The Matrix Revolutions

Before we get to the crux of the problem, Mr. Anderson, I think that we should go over some previews. THE ALAMO–First off, this movie has been pushed back to April ’04. Why, then, are they still showing old trailers that say that it’s opening on Christmas Day? But that’s neither here nor there.

This, however, is here: I hear that they postponed it because of one scene that didn’t play well with Texas test audiences. There’s a scene where Davey Crockett begs for his life. Ya know what? Even heroes beg. Screw ‘em. Did it happen? Possibly. If it did it should be in the movie. If it didn’t, cut it. That’s the true test of a Texan. We can take the good with the bad in our heroes.

I’ll still see this one with or without the scene.

THE LAST SAMURAI–The more I learn about samurai (mostly from the anime series, Rurouni Kenshin…check it out if you get a chance. Especially the prequels, Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal. Heartwrenching stuff.), the more excited I am about this movie. I’m not too excited by Tom Cruise’s performance in the trailer, though. He looks kinda funny swingin’ that sword around. But I’ll still see it and I’ll probably like it.

TROY–The movie that nearly broke the Australian film community. Brad Pitt as Trojan hero Achilles. Hmmm. I guess it could work. This is just a teaser, but it looks like it could be a great sword and sandal epic. And I know we’re all up for that, right? Ok, how about the rest of the cast? Brendan Gleeson, Orlando Bloom, Diane Kruger (who? Don’t care. She’s hot.), Eric Bana, Sean Bean, Brian Cox, Peter O’Toole (Yay!), Saffron Burrows…jeez, that’s a lot of names. And with Wolfgang Petersen at the helm it should be good. As long as he doesn’t go all creepy on us like he did with Perfect Storm.

TORQUE, or 3 FAST 3 FURIOUS–What the fuck? Is Ice Cube gearing up for his role in XXX2 by doing this batshit? I have no clue what this is. Something about a bunch of people who drive their motorcycles really, really fast and try not to die doing it. That’s a plot?! And what’s with the rest of the cast? I only recognize Ice and Jay Hernandez from Crazy/Beautiful (I didn’t see it! What are you talking about!?). Everyone else is a bunch of no-name piecers going through the motions. At least those other flicks got some names behind them. It’s gonna be just as shitty as the Fast/Furious/XXX flicks. Probably even worse.

That just about does it for you, Mr. Anderson. Now I believe it is time to bake some cookies before you die.

So, I’m going to pretend like everyone reading my review has seen Reloaded. If you haven’t, stop reading now. You may not want to know what happens at all in this movie. Then again, maybe you don’t care because you heard so much bad stuff about both of the sequels. In that case, read on, my cynical friends.

When last we left Neo (Kanoo Reeves) and company, Neo had just been knocked comatose by knocking a few machines comatose. He was lying on a table with Bane (Ian Bliss), who had been consumed by Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). Trinity was, of course, distraught. We’ve learned that the Oracle (Gloria Foster) may not be trustworthy and that the Matrix and indeed Zion itself have been constructed 6 times before, each time being destroyed when The One fucks up. This time, though, there’s the problem of Smith. He is now a rogue program on his own agenda.

That, in a nutshell, is what happens in Reloaded. What took me one paragraph to tell you took the Wachowskis over two hours, about 50 new characters and a whole bunch of Scooby-Doo moments where all action and forward progress stops in order to explain what the hell’s going on.

Revolutions picks up pretty much the second Reloaded left off. The billions of Smiths are still after Neo, but Neo is in a new place. He’s somewhere between Reality and the Matrix. Why? How? Where? All questions that aren’t really answered. Which, actually, is fine. I’m ok with a few loose ends that are left up to the audience to decipher for themselves.

This movie seems to be one big loose end, though. Some plots are nearly dropped (was Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) in this movie? He seemed to be relegated to standing on the sidelines with pom-poms yelling, “GO, NIOBE!!”) and new ones are picked up (The Oracle will now be played by Mary Alice…but she still loves candy! And she’s still cryptic as all hell.). There’s lots of cool action (Niobe’s (Jada Pinkett-Smith) run through the tubes was pretty damn cool as were the scenes of the Aliens robots shooting up the machines), but that’s almost all that seems to be here. Isn’t there a happy medium between this and Reloaded? Oh yeah. It was the first movie.

Let’s start with the biggest problem: the script.

Basically, I think that the Wachowskis should have written this one, burned the script and completely re-written it. I had to come home and brush the corn out of my teeth after seeing it. There were way too many, “Let’s go get ‘em!” lines. General Mifune (who has a kick-ass name) actually said something like, “They may kill most of us, but before they do WE’RE GONNA GIVE ‘EM HELLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!” (Cue Aliens-bots pumping their fists in the air. Seriously. They do. But other than that they looked cool.)

Mifune shouldn’t have been allowed to speak.

There was some speechifying in this one, but it wasn’t nearly as long-winded as in Reloaded and it didn’t have quite as much of a point. The Oracle seemed to have the most to say, but she didn’t have any big revelations this time out. Not really. And, while they worked her new appearance into the story pretty well, they didn’t explain it too well. Was she hiding from Smith? The Architect? The FBI? Underdog? What the fuck?

Just like Reloaded, everyone seemed to be acting like they were stuck in molasses and that their teeth were glued together. Sure, they were still kinda cool, but they almost seemed like they were sick of being there. Don’t really blame ‘em.

And let’s talk geography, guys? I never got a feel for where the ships were in relation to Zion. I thought that Niobe and Morpheus were a LOT closer than they apparently were. And how far away is the Machine City, really? It didn’t seem to be too far away, but, while it took the machines a LONG-ass time to get to Zion, Neo and Trinity made it there in a matter of about an hour. And, speaking of that trip, it seems like Bane was in this story to do two things. One I can’t talk about without giving away too much (I’ll have a spoiler review at the bottom of this one.), but the other was to do a really good impression of Agent Smith. It was probably the best acting in the whole movie. The other “secret” thing could have been done by just about anybody or anything. He was a completely worthless character.

As were Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), Persephone (Monica Bellucci) and the Trainman (Bruce Spense, who was in this franchises direct ancestor, Dark City). Sure, Merovingian and Persephone had more too do in the last one, but here they were completely wasted (especially Persephone). And the Trainman was just kinda dumb. I guess they had to show that programs had learned about “love,” but there had to be a better way to do it than to introduce four new characters and a whole new world. (It’s one of the first scenes, folks. Not much of a spoiler. Just wait.)

And then there are characters that they didn’t do nearly enough with. Of course Morpheus was basically an extended cameo in this one. (And he doesn’t look quite as crazy here.) But Kid (Clayton Watson), who had a whole Animatrix short about him, was barely in it. He had more of a part than he did in Reloaded, but I was expecting him to be with Neo for most of this one. Instead he was delegated to Zion and helping Niobe out.

And one big question for the editor: When was Neo jacked into the Matrix at the beginning of the movie. He starts out in a coma on a bed. Then, as they slowly figure out where he is and why he’s there they, of course, find a way to pull him out. Then, when they get back to the real world, he’s suddenly jacked in. HUH?!? A very important part of the sequence of events was cut out and it got a little confusing there. Maybe we didn’t NEED to see it, but it makes the editor look bad if we don’t.

So, what the fuck was good about this one?

Well, the action was great! Nothing as grandiose as the car chase in Reloaded, but there was still quite a bit of action here. As I said, Niobe’s run was really cool and any action involving the machines was cool. A few good fight scenes. And the scenes with the Zionists shooting at the machines as they came into the dock with the Aliens power suits were cool…for a while. After a while I started trying to figure out what was bothering me about it, but I was never able to quite put my finger on it. Then a friend of mine hit the nail on the head: they were playing Centipede! Cheese!

The story itself was alright, too. They took everybody to their inevitable place and it all fit together.

The sets were better, I think. Zion looked a little better and the machines, as always, looked freakin’ awesome. Like the ships in Aliens (apparently the Wachowskis’ favorite movie…they certainly stole enough from it), they almost seem organic. Like they’ve been there forever. They just grew out of the earth.

But that ending was anti-climactic as hell. I won’t get into it too much here, but it just kinda pissed the audience off. No matter how much fun I had watching the action, I still walked out of the theatre shuddering with anger.

Which brings us to the final thing that’s good about this movie: it brings the whole thing to a close. The Matrix is finally over. And we can breath a sigh of relief that we will no longer be taken by a favored filmmaker until Lucas comes out with his next opus.

(SPOILERS COMING….WATCH OUT!!!!)

If you don’t want to know what happens at the end, DON’T read on. It could be detrimental to your health.

So, can anybody help me out here? What the fuck happened at the end of this movie? Neo makes a deal with the leader of the machines, which, by the way, was called “Deus ex Machina.” So, apparently they knew that the end was a cop-out.

So Neo and Smith have an epic fight that would make Superman ashamed of flying. (Did we really need all of that?) They make some big water explosions and make big holes in the ground. This goes on for about an hour. There’s a cool shot of rain drops being broken as Neo throws a punch, but it’s ruined by the actually connection with Smith’s face. He looks like a cartoon character being squashed against a wall.

Neo gets beaten to a pulp and finally decides that he has to succumb to Smith and “become one” with him. Why? Because it’s in the script. A friend of mine told me what he thought, but is it what they were going for? Were they really looking for a way to get the machines jacked into Smith so they could take him over and destroy him? Well, they probably could have done that with The Oracle or any of the other number of programs who were assimilated.

Besides, that makes this whole trilogy out to be a VERY glorified version of War Of The Worlds. It makes Independence Day look like a student film that was just “inspired” by that old flick. What a shaggy dog ending to what could have been Star Wars for a new generation. It’s really too bad. Maybe someday, when they’re all out on DVD, I’ll watch them all in one marathon session and see if they look better that way. I doubt it, though.