The Matrix Revolutions- Movie Review

Critics Score - 4 of 10

General Audience Score - 6 of 10

Movie trilogies are a terribly difficult thing to get right. With beloved stories, historic villains, heroes deserving of epic send-offs and grand finales that make people wait in lines for days and send so much traffic through ticket selling websites that servers crash. The hype for any great trilogy or movie saga can reach unbelievably high levels and the opening day at the theatres is a event for the ages, and the conclusion to The Matrix trilogy, The Matrix Revolutions, was no exception. But despite it’s efforts to create interesting and new ideas, which resulted in an ending that nobody could see coming, it was also so wild and non-sensical that all it’s originality was wasted and undone. Instead of being regularly drawn back like many are to the original film, the third part of the trilogy has fallen by the wayside in the sands of cinematic time and is easily forgotten even with such creativity. While Reloaded was enjoyable but a little problematic, the third installment manages to derail The Matrix train and all our expectations were deflated like a Revolution that nobody shows up for.

SYNOPSIS - The third installment in the series begins with Neo (Keanu Reeves) in a coma from stopping real machines in the actual world with his mind. It works as a crazy, surprise ending but that’s more or less the point of no return when the films start to stray from cool fictional fantasy into looney town. Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) go visit the Oracle to find out what’s happened to Neo. She explains that Neo is trapped in a realm in between the Matrix and the human world, a train station of sorts, which is controlled by the biggest a-hole in the franchise, the Merovingian. So Morpheus and Trinity pay him a visit and after busting into his S&M dance club, they persuade him to let them rescue Neo. But all the while back in Zion, their army prepares for the machine invasion of sentinels and braces for the fight of their lives. And let’s not forget former Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) is copying himself, taking over people and wreaking general havoc. Once Neo has a chance to think things through, he realizes he needs to take a ship and fly up to the machine city and talk with the head machine boss to try and get things straightened out.

After it’s all over and the machines have won the day, we sit back and ask ourselves, what the f*** was that all about. It’s one thing to have the bad guys get the upper hand in a series, The Empire Strikes Back or Avengers Infinity War are great examples, but nobody wants the characters we’ve grown to love and care about over a trilogy of almost five years get their asses handed to them repeatedly. The Wachowski’s direction and screenplay are extremely inconsistent, like Reloaded, the dialogue is difficult at times and while I gotta give them credit for being inventive and creative, many of their choices just don’t make much sense. I lay at the feet of the screenplay the inability to deliver satisfying story arcs or resolutions for these characters and plot holes in the story abound. While being visually impressive and also the most grounded part of the film lies in the attack on Zion, with hoards of sentinels being shot down and chaos reigning supreme, those sequences do pack a punch and do make a slight impression. But this final installment for that time was such a letdown in most of the major ways the others were able to find success that it was really surprising we say goodbye to Neo and Trinity without much fanfare.

SUMMARY - All in all the Matrix trilogy winds up being solid in totality but poorly executed in it’s finale. The Matrix is in my top 10 all time films but I haven’t desired to revisit Reloaded or Revolutions in over a decade and while there’s some good to be found in the films, the final episode is completely forgettable. The Matrix is a terrific beginning, Reloaded holds its own, but you really shouldn’t be starting the Revolution if you can’t finish it.