A Film That Suddenly Turns In To A Video Game

Rating: 4/10 (14 August 2010)

Some people who loved the original film of THE MATRIX have been very vocal that the overblown , over bloated sequels have damaged the original . I can see their point , it's a bit like having a third part to THE GODFATHER . The good news is that whilst everyone can still remember parts one and two of THE GODFATHER saga hardly anyone can remember part three . Something similar is at play with THE MATRIX . The sequels are easily forgotten though I wonder if the studio can remember how much money they wasted in producing and how much money people wasted in watching them in the cinema ?
Reloaded was a very patchy but was slightly better than the final film in the franchise - Revolutions . To be blunt it has no function apart from a money making exercise . Neither sequel is self contained . You could say the same about LORD OF THE RINGS since it's effectively one story split in to three parts but you don't believe for a second THE MATRIX was ever conceived as a franchise film . . In fact with an added ten minutes runtime Reloaded could have tied up all the loose ends without a need for a third film . As it stands we get nothing happening plot wise for most of the film then we get an over extended overblown action sequence
The attack on Zion deserves its own paragraph because it's so badly done . It's a sequence inspired by STAR WARS , ALIENS and TRANSFORMERS but fails to live up to any of them . Revolutions was made before the big budget film version so I'm referring to the animated TV show . That's right the climax of Revolutions is less impressive than an animated children's show from the 1980s . It's like going in to an amusement arcade and watching somebody play an arcade game for many minutes . I notice some people have been impressed by the sequence so I'm guessing watching it on an Imax screen at the cinema improves the sequence but watching it on a widescreen TV it's very uninvolving . Interesting too that neither film was nominated for special effects Oscar - or indeed any Oscar which probably sums up the arrogance of the studio who thought THE MATRIX needed any sequels