A Major Disappointment

Rating: 6/10 (6 November 2003)

I think the Brothers Wachowski knew they had a dog on their hands with this one and figured that all would be forgiven if they simply threw $40 million at the Zion vs. Machines battle scene. Well, they were wrong. Yes, that scene was spectacular, but by the time it rolled around, I didn't really care what happened to anyone or anything in this movie.
How did things go so terribly wrong? I think the failure of "Revolutions" can be blamed on lack of follow-through. The first two films promised many things. For example, when Neo told the Architect near the end of Reloaded that "you better hope we don't meet again," and the Architect responds, "don't worry, we won't," I took that to mean that Neo and the Architect would have some type of showdown in the third film. Unfortunately, it turns out that the Architect was right. And at the end of the first film, when Neo told the machines that he was going to show a few things to the people trapped in the Matrix, I assumed that maybe we would get to see some scenes in future movies of Neo doing just that (i.e., flying up to people and freaking them out with all the super-human things he could do, or perhaps even making an appearance at a Superbowl half-time show). Well, nothing like that happened in the final film. Indeed, some very outrageous things involving Agent Smith had to be going on within the Matrix at the same time Zion was under seige, but we didn't get to see any of it.
Perhaps the most disappointing part of "Revolutions" is the failure of the Wachowskis to do anything interesting with the fact that Neo, at the end of "Reloaded," had "The One"-type powers outside of the Matrix -- he could actually stop the Sentinals with his mind. This suggested that perhaps Neo and the rest of the folks at Zion were still trapped within some type of Matrix, and I thought the third movie would begin by exploring this intriguing idea. Well, I won't go into too much detail, but the explanation as to why he was able to do such things outside of the Matrix was unsatisfying, to say the least.
This film simply did not work. I don't think the Wachowskis really had any clue regarding how to finish this story, and their lack of any good ideas in that regard pretty much doomed this final movie.