Better Than Reloaded, But...

Rating: 5/10 (11 November 2003)

So what we have is one outstanding first film, one throughly muddled second film, and a third that falls inbetween the two. (Spoilers follow)
What "Revolutions" has that is worth praising is...a tremendously ambitious and well done battle sequence (the defense of the city of Zion)...a bare minimum of the vague mumbo jumbo that weighed down "Reloaded"....Nona Gaye (in the role Aliyiah was to have)...seeing the City of Machines...and the final battle between Neo and Agent Smith (the opening of this in particular).
However, all is not right in the Matrix. First off, we spend most of the first half hour dealing with "the Trainman", Neo at this strange train station he can't escape, and a "family" of computer programs, and all for...what exactly? Most of the first hour or so has almost no bearing on what follows.
The nonstop action after that held my interest, sure. But Trinity's last scene was too long (do you really want your audience saying "get on with it" at this point?). And the Wachowski Brothers fall for that terrible Hollywood habit of having crowds cheering at the end of their film (a la the team winning the big game kind of moment).
Which leads me to ask this. Was anyone else struck by the fact that, at the end, we're basically back to square one? That is, the "war" may be over, but that still leaves most of humanity plugged into The Matrix, still like the battery Morpheus holds up in the first film. This is a happy ending?