Way too much action and too little explanation

Rating: 6/10 (11 August 2014)

I've watched the entire trilogy in three days, and now I clearly see why is only the first movie in the Top 250. When I watched it, I was amazed by it, and I desperately needed to watch the other two tosee how the story ended. But after doing it, I'm really disappointed. The plot behind the Matrix is so rich that it should have allowed the Wachowskis to come up with a better denouement. Not even that, if we consider The Matrix to be the exposition of the story (the Matrix is explained, we discover that Neo is the One), I think this exposition deserves a better rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement altogether (Yeah, I just looked up "Dramatic structure"). And by better I don't mean more stopping bullets and millionaire visual effects, but an enrichment of the original story. J.K. Rowling, after the Sorcerer's Stone success, didn't limit herself to write six other books full of spell-casting and mythological creatures, but she rather developed a way more complex Wizards' world than the one illustrated in the first book. I honestly think that the Wachowsis should and could have done the same with The Matrix.
So this movie, together with the second one, is frankly disappointing. Take for example Zion's defense, which accounts for the biggest portion of this movie, even when the public knows from the beginning of Matrix Reloaded that humans have no chance against the machines. More or less the same happens with the climatic battle of Neo against Smith: whose idea was it that the dispute between the One, humans' only hope, and his nemesis, a rebellious and viral program that tries to conquer the entire world, could be resolved in a kung-fu battle? I mean, how on Earth can Neo defeat a guy that has billions of clones purely out of fists and kicks? Nevertheless, I must say that it is after all the useless fighting between Neo and Smith that we find what I think is the most interesting dialog in the movie. After Smith beats the s*it out of Neo (which we know from the beginning it would happen), Smith asks Neo why does he keep persisting, and Neo answers: "Becaus I choose to". This, together with the dialog between Neo and the Oracle earlier in the movie, suggest a nice conciliation for the recurrent problem between personal freedom (the essence of human existence) and fate, which is represented in the movie with the Oracle's ability to foresee the future, the Prophecy, and the fact that the Matrix is a logarithms-based world that tends towards perception. This theme appears across the entire trilogy, from the red and blue pills scene to the Architect's scene in Reloaded. In my review of Reloaded I mention how this theme is more clearly embodied in Morpheus' character, who insists on people's choices ("I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it.") and at the same time is the firmest believer in the Prohpecy and fate ("What happened, happened and couldn't have happened any other way").
Now in this movie is where the Wachowkis solution to this problem is more clearly expressed: Destiny does exist, and Smith inevitably beats Neo ("inevitabilty" is one of Smith's favorite words). But because Neo chose to be beaten up by Smith, the meaning of the act of Smith-beating-Neo changes and it now means Neo's sacrifice for Peace and Smith's defeat (there is also a lot of Ying-Yang in this, in how Smith is created out of Neo and how he's defeated out of co-opting Neo). Also the way in which the Oracle cannot see beyond people's choices, reminds me of the concept of restrained subjects, which refers to a Marx's quote in the 18th Brumaire:
"Men make their own history but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."
Neo didn't choose to be the One, but he can choose what to do with it, the way he chose to sacrifice himself in the end. That's what makes him human (as the Merovingian reminds to his thugs after he bleeds in a fight scene in Reloaded).
Of course I'm just over-thinking the tiny bits of this movie that are worth analyzing, and for the most part this is just explosions, fists and visual effects. And coming back to the beginning, The Matrix deserved a better epilogue than the empty scene with the Oracle and the Architect, full of vague phrases about not knowing how long the peace will last.