Permanent and Fatal Errors

Rating: 5/10 (10 November 2003)

In the Matrix Revolutions I found a cine-surrogate for a man with whom I once had the misfortune of discussing Reloaded during the summer. He didn't understand it fully of course but he had plenty to say about it, oh yes, it was profound but he wasn't sure why and despite proclaiming most of the people who'd disliked it were probably 'stupid', he managed to deliver a soliloquy on the story full of ideas which said absolutely nothing. Revolutions conception echoes this wholly-thinking, empty headed idolatry with pixel perfect precision.
A film about the death of humanity, it ironically lacks the same with lifeless characterisation perhaps modelled more on your common domestic appliances than any real person. Despite all the talk of the forthcoming apocalypse I found myself rooting for the sentinels and Monica Belluci's cleavage, wondering why you'd want to survive in a world so tortuously bleak that it may be likened to living in Iceland all year round - where culture is so soul crushingly fatalist that the only topics ripe for discussion are death and metaphysics. OK, its wartime but the inhabitants of Zion who don't even enjoy a municipal shopping arcade or a local radio station must feel like they've been living through the blitz except thats its lasted 100 years! Worst of all heres a city where God, Neo-help us may or may not be Keeanu f'ing Reeves - a man with less emotional range than a sentinel with a stroke. You have to admire their will to fight in the face of such monumental obstacles especially in light of the catch-22 that characterises their predicament. Live in the real world and you've got death and an industrial eyesore to look forward to, get plugged back in and you may be bored to death listening to people who either witter on about the meaning of choice or worse find they're prone to making statements like 'what just happened could not have happened any other way' or 'she'll kill us all, shes in love!' Please Trinity, go ahead - SHOOT, i'm ready.
The original films infusion of high concept and existential crisis kept the philosophy and the minutiae of the plot where it belonged, in the subtext and therefore with the audience. Reloaded in contrast played like a computer game with inserts written by a philosophy undergraduate - painfully laboured, expositionary dialogue and the worst Q and A in modern memory bolted onto a plot that apparently was going to convince us this was more than just a moderately clever sci-fi actioner, yesss indeed, this was a semi-religious experience! Techno-theology would you believe. You wouldn't? Thought it sounded like the self-important pontifications of films geeks who read the screenplay to Star Wars instead of the bible and registered themselves as 'Jedi' in the last census? Well you can go to hell, this is no trilogy for non-believers.
The third film tempers down the bogus profundities and those tired myth making questions but the faith motif still dominates, yes, its an allegoricaust! Just as the characters (we'll call them that for now) must believe in Neo's divine credentials, we are asked to take a far greater leap of faith - namely that this all means something. That beyond the pre-school truisms (everything that has a beginning has an end, etc...) there is a dense, intellectually challenging story onto which a terrible script has been grafted, presumably by accident (perhaps the machines did it). The less they say the greater the ambiguity and the harder we work but hang on, what if this was the movie version of a kinder surprise egg without the toy inside and the filmmakers were in fact trying to preempt audience response by alluding to a grander design safe in the knowledge it will get buttons pushed the world over? The gag is this is it, there is no more. There, don't you feel stupid?
This may be one of the first blockbusters specifically designed for the internet and fan boy community. With so much left deliberately underdeveloped and unexplained it'll be mecca for the terminally bored who'll no doubt write thousands of words on it when it deserves little or no attention. Fortunately I'm not falling into that trap.
Watching Revolutions you feel it could have been written by a computer, ergo we bear witness to the systemic anomaly that ultimately leads to permanent and fatal errors. Its not all bad. The battle for Zion is impressive - visceral and exciting but the fact that this is the film's best sequence, an action set-piece rather than a moment of character development, testifies to the fact this baby has a weaker core than an apple dropped into a bowl of maggots. The 2nd and 3rd films crucially lack the economy and tight plotting of the first film that, combined with what felt like an original and innovative design, hid the shortcomings of the characters. This is all too evident in these joyless sequels where flabby plotting and ruinous doses of sentiment and exposition dominate (Was there any scene more painful that the demise of the one of 'major' characters?) At the end its all over but it isn't, I enjoyed it but I didn't - A load of old pixels? That I believe. Can we forget all about it now please?