An awful excuse of a movie

Rating: Null/10 (28 April 2004)

This movie is about as disappointing as an end to a trilogy can be. The first movie was great, but these last two have shown what happens when the creators are two creative and are then given a massive budget to play with. Every stupid and ludicrous idea makes its way from the `genius' brains onto the screen because there is nothing stopping them. That's exactly what happened to this movie. To top it off, the dialogue is the worst it's ever been. The Matrix was not known for it's great dialogue, but it did well enough. Reloaded started to get bad, but Revolutions takes the cake. It's as if every character is required to say the most painfully clichéd things ever. The so-called `romance' between Neo and Trinity all but fizzles. At least in Reloaded we got a steamy love scene. In Revolutions, we get a few kisses and a really bad line of dialogue from Trinity.

The plot in this movie has become completely convoluted and we are dealing with characters for most of the movie that were introduced in Reloaded. The plot becomes more of a philosophical debate on life, which is fine, except that little of it makes sense. The highly sophisticated dialogues in the scenes with the Oracle are dumbed down completely by the simplistic actions the characters take. It's hard to care about a lot about them because they say ridiculously stupid things and despite all that is going on around them, they are completely unmoved by it. Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobi is particularly awful, as is Clayton Watson who plays Kid. Niobi was the tough and confident expert pilot when we first met her and she is in the end. She doesn't believe Neo is the chosen one, and she still doesn't in the end. Kid is the exact opposite of her and again is the same even in the end. I heard so many great things about Hugo Weaving's performance and then I saw the movie. He actually does the laugh Dr. Evil does in Austin Powers. He at one point makes his lips look like Steve Tyler's all while saying the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Someone said he should've gotten an award for his performance, and I agree, but probably not on which award he should win. The whole idea that Neo must make his own choices is supposed to be a big revelation that draws you into the story. Didn't we all learn that in second grade? Why is it taking Neo so long to figure that out, especially when it already was told to him in the first two movies? Many people have complained about the end of the movie, but that is not the worst part, the beginning and the middle aren't so hot either.

Reloaded featured an amazing scene on a freeway and some good fight scenes scattered throughout, but Revolutions has only two hand-to-hand fight scenes, one of which being the climatic battle between Neo and Agent Smith. Technically it has three, but since one of them involves Trinity, Morpheus, and Seraph shooting their way past guards in a room with columns, I tend not to count that one since we saw it already in the first movie. The final scene looks good except that both Neo and Agent Smith have grown two powerful for their own good and the final scene looks more like a fight scene from Superman. There is the battle of Zion, but the drab looking city is difficult to watch because you have no sense of where any of the characters are or what exactly the humans are fighting to save. Freedom, obviously, but no time is spent getting the audience to empathize with the humans. The machines the humans use to fight the machines look drunk, and the machine army seems more interested in flying around in pretty patterns than actually attacking anyone. And if they are supposed to be brutal and efficient killing machines, then why are they oblivious when humans start firing rockets at them? Also, if humans have learned how to generate such a large EMP without the use of a nuclear weapon, why do they still use machine guns? The vague ending makes you wonder if there is a fourth movie planned for the future, which would be unfortunate given the quality of this film.
Overall, the movie appears to be geared towards someone with higher intelligence than perhaps the writer of this critique commands, and if anyone does have that higher intelligence, then by all means share it with me so I may understand. Unfortunately, the Matrix Revolutions appears to be a dismal failure in concluding what should've been an amazing trilogy. Its complicated philosophical implications are watered down with action that is less exciting than in the first two movies. If you haven't seen Reloaded, then don't bother watching it or this movie. If you saw the second movie, then you probably have no choice but to subject yourself to the third one.