Here we go.......again! Yawn.

Rating: 7/10 (20 November 2003)

Less than 6 months after the underwhelming Reloaded, here comes Revolutions. And it's similarly underwhelming. Not quite as much as Reloaded, because it did have its moments. But all in all, not as good a conclusion as I had hoped. In fact, I begin to fear it's not a conclusion at all, but just the beginning of a long running franchise, possibly doomed to the likes of mini-series and TV movies, with unknown actors replacing the real stars and the whole thing ending up in an unhealthy, Galactica 1980 kind of stupidity.
That said, Revolutions is better than Reloaded. The dock combat sequence was very interesting, though the combat mechanoids are not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination. In fact the APU's are not even particularly well designed, from a combat point of view - those dangling ammunition belts are just woefully wrong and entirely out of place in anything except a Rambo film.
The sentinels swirled around like a shoal of fish, which was a nice visual touch, but I couldn't for the life of me understand why, once that many of them (thousands) had gotten into Zion, they didn't simply swarm over the defenders like bees from all sides at once. Would have made for boring cinema, I guess, but not very realistic. There were also a number of scenes involving shoulder launched missiles that reminded me all too much of Starship Troopers. Also, didn't the sentinels throw bombs in the first movie? Why didn't they do that in Zion?
At least Revolutions didn't have the sickly sweet, everything turns out fine for everyone, ending that Hollywood tiresomely trots out again and again. A main character dies! Love does not conquer all. Good doesn't triumph over evil without batting an eyelid. All good points in an otherwise lacklustre movie. Other good things include fewer endless martial arts scenes where the fight goes on, and on, and on, like everyone has Duracell's fitted.
A lot of plot points, which fans hoped would be explained, were glossed over, ignored, or given stupid answers. For example, Neo's ability to use his powers outside of the Matrix we are told is "because he is the One" and that's it. Pseudo-religious crap. And there's a limbo-like area between the Matrix and the Real World. More pseudo-religious crap. There are also several more "psycho-babble" moments where exposition goes crazy and you end up gritting your teeth, hoping the film will actually continue before too much longer, so that you don't start to nod off. Another thing which bugged me - the ships have EMP devices, but Zion does not? The number one way of defeating sentinels and the Zionists (yet more pseudo-religion there) don't think its a good idea to run up a few score spares? Instead they resort to men in armoured suits and bullets. Hmmmm. This kind of "let's write an exciting story, but not think what people would actually do in such a situation" writing is what really pi$$es me off with cinema today. Sure, the initial viewing may be favourable, because we can all overlook such things, but re-watch factor becomes less and less when we have our intelligence insulted by such awful plot failings.
By the way, am I the only person who finds the Oracle to get increasingly irritating as the movies have progressed? So smug, so "know-it-all". Gah! Shame she doesn't get her program erased!
On the bright side, my enjoyment of the film was boosted immensely by the appearance of Bruce Spence as the "The Train Man". Nice to see him on film again. A small role, but worth it.
All in all another underwhelming movie that cannot live up to its hype, or the success of the original. Mostly down to the FX crews ever raising the bar of our visual expectations. The extraordinary is now ordinary and we demand something spectacular in order to be wowed. Revolutions has its moments, and is worth watching, but its nothing special anymore.
The original will continue to have a place in my DVD collection, but I'll not be shelling out cash for the sequels. The Wachowski's may have come up with a great idea in "The Matrix" but time has proven them unable to take the idea and run with it.