The story of two comic book geeks who aimed to high (spoilers)

Rating: 5/10 (6 November 2003)

This, the third, and one must hope final Matrix movie puts the final nail in the coffin of this series hopes of becoming iconic movie making. In 10 years no-one will give a damn. In hindsight the sequels were always going to disappoint. The best feature of the original, what made it truly special was bullet time. Period. The plot was interesting, and most of the performances good, but the action scenes made it special. It was always going to be difficult to top these, and impossible for anything to have the same effect as the lobby sequence (Which they ape in this film, was less convincingly). And the point is; that wasn't down to the Wachowski's. It was down to the guy who invented the technology. All the praise though went to the lucky comic book authors who suddenly believed they were auteurs, and started behaving like such. Lucas escaped this by giving up directors duties on Empire; no-one suggested that to Andy and Larry. The result is a 5 hour mess with a story which could fill 2.(spoilers) In the end it seems quite simple. There was a war nobody could win, but both sides wanted to destroy each other. By using Neo's uniqueness (he appears to be some kind of Jesus figure, performing miracles, dying suspended in the air for the good of the people) the oracle gives agent smith the power to bring the world to the brink of destruction, knowing a truce would have to be made. Justification for allowing the machines life is given by the irritating little girl and her parents, sacrificing themselves for their `daughter' a pointless program. This lack of logic proves they are alive, disproving Smith's point about love being a human condition. This theory is hammered home by the corny end scene with the architect telling the oracle she played a `dangerous game'. All the crap philosophising over the movies was pure filler, to stretch the concept to two movies, an idea which looked shaky in reloaded, and an abomination in revolutions. The battle of Zion was the most emotionless pile of clichéd drivel seen since Armageddon. The kid who overcomes his fear to save the day, the brave general who dies heroically, though not before given final words to aforementioned kid. The scared woman who sees her butch buddy get killed before saving the day in the exact same way her brother did in the first film. With a bit more common sense used one good sequel could have been made, the freeway chase was fantastic, neo v 1000 smiths, daft but fun and the final fight okay, despite being ridiculously overblown. But you are unlikely to get much common sense from two comic book geeks with over inflated egos and budgets, are you?