Mysto-Digital Disappointment

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 2003)

Part of this could be seen as a spoiler - read on with that understanding.
To begin, I enjoyed this one more than Matrix Reloaded but not nearly as much as Matrix itself. It was visually better than Reloaded - the CGI is so much cleaner, but visuals alone aren't enough. Both of the follow-up Matrix movies suffered from sudden halts in the action. Those halts (wanna bat philosophy around?) lets the audience catch up with the action to that point, then they have to sit there and twiddle their metaphorical thumbs until the action takes off again. "Willing suspension of disbelief" is very hard to maintain in that atmosphere.
My biggest problem with this one is that the premise, minds trapped in a digital world, could have had so many more ways of being resolved, or not resolved as the case may be. "The One" turns out to be The One (micro-evolutionary freak) that can see the "Matrix of Reality", if you want to call it that. What is this, X-Men of the Matrix? No competent sci-fi writer today would use that tired plot twist to wind down such a promising storyline.
I was very disappointed after the movie dropped to credits. Where's the closure? There are so many loose ends that another sequel only makes sense. But how many times can they do such a weak job and expect people to keep coming back? Storyline is what made the original Matrix so great, but it is the poorest part of these sequels.