Revolutions Calling

[uberreiniger]

Fanboy that I am, I went to see Matrix Revolutions tonight. That's eight bucks I'll never see again.


I want everybody to know that I tried really hard to like this movie. I really did. Now mind you, I was one of the biggest apologists for Reloaded that there was. I loved it. I loved every minute and at times when it seemed like the whole world was against it, I was taking on all comers, unafraid to let them know how cool it was.

Now I know how all those people felt because this... this just left me sitting there going "And!? AND!?" It's okay to have an ending that leaves questions. I would've expected nothing less from the Wachowski bros. But it's something else to have an ending that's just plain unsatisfying. Especially when no other sequels will ever be forthcoming. And this ending was unsatisfying. Big time. Not the ending of the war. I'd actually hoped that they'd go that very direction and create peace with the machines. Rather, I just found the cheery sunset ending to be nullifying and abrupt. It did not invoke the feelings it was intended to. I wanted to know what happened to Neo. Was he dead, or merely unconcsious? My vote was for unconcsious as I doubt the machines would so carefully trundle him away if he were dead. More likely, he'd be unceremoniously scooped up by a most ungentle squiddy and dropped in the nearest liquification vat to feed the sleepers. I guess I felt they just should've done something at the end which personalized it more to him, brought more emphasis to the completion of his journey. It was as though at the end he just suddenly stopped being the main character and became just a walking plot mechanic. It honestly felt that way through the entire last half of the movie and I didn't like it at all. In fact, all three of the main characters (Neo, Morpheus, Trinity,) just sort of seemed to dissolve in both identity and significance once the battle for Zion started. The death of Trinity I found to be completely forced and empty. It just came across like "Oooh, look we killed a main character. Look how sad it is. Aren't you sad? Neo's sad!" Maybe I'm being too picky about it, but it was cliche and I found it downright insulting.

And I will say the battle for Zion was excellent. It was epic without being over the top, tragic without being pretentious, and so seamlessly animated that I found myself going "how'd the BUILD those things!?" even when I knew full well the machines only existed on a computer screen. The character of Zee really stood out strong in this sequence and it was incredible to watch her use the reserves of fortitude within herself that her brief appearance in Reloaded only hinted at. My only question.... Why in the hell didn't they already have an EMP mechanism set up within the dock to use as a last resort weapon? If I were Zion's defense coordinator, that'd be the first thing I'd install, but that's just the kinda guy I am. "Take 'em down with me" has always been a sound strategy in my book.

Hugo Weaving, was, as always, excellent in the role of Agent Smith. I do believe that Smith will go down alongside Darth Vader as one of the great cinematic villains of all time. I was extremely disappointed at so little screen time for the Merovingian and Persephone, and at the Twins' conspicuous absence. But... oh well. Probably the easiest paycheck Monica Belluci's ever picked up in her life.

Perhaps the most beautiful moment in the movie was the graceful homage to the late Gloria Foster who played the Oracle in the first two films before her death from diabetes. As the Oracle explains the change in her appearance as being due to her temporary destruction at the hands of the Merovingian, she gives gentle salute to her real-life predecessor without breaking character or story. That one line, "I wanted to be here just as you remembered me, but it wasn't meant to be," was easily the most moving of the entire film for me.

My final gripe is the fight scenes. These were every bit as dull as Reloaded's were awesome. There were fewer of them, for one thing. And what ones there were just felt routine and obligatory. Neo's gruesome real-life battle with Smith/Bane was the best of them all just for how irreversible the outcome of it was. The fight with Merovingian's goons? A yawner? The climactic battle with Smith? Eh, we could've skipped straight to Smith and Neo's final conversation, (which was very, very good,) and not been cheated in the slightest.

One final note: the Wachowskis are notorious for putting allusions and references in their films and this one was no different, but the references were quite a bit more overtly pop-cultural. The face and voice of the machine-entity at the end was quite reminiscent of the MCP in the movie "Tron" and I think that was intentional. And when Neo discovers his new "blind sight" I was quite a bit tempted to raise my fist into the air and shout "MAUD'IB!" :)

Overly, I'll give Matrix Revolutions three out of five stars. A decent ending to the trilogy, but an ending I felt was capable of so much more.

Comments

[dayglowdave.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of Orson Welles's Unicron when I saw the MCP/Matrix thingy.

[dayglowdave.livejournal.com]

But then again, it is a sure bet that Unicron was also based on the MCP.

[etan.livejournal.com]

I really liked it, myself. It certianly wasn't perfect, but I'm completely satisfied with it.

The one part I was disappointed with, I agree with you, was the fight scenes (with the exception of the Neo/Smith end fight, which I loved).

And I had hoped for so much more from Persephone...I think she had (has?) great potential as a character. And she looked so fine in that red leather costume in Revolutions...

I'm suprised you didn't catch the reference of Neo's death when he's being carted away by the machines...it's an allusions to Arthurian legend! Where Arthur is taken away to whatever island after his death by the Lady of the Lake, and the legend that "he will return when England needs him most" or something like that! I don't think there will be a sequel where Neo comes back--just like Arthur will likely never return--and i'm pretty convinced that Neo is dead (if for no ther reason than because Keanu and Co. have all reiterated that this is the end of Neo's story).

And, FYI, there will be plenty of sequels, just not on the Silver Screen. Comic books, video games, dvds, all planned for the matrix universe. I suspect we'll have a line of novels (a la Star Trek, etc.) before too long as well.

The one thing I thought they could have totally skipped was the last scene, the meeting between the Oracle and the Architect. I thought it was pretty unnecissary.

*shrug*

Besides, if you clarify whether or not Neo is dead/unconscious, then you squelch thousands of hours of fanboy and geek arguements that are surely to come over the subject in the next hundred years...

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

You're right. I didn't catch that allusion to Arthur at all! I'm surprise more people haven't taken note that when Neo's lying there at the end in, as Soundgarden would say, "his Jesus Christ pose," and everything turns into golden light that his body turns into a cross. I thought that was pretty cool. I didn't think the meeting with the Oracle and Architect was bad, just not the right note to end the film on. It felt like there should've been some kind of scene after.

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

Neo: "The point is Smith's dead and the Matrix died with him!"

Unicron: "No. The point is... You're a FOOL!"

Or how about this....

Unicron: "Your bargaining posture is highly dubious. But very well. You are now... GALVANEO!

Galvaneo: "Whoa..."

[donkeyjon.livejournal.com]

I rented the second movie earlier this week and watched it for the first time. It was really VERY good, and all my friends that poo-pooed it are most likely not computer geeks. They really made a great effort to make sure that the programs were portrayed correctly. The AI of them was wonderful, and the way they worked a perfectly normal coding construct (jumping from one location to another) into a virtual reality setting (doors and keys) really made the movie for me.

Just got back from Revolutions tonight. At the end of the movie, my friend Rick and I talked it over, and we both decided that this movie just wasn't up to snuff. To be honest, I found the romance in the movie to be a wonderful choice, the performances were good, and the movie executed fine. But for the last half of the movie I sat there and said "Please no Passion Play ending...please no Passion Play ending..." in vain. Ok, I get it. Neo sacrifices himself to bring peace. Neo is killed by the Great Evil, and then the Great Evil is defeated in his own moment of triumph. Thanks. The crucifix ending really was unnecessary, but throw it in just in case someone doesn't get it.

We should have seen this coming. The first two movies were not shy about throwing Biblical references in. They weren't shy about calling Neo a messiah. I just wish they could have done something else.

On a side note, I liked the final scene quite a lot. Again, as a computer geek, the idea of the Architect being capable of lying to the Oracle is of course absurd. When she asks him for his word, and he seems offended that she thinks he might have gained some shred of humanity, I finally felt that they'd done SOMETHING right in the movie. Too bad it was after 3 hours of going the wrong direction.

After the last movie, Rick thought that we had discovered the truth of the movies. The real world as the humans know it is but another layer of the Matrix. One they have been thus unable to penetrate. Neo is able to finally realize that this "real" matrix exists and manipulate it as he does the other. Revolutions would thus be him discovering the "real" Matrix and working toward waking up the rest of humanity to the actual Real world. We decided that if this were actually the direction the story would have taken, it would have been a damn sight better than this movie. :)

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

A lot of Matrix fans were anticipating this, so many in fact it they even have a name for it: MWAM (for "Matrix Within a Matrix") Most other Matrix fans were hoping for the ending we actually got: the "peace treaty" ending. I was hoping for MWAM just because there were so many ways they could have done it to make it intense and powerful. As it was, since they did this ending I figure they could've done it worse. And the passion play ending didn't annoy me so much as the way it was all handled. Neo was hardly _in_ this bloody film and let's face it, it's really hard to relate to the sufferings of a messiah whom you have no connection to. In the end, he was just "another character" doing just "another scene." And you can do this in a film and get away with it, but the emphasis of the main character's struggle still needs to be there. "Return of the Jedi" is a good example with every one of the main characters making a vital contribution to the Death Star's destruction, but the emotional struggle of Luke still gaining special emphasis without detracting from the larger struggle. So yeah, good movie, hollow ending.

[(Anonymous)]

I have to admit, I don't get where you're coming from here. I thought Revolutions did exactly what it needed to. Perhaps it was flawed, but it is a movie after all.

And I found it less flawed on the whole than Reloaded was.

In 30 words or less. What was missing? What sort of ending were you expecting that would have made it all worth it?

And I understand you think it was inconclusive. But why? What would have made it conclusive. Obviously we couldn't have had everybody immediately unplugged and dumped into the mud.

[(Anonymous)]

This is noysh (http://www.mintchaos.com/chashitsu/), by the way...

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

I'll admit after I've had a few days to mull it over I like the whole movie overall a bit better. I guess my problem with the ending was that it didn't center around Neo as much as I felt it should. I understand the choice to take him off center stage and show how events are affecting everyone else, but I feel it was a poor one that made the movie suffer. As I said earlier, it's hard to have feelings for a messiah you don't have any personal connection to. The scene where the machines are carting him away at the end didn't feel I, think, like they wanted it to feel: like something poignant and final. Rather, it felt like a lead-in to another scene which didn't make the cut. The Oracle/Architect scene, while marvelous, should not have been the final scene. Something involving Neo should have. And I still think Trinity's death was just stupid. When the whole point of one movie is to save a character only to have that character die a contrived, meaningless death in the next movie it's not "poignant", it's not "ironic", it's not "moving", it's just bad film-making. I've seen plenty of sequels (usually direct-to-video junk) where this has been done and it doesn't work any better in this than it did in there. If they wanted to axe her that was fine, I just think it could've been more dramatic. So yeah, to surmise, Neo and Trinity handled completely the wrong way and a story that's been about them for its entirity suddenly steering drastically away from them at the end.

Still had fun seeing it though. And planning to see it again.

[(Anonymous)]

Far as I'm concerned, Trinity was living on borrowed time. She'd already been killed once. I don't consider her death to me 'ironic' (although, I -was- very moved by it), I consider it to be karma. Neo brought her back and she died keeping him alive. I mean, they were in a freaking plane crash for all intents and purposes.

Interesting thing-- many of the Architect's predictions in Reloaded ended up being true by the end didn't they. Neo left to save Trinity, but she died anyway... Interesting, no?

Oh, and here are a couple of links that you may or may not find interesting:

The Corporate Mofo's Guide to Reloaded and Revolutions:
http://www.corporatemofo.com/stories/051803matrix.htm
http://www.corporatemofo.com/stories/031109matrix.htm

I love Corporate Mofo. I could give that website a big sloppy wet kiss sometimes.

-noysh