There is (Still) No Spoon

Rating: 4/10 (7 November 2003)

Here is wisdom: Everything that has a beginning has an end. A long, plodding, painfully drawn-out end. Here is more wisdom: Some things are better left to the imagination. There is no spoon.
The Matrix trilogy limps to an less-than-satisfying conclusion in The Matrix Revolutions, which makes a lot of the same mistakes that made Reloaded such a disappointment. How did this happen? The first movie was so cool, so exhilarating. It nodded politely to all its blended sources, before pouring them all together and creating its own intriguing story, with layers of reality stacked helter-skelter. It created a sensation, defined moviemaking for a generation, and inspired musings by fans ranging from obscure ramblings on websites (um, hi there) to doctoral theses. Forget The Phantom Menace - The Matrix was the real successor to Star Wars. And that, I think, is the problem. The Matrix series has become so intent on itself as post-modern myth that it forgets to be fun. Both sequels ratcheted up the mumbo-jumbo while discarding the endearingly loopy pseudo-religiosity that gave the first movie its charm. They increase complexity and reduce joy. There is no reason whatsoever why the sequels should turn out to be more talky than the first one, which had to set up the whole scenario in the first place, but that's exactly what happened.
I won't bother too much with plot summary, especially since it's so convoluted and strange, expanding on the revelations in Reloaded about the nature and history of the Matrix. Anyway, the Bad Guys are still on their way to trash Zion, and Agent Smith is still replicating like a crazed Xerox machine in a bid to take over the Matrix.
Revolutions, like Reloaded, errs in setting comparatively little action inside the Matrix itself. The Matrix, and the heroes' ability to distort its reality to their advantage, was the element that made the original stand out, and gave it the wow factor that made it a modern classic. It's the series' best card, but they seem reluctant to play it. It was far more dramatically effective to dream of Zion than to see it, and that was before we knew that it looked like some kind of industrial-park hippie commune. There is too much of Zion in Revolutions, too much of its unwashed squalor, its strange caveman fetish, and the stuffy school board that runs it (including Cornel West, whose acting skills suggest he should stick to extorting money from Harvard, or Princeton, or whatever school he's milking now).
But Reloaded gave us a nifty car-chase set piece to partially redeem itself for being so dull and earnest. Revolutions instead gives us a slug-match at the rusty gates of Zion between invading robo-squids and the goofily impractical weaponry of Zion's defense forces. I need to talk about these for a sec - they have these giant robot frames with machine guns in each hand, but with no targeting system or any kind of shielding for the operator. Who designed these things? Undertakers? The fight scene itself is big and loud, and not without visual dazzle, but it's nothing you haven't already seen, and better. The in- Matrix theatrics are limited to a floor-to-ceiling shootout in the basement of a nightclub, and the final fistfight showdown between Neo and Agent Smith. They are amazing scenes of technical artistry, but then they're over.
The Matrix series provided the perfect vehicle for Keanu Reeves, who is, to put it kindly, not a deep actor. Reeves has made the most of his spacey quality, and turns his flatness into an impressive sort of Zen charisma. There's really no other actor who could have pulled it off as well. And though she is more talented, he and Carrie-Anne Moss do have a certain quiet chemistry together. The real disappointment in Revolutions is Laurence Fishburne. He was perfectly cast as the inscrutable master, communicating wisdom and self- possession, with just the right leavening of humor. In Reloaded, he had that awful scene where he bellowed that weird speech on the rock in Zion -
Morpheus should never have to raise his voice - but his freeway sword battle was thrilling. By Revolutions Fishburne looks pudgy and spent, and doesn't get any good scenes. It's as if Morpheus is so far past his prime that they only keep him around out of pity.
There's still Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith. Weaving's unmistakable stilted line deliveries have become part of film lore, perfectly capturing the sense that something about the world was slightly. . .off, and one of the subtle signs that the machines' understanding of humanity was incomplete. In Revolutions Smith is working solo, and becoming a threat to human and machine alike. He has an entourage of clones, though the effect is more comic than chilling.
Revolutions also sees the return of the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson) and his chilly consort (Monica Bellucci). I never understood these characters' purpose, and still don't. Their presence in the second movie seemed like an unnecessary detour, but one imagined they were being introduced because they would become significant by series' end. They don't - they actually get less screen time in the final chapter than the second. This is probably just as well, since whenever they were on screen in Reloaded, it stopped the movie dead.
The ending is obtuse, and leaves you going, `Well, NOW what?' If the Wachowskis hadn't announced that the trilogy was ended, I would think they were leaving themselves open for a fourth movie (`The Matrix Obfuscations', perhaps).
This review ended up being little more than a litany of complaint. But mulling over the movie, one thing was clear: I wish they had just left the first movie alone. A bad sequel is a kind of betrayal, as any fan of `Robocop' or `The Hidden' will tell you. Oh, well, while I'm at it, here's a prediction off the top of my head: the next Star Wars movie, when it finally comes out, is gonna suck too. You're welcome.