"Everything that has a Beginning has an End", Thank God

Rating: 3/10 (13 May 2007)

It's now been four years since The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. The two sequels that surpassed the classic movie The Matrix. Both were filmed back to back, and both had a huge amount of anticipation riding upon them. The Matrix Reloaded arrived in the summer, and admittedly it received mixed reviews. Those who said it was brilliant and as good as the original, and others who despised the movie, complaining it made little sense and was just one huge disappointment. I personally loved The Matrix Reloaded, I won't lie and say its as good as the original as it really isn't. Its a good movie, that only stumbles at the last hurdle when it randomly introduced a man called The Architect. The rest of the movie is pretty well done, and the Freeway chase is the stuff movies are made for. Then The Matrix Revolutions arrived. I never got to see this at the cinema, but instead forked out a bit of money to purchase it on DVD. Convinced it would be the conclusion I wanted. Alas, The Matrix Revolutions was an unmitigated disaster. A movie, that while having a few tiny brilliant moments, just felt like an anticlimax. A confusing, jumbled up mess, with dialogue so tiresome you struggle to stay awake. Now after four years I returned to it once again to see whether it had aged very well, alas it's even worse than before. Making this the weakest ending to a trilogy I have seen in a long time.
So where do the problems with Revolutions start? Well it certainly doesn't start at the beginning, as the opening scenes of Revolutions worked for me. The sections in the Train Station, and the fight in Club Hell might not be in the same league as the first and second movie, but as passable entertainment it works. However after the brief jolt of energy the movie seems to die. The middle section is horrible, just plain horrible. Most people enjoyed the siege of Zion near the end, I really disliked it for some reason. My major moan with the movie is all about the lack of scenes in The Matrix. The highlights of the original and Reloaded all took place within the Matrix. Some imbecile decided to remove The Matrix from the final movie until the ending, and that really makes the movie dull as hell. Why anyone would want to save the dreary "real world" is beyond me, I'd much rather have the slickness of the computer programme. As I said the middle has little going for it, after the Oracle meeting which lacks of the spark of the last two Oracle meetings, there is nothing. Neo and Trinity seem to disappear for hours upon hours, and we're left with Morpheus, Niobe and all the others defending Zion. This leads to a special effects filled noisy as hell sequence that never inspires excitement. It has an epic feel to it, yet it never fulfils its full potential.
The characters in the movie also have a very hard time. Keanu Reeves' Neo seems to disappear for half the movie, a shame as here he has some great moments. His character goes through a lot, and by the ending he is still a interesting character. Alas, he seems to be a plot placement now, by the final fight between him and Smith you've lost much of the respect you had for the character and movie. Carrie Anne Moss might have well have not been in the movie. After the finale revolving her in Reloaded you'd have expected her character to have been pivotal. Here she seems almost tired, my guess is she had already signed on for the third one before the script had been done. That might explain why she seems to be hanging around for the hell of it. Laurence Fishbourne is also sidelined, his character no longer the great leader as he was in the original, now he seems almost average. In fact the only character who comes out still brilliant is Hugo Weaving's Agent Smith. He does stumble in the ending, mainly because the fight scene is ludicrous, but his character is still the best thing in The Matrix series.
So what does work in this movie? Thankfully the final fight that the trailers promised between Neo and Agent Smith is breathtaking, for a time. I say "for a time" as the fight seems to go on for way too long. When it begins you couldn't be more excited, its the one sequence in this movie that make you sit up and brace yourself for something cool. For the first few minutes it delivers, before it never seems to end and concludes in the most limp ending I have seen in years. The story also does manage to hold it together, and the death sequences have the impact the directors obviously wanted. But apart from a few sequences that work and sit strongly alongside the rest of the series, this movie is just a dreary mess.
Revolutions has not aged particularly well, what was once an average movie is now a plain terrible one. Its well made, but the script and cast seem tired. When watched with the rest of the series the faults are all the more clearer.