Well okaaaaay... it was kind of fun to watch, I guess...

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 2003)

This isn't exactly what I had expected.
As I believe I have stated in my review for THE MATRIX RELOADED, I'm not a huge Matrix fan. I thought the series was interesting and entertaining to toy with, though. And once you got into them, both of the first movies were really a lot of fun. And this is the only one of the three I bothered to see in theatres.
I have the feeling that MATRIX fans are going to be really annoyed with this one. Certainly the crowd I saw it with was rowdy and hyped up when they walked in and took their seats; but they all left in stiff silence.
Warning: spoilers ahead.
Now don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike this movie. I'm glad I saw it, it was interesting to see how the Brothers W chose to end it. And I was really enjoying the first half of the movie during all those scenes taking place within the Matrix, which are done with both action and humour. Plus, the whole idea of programs that could love and care for others on a human level was fascinating and I was anxious to see it developed later in the film (unfortunately, it never is). I loved every bit they came up with in the Matrix world and hoped for more.
But the moment we all got into the real world scenes (which were inevitable after all; we did know right from the beginning that they have to face the machines in a big one-on-one eventually), certain questions started nagging at me. While a part of me was getting after myself for questioning all this stuff and thinking, "Hey, it's just a sci-fi film! Why bother puzzling over this stuff?", I nevertheless couldn't help wondering:
* Where is the rest of the fleet? All throughout THE MATRIX RELOADED, we kept getting informed about how important it was to have "every single available ship" ready for when Zion would come under attack. So where are they all?
* Why are the humans using giant mechanical robot bodies to fight back at the machines instead of a more humanized way? Well, I suppose it makes sense to give them fair-and-square abilities to pit them against the machines, and I think that's also the reason why we kept getting shots of common shells being used, but still...
* If a single shell can take out a huge guargantuan enemy machine, then why has the war lasted so long?
* Why do the mechanical robot arms the humans use have simple oversized machine guns in them when the humans also have those deadly blue-laser-firing devices we've seen in both the first movie and this one? Wouldn't it make more sense to simply have those lasers installed instead since they're obviously so effective? Or arming everybody with them? Or were there simply not enough to go around?
Well, I could go on and on, but eventually after a while I simply stopped caring and just struggled to enjoy the movie on its own level. And it is enjoyable, its plusses outweigh its minuses in my mind.

But by the time we reach the end, I had a ton of whoppers entering my mind throughout the oddly inconclusive finale! Simply put, this film ended up creating far more questions than it answered. Here are a handful of them:
* At the end of the movie we are told the "others" who "chose to" are allowed to go free. Is this in reference to the programs escaping to the Matrix? Or the humans? Or BOTH?
* Have all the humans been freed, leaving the Matrix a haven for escaping human-acting programs to escape to and live in?
* If the humans have not been freed, how are they given the choice? I mean, is someone going to bother explaining to them the whole situation so they can choose or what?
And much, much more.
You see what I mean? I think the point I'm getting at here is that this movie isn't really interested in presenting us with answers so much as it is with piling on even more questions. That would have been fine if the first two movies didn't seem so determined to promise us a definite resolution by the trilogy's end. But in this case, I see this ending as the result of only one of two possibilities: either the Brothers W had simply painted themselves into a corner until it was apparent that *NO* resolution was going to tie up all the loose ends they had introduced by now, or they were simply so determined to leave the door open for additional sequels and franchises like books, comics, etc. that they tossed their audience out the window in favour of addon (and thus more moneymaking) possibilities.
In either case, it's obvious the Brothers W apparently just do not want their series to end and are determined to keep it going because they like it too much.
I should note that the big centerpiece battle against the machines is extremely wearing on the senses. Simply put, the scene as a whole simply does not "read" properly--that's a term we in the industry use to refer to how naturally the human eye is capable of perceiving what is supposed to be happening on the screen. In this case, it's physically impossible to follow everything upon a first-time viewing simply because it's simply all too much at once. COOL WORLD was so visually overwhelming and loud that people in the audience literally felt exhausted, got headaches and starting saying aloud that they wish they had some aspirin: the big battle scene here makes COOL WORLD feel like a cakewalk. Other filmmakers such as George Lucas are not only capable of choreographing their battles much more logically in terms of being able to be followed, but they also have the good sense to cut back and forth between various battles so that one scene doesn't grow wearing from dragging on and on too long. Unfortunately, the Brothers W turn out to be lousy editors in this sense, and they allow the whole bit to be so busy, so loud, so blurry, so confusing and so flat out and out grey-black-blue-aqua that I kept squinting at the screen the way I do when driving through a bad snowstorm. It was horrendous, and it comes close to making the movie self-destruct.
Now on a more positive note, the movie does inject very human situations and elements into the previously-already-established characters that make the film feel more believable than the usual sci-fi outing. Characters dying and such are elements to be expected, but Neo's being permanently BLINDED was not! This is not usually the sort of thing you see happen in movie trilogies, a well-known character being blinded for life in something like a sci-fi romp usually just isn't done because it's all too disturbing to the audience: something like sight is a precious thing, and it violently jerks the audience back to reality as such an element not only immediately reminds them of how eyesight loss can happen to anyone, but also of those out there who are physically unable to watch movies at all. But even though I'm not so sure it was a good idea to have such an ingredient here, give the Brothers W a good strong mark here for taking a risk in trying to up the drama and challenge for our protagonist.
In the end, I had had a good time watching the movie. But I felt empty and disappointed due to all of the previously-mentioned points. It had felt like you were listening to a teenager reading aloud a "Choose Your Own Adventure Book" you already knew by heart--and you knew that they had just managed to choose the most thoroughly blah ending in the entire "ending" selection when you knew there were so many cooler ones out there they could have picked instead.