, and fails to give the trilogy a chance on its own terms. In the case of the well-liked/despised Merovingian, he served his symbolic purpose as an obstacle (clinging, desire, vanity, immutability) in the search for Truth (or Liberation, or Change) during the 2nd film. Don't expect him to play a major role in the 3rd. Other obstacles on the path, other questions, replace those that have passed before.

The Matrix presents the one-ness of the world's major religions and philosophies amidst a hail of bullets and explosions. This is big-budget, high-tech action with intelligence. Neo represents in the same breath a Christian Messiah and an atheistic Nietschean Will-To-Power. Your favorite world religion or famous philosopher is likely to be given at least symbolic passing reference. Even the extreme violence of the film may pose spiritual challenge or ethical puzzles. If not, at least it is interesting, with so many bullet cases cling-clanging throughout the trilogy, that no human ever shoots or directly kills another human. At least not while the human is under conscious human control, i.e. the program/virus Smith replicates itself into the "real" world human body to kill and be killed.
Yet, the violence is high-stakes. It does involve death, and worse, the threat of "deletion" from existence.

From phenomenology to spectacle, the Matrix trilogy was an enjoyable and provocative ride. It was imperfect in some details here and there, perhaps because it was so big in scope, and bold in ambition. I find it odd that I've not heard others wonder about whether the "real" world isn't really part of the matrix, since programs like Smith and Neo's powers traverse the "barrier" between the worlds?
The trilogy, including the final installment, succeeded overall, despite some quibbles I had over certain details. Like, if the EMP was so effective against the calamari, why weren't a slew of them installed in the docking port, shielded from one another, to avert the invasion? Or, why didn't they put a plexiglass or reinforced shell around those exposed guys in those Aliens walker-weapons?
The religious, technological and philosophical tid-bytes, perhaps, were never meant to explain, or to be explained. It may be questioning and not the answers, choosing and not the choice, that matter in the Matrix' world. And yet these questions and choices have real-world consequences, in the Matrix.Smith asks, "Why? Why do you do it?" Why does Neo get up, not die? "Because I choose to."

I have to give my wife credit for the summation of the experience: the "most damn fun theological lesson I've attended."


- Doug Pyle

 

[Brajesh Upadhyay]

The Matrix :star: :star: :star: :star: 1/2 (out of 5)
The Matrix Reloaded :star: :star: :star: 1/2
The Matrix Revolutions :star: :star:

It started out w/a great mix of sci-fi, action & intriguing ideas on humanity/reality vs. machines/cyberdom. It ended up as a big, loud & cheesy mess of its own doing. What a let down! It's similar to what happened w/the original 'Star Wars' trilogy & the recent dull prequels. At least ideas aren't dead w/the LOTR trilogy.

 

[John Geelan]

Usually when you leave the theater after seeing a Part 3 of a series you feel fufilled or content that you've seen the conclusion of a great story.

I don't get that feeling after seeing Revolutions. There is no joy. Just the feeling I was hit with a bat after sitting thru the picture.

The producers of The Matrix just cashed it in as far as I'm concerned. They now have very fat bank accounts.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Nils: best d*#n review I ever read!

I share a lot of your thoughts and you've expressed it far better than I can, but unlike you I didn't come out disappointed, and don't feel as negatively about either Reloaded or Revolutions as you appear to. More like very intrigued by all the questions raised and the non-pat answer that they did give us. The more I think about it all, the more I appreciate it. No doubt more viewings will add to this.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Late to the dance this time. After Matrix:Reloaded my desire to see Matrix:Revolutions was severely blunted.

Reloaded suffered from narrative problems that really drained a lot of my excitement and expectations. Technically brilliant with only a few moments where the seams showed. OTOH it really opened up the scope of the franchise with both positive and negative effects.

The positives were the sheer amount of ideas that the W. brothers brought to the table. The negatives are related mostly with the characters. Many more characters were added and given the coldness of the first movie never really allowed me to invest much in the main characters.

Revolutions was a step back in the right direction and is the most emotionally satisfying of the three. In Reloaded there was no connection with the people of Zion. Revolutions turned this around somewhat and made Zion more relatable. Unfortunately many of the principal characters because of the role they had such as Neo or the Oracle - still remained distant to me.

The biggest casualty has to Morpheus. The character arc he has drops severely from the first Matrix through Reloaded and down to Revolutions.

Trinity fared much better and has the best lines in Revolutions. Her shot of seeing the sun was great - though I prefer the reaction shots in Logan's Run better. About the only true great moment in that film.

Technically Revolutions is astounding. This time there are no seams that I could see. A SFX Oscar seems to be a given here. I can't think of any movie that could surpass it. If the emotional impact of ROTK is strong enough then it might have a chance. The Machine City was amazing - loved all the little robot crabs, spiders etc flitting about.

Revolutions is a more traditional action oriented movie and as a result many of the ideas in Reloaded are not followed up. They are left up to the viewer to decide. The debate about whether that is good or bad has been the content of many long posts here.

In the end Revolutions is a solid flick that strikes me neither as good or as bad as many seem to park themselves in.

The Matrix stands by itself as a well constructed, clever, action movie which leaves the audience at a point where their imagination can soar in many different directions.

The sequels can't stand on their own and while offering up myriad possibilities in the end lock the viewer into the W. brothers vision.

Looking at the W. brothers previous resume - these two movies are their first stab at epic type pictures. Too much was brought to the table. The proper balance between narrative and action suffered as a result.

Revolutions strikes me as a 8 - due to strong technical and cinematic skills coupled with some strong story content. Where it stumbles - not nearly as badly as Reloaded - is the marriage of narrative and action. That and characters one could never really warm to make me appreciate and not embrace the movies.

 

[Alex Spindler]

I've given time to think about the films themselves, rewatched The Matrix some as well, and have participated in the rather heated discussion on Revolutions. Sounds like it is time to review the movie.

First and foremost, I would consider Reloaded and Revolutions to be two parts of one film (ala Kill Bill). In that case, the review is based on not only how they relate the first movie, but also to how they relate to each other. However, this is mostly focused on Revolutions.

The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions (TMR&R) takes the story of superhuman messiah Neo, who had conquered the rules of the Matrix in the first film, to a new direction as the humans try to stave off a push by the machines to crush their underground haven, Zion. Through ancillary material (such as the anime anthology Animatrix), the movie opens with this new crisis of the machines massing around a drilling apparatus to reach Zion. Prior to this, the humans have been quite successful in freeing their zombified compatriots. It seems the machines have had enough.

To complicate matters, it seems that the old machine agent Smith has become unexploded from the previous film and discovered that he can copy himself virally into other hosts.
This prompts our hero to inquire about how things have changed. This quest leads the hero to find that not only is he not unique, but he is partially a pawn of the machines.

Revolutions begins with the hero wakening from a coma and trying to reconcile the impending attack by the machines, dealing with the threat that Smith is posing in both the Matrix and in the real world, as well as to understand his role in the entire affair.

Different in tone that either of the previous films, Revolutions is more of an action climax than an offering of more philosophy. This centers around two main conflicts; one between Neo and Smith and one between the humans and the machines. In that sense, the action scenes are better integrated into the plot than the action scenes were for Reloaded. This does not preclude some that echo Reloaded's poorly justified action sequences, namely that of the brief action interlude in Club Hell.
In an homage to the sequence presented in the lobby scene, Morpheus, Trinity, and Seraph fight their way to an audience with the Merovingian. Despite their ceiling walking ability, the Merovingian's exceptional bodyguards offer as little challenge as the mundane humans did in the original Lobby scene.

The good is that there are some wonderful moments in the film. There are well developed scenes where Smith's human surrogate first taunts and then fights with Neo. There is a wonderful visual of one character being the first human to experience a natural sight for the first time in hundreds of years. Also, there is an excellent single scene that shows Smith standing over Neo in a crater, which is visibly like seeing a comic book come straight to life. Those moments show the same kind of brilliance as the first film had and rival the visual thrills found in the bullet time battles and great stylings. It must also be said that the final conflict between the machines and humans is very strong special effects wise, as well as having some nice thrilling moments.

The bad unfortunately outweighs the good, for me at least.

At the end of The Matrix, the hero has become a god, unable to be restrained by the system itself. The films continue to try to develop conflict for him, but end up in the same trap that writers for Superman have come to; How do you introduce threat to an invulnerable and superhuman character. They toy with overwhelming him with numbers, but eventually settle (as the Superman movies do) with providing him an equal character challenge. This comes in the form of former Agent Smith, who after absorbing a key character becomes able to fly and fight as well as Neo. This leads to a long action sequence taken directly from Superman II (ironically enough), where invulnerable flying characters punch each other into craters. It lasts so long that I was left envying a convention of martial arts films where one combatant would state that, "you cannot defeat my stance" and they would stop fighting.

This leads to a resolution that the characters cannot bring about themselves, which the filmmakers resolve through a Deus Ex Machina. Similar to how they explained the thin task oriented nature of Reloaded by having a character state this, they winkingly acknowledge this fault by having the source of the Deus Ex Machina actually be called "Deus Ex Machina". While I could appreciate the self referential use of this in Adaptation, I felt this was a large flaw in these films themselves, where the filmmakers painted themselves in a corner by making their hero a god and then trying to create challenges for him which ultimately exceeded any reasonable conclusion.

The returning characters are also given short shrift. Morpheus is given a back seat to new characters that have nowhere near the charisma, story integration, or potential for character development. He is presented at the end of Reloaded that his belief structure is completely false. However, he still pontificates in Revolutions as though he still has faith in Neo. This seems as though it would be a great character development opportunity, but focus is shifted to minor new characters that are far less dynamic or interesting.

Dialog is also a weak point. Whereas Reloaded has long monologues using obtuse language, Revolutions is loaded with sound bite catch phrases that diminish the impact of what is on screen. None of these have the relevance that made potentially bad phases "There is no spoon" and "I know Kung-Fu" so good. Instead we have "Neo, I believe" and laughably bad death scene confessionals that would immediately clear any teary eyes because they would begin rolling.

Often in science fiction and fantasy films a level of suspension of disbelief and acceptance of basic conditions is required. As long as a film stays true and committed to the conditions it establishes, I can keep from faulting the logic of the conditions regardless of how outlandish it may be. But there are several situations here where the movie really exposes the conceits as being illogical. For example, it is stated that the machines are harvesting humans for power because the skies have been darkened. This is supported wholeheartedly by The Matrix through images, dialog, and even the entire concept for the Matrix itself. However, in an effort to provide one of the more memorable visuals in the film, they expose the faultiness of the concept by showing how easily the machines could reach a solar power source. Similarly, they introduce the armored exoskeletons with open cockpits largely because they look cool and expose the actor very well. Then they expose the flaw by having that same actor be lacerated by a wave of machines. The machines move in a very graceful and visually attractive snaking swarm while on patrol. Then they proceed to attack in the same narrow swarm, which the armored units fire on without even the need to aim. There is even a sequence that is as much a computer game update on the video game Galaga, which is where the machines appear to have developed their tactics. This seemed to invite me to nitpick their decisions even after I had already accepted them. As an example, I was fine with their armored unit design in Reloaded as it looked cool and they filmed it as such. But to exploit that vulnerability as they did in this film would be like someone leading the heroes into a darkened basement where their penchant for sunglasses would make them easy targets.

Revolutions also has the unfortunate side-effect of harming the value of Reloaded. Much talk, and enjoyment, of Reloaded was from speculating on the significance of enigmatic characters, statements, and situations that appeared to be a set up for a large payoff in Revolutions. This, sadly, is not the case. In fact, little shown in Revolutions supports or expands on the most interesting parts of Reloaded. Information on previous iterations of the Matrix, the precognitive abilities of Neo, the purpose behind a kiss from the beautiful Persephone, the role that Merovingian plays and why Persephone states that he was once much like Neo, and even the reason why valuable screen time is presented to a character like Seraph. As Revolutions comes to a close, it becomes clear that the answers are either very mundane or that no further expansion of these elements will be found in the feature films. Some consider this a valuable addition to the films as they provide ground for fertile interpretation while others find them to be narrative weaknesses.

I am squarely in the second camp and found at the end that both films are filled with fat in need of trimming. Potentially interesting or critical characters proved to be non-characters, significant events became non-events, and apparently complex dialog existed just to justify an action sequence or introduce a concept that would not have an impact on the story. This is based on my expectations, which is often a reason why faults are perceived where none may exist. My expectations, built from the example provided by The Matrix, was for a visually stunning, narratively efficient, well plotted adventure that utilized the action not only to thrill but also to help explain concepts and philosophies that were central to the overall movie. Even while loaded with exposition, it would be supported by a visual or sequence for the audience to latch onto. I did not find this to be the case for either Reloaded or Revolutions.

As a movie by itself, the selling point is the battle for Zion. Although suffering from repetition that makes it seem overlong, it is a technically brilliant special effect sequence. Unfortunately, the journey to get there is littered with bad dialog, underwritten and underused characters, irrelevant and discarded plot threads, and some badly integrated action sequences. As such, I would give it :star: :star:. Additionally, as the most intriguing portions of Reloaded proved to not be relevant in the least on seeing the second half of the story, it as well drops from :star: :star: :star: to :star: :star: 1/2.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Oh, my! What happened? What the hell happened!!! Who is responsible for this contraption? Those were my thoughts after watching The Matrix Revolutions. It is as if the Wachowski brothers simply ran out of clever ideas, dialogue and even a story to wrap up its trilogy. Actually, this installment is not even necessary. With some heavy editing, Revolutions and Reloaded could have easily been one film.

The Wachowskis also lay it thick on the religious allegory but with a budget of millions of dollars to tell such allegories, all is lost in this special effects extravaganza with its meanings diminished to oblivion like the Sentinels the humans are trying to purge.

The characters created in Reloaded were so underutilized this time around that I really didn’t care what happened to them. The battle for Zion, which comprises most of the second half of the film, looks like one long video game that is oh-so mind numbing.

Furthermore, that “love conquers all” mantra used ever so extensively in the first two films finally wears itself out and is quickly reduced to a drivel.

The Wachowski brothers and its studio, Warner Bros., decided to release Revolutions simultaneously worldwide admittedly to prevent piracy. Or maybe they were they just trying to cash in on the lucrative first weekend audience before bad word of mouth spreads. Because a movie as bad as this one masquerading with religious allegories and philosophical symbolisms does not have to worry about being pirated.

The Matrix Revolutions rates a disappointing (out of four). Accordingly, The Matrix Reloaded drops a notch from its previously given rating.

~Edwin

 

[Steve Owen]

Better late than never...

I finally got around to seeing this. I'd give it 2.5/5 (the first two were 5 and 4 respectively). I found it to be a bit of a cop-out given the build up of the first two. It didn't really leave me thinking and wondering and pondering at all like the first two did. It was a decent action flick to be sure, but it could have been so much more...

-Steve