Good idea gone wrong ... again.

Rating: 3/10 (19 November 2003)

Horrendous! I want my seven Euro back. This movie was the death blow to what the good idea that was half-beaten to death by the "Matrix: Reloaded." After that second movie with it's unnecessary first hour of footage, the "Matrix: Revolutions" finally destroyed all hope of resurrecting the revolutionary (no pun intended) 1999 film, the "Matrix."
Where to begin? I suppose, first of all, dialogue. Cheap, trite philosophy from Keanu Reeves? No thanks. Uninspired speeches given to men going to battle robots that can swim through air with no sort of propulsion apparatus? No thanks. Insincere, hokey love duet between Keanu and Carrie-Anne Moss? No, no, no. Why did he bring her back in the second one? To spite me?
To quote a friend of mine, "I have seen this thing in other movies ... it's called acting, and it just wasn't in [the "Matrix: Revolutions"] at all." Now, though I want to agree with this, is a little unfair. Hugo Weaving acted quite well, as usual, but the lack of acting skills from nearly everyone he interacted with made him appear to overact at times. Sorry, Hugo.
Also, although I realize some of the following examples will be stretches, but I feel I must mention them, there are the rip-off scenes. First, the same friend who commented above also said that he appreciated the scene where Jada Pinkett Smith flew the ship (or whatever) into Zion and EMP'ed all the robots more when it was the Millennium Falcon escaping the Death Star. Sorry, Will, your wife just isn't Billy Dee Williams. Oh yeah, Ben Affleck from "Daredevil" called for you Keanu, he wants his superpower back. To put Agent Smith in a human body only to get killed after he accomplished next to nothing in it ... great idea Wachowskis. And the mech robot thingies... seemed stolen from "Aliens." I know that's a bit of a stretch, but if I imagine a military version of the cargo loader that Sigourney Weaver fights the Queen Alien in, it would be one of those. Plus, that speech Captain Whoever gave before the battle seemed like a cross between "Patton" but dumbed down to "Independence Day" proportions. And the whole of the movie that happened outside of the "matrix" (which really only began in the second film) has always seemed to me a rip-off of the man vs. machine war that started in "Terminator," only the machines are more modernized with special effects.
Also, this film tossed in a bunch of incredibly useless extra characters like the Trainman and Sati and her parents. I say these are useless because Morpheus and Trinity go to see Merovingian and Persephone in an encounter which lasts about five minutes. In fact, I believe Monica Bellucci's cameo was merely to point out that she has an ample bosom as her one line was utterly meaningless. The new extra characters detracted from the old ones and the old ones just seemed tossed into the script. Ugh!
To the Wachowskis, great idea with the first one guys, but when you expanded the world of the matrix, you bit off more than you could chew. The entirety of the trilogy should have been contained within the matrix in a fight to free the minds of all the other humans or something, but the Zion, machine world, and the Matrix was just too much to handle in three movies. Also, if you guys want to philosophize in that manner, go to a Star Trek convention or brush up on your Kant and Rousseau first. Seriously.
Conclusion: I recommend seeing this movie only if it's raining and you've watched every one of the movies you own six times or more and this just happens to be available. Otherwise, don't waste your money.