A flawed film which ends the trilogy with a whimper.

Rating: 4/10 (3 October 2005)

I was quite clear on what I thought about Reloaded, the action scenes inside the Matrix were good overall, but it was letdown by the scenes in Zion which I felt were mostly a waste of time. In that film, it didn't matter, I could sit through a few scenes I didn't like for the great car chase or the Architect scene. However in this film, I realised that Reloaded's flaws only emphasise the flaws in Revolutions.
Firstly, this film is all over the place as it is. Not enough time is spent on Neo who is the pivotal character of the trilogy, there are extremely long sequences just showing the war between man and machine in Zion, which definitely would have benefited from a few Neo and Trinity scenes as intermissions. The battle between the humans and the machines isn't presented well and it's boring to put it bluntly. However, it is made even worse by the fact that these characters fighting the machines were not developed enough in this film or the previous one.
Bottom line: The Matrix Revolutions is about a war between some humans and some machines which I just don't care about all that much. The Wachowskis had plenty of time to develop these characters in the opening section of Reloaded, and instead they wasted their time on a five-minute partying scene. By the time the war comes around, I don't know enough about these characters for it to sustain my interest in a short battle, let alone this massive attack on the city of Zion which takes up half of this film.
I was sitting bored in my seat during most of this film, because despite the visuals and special effects, I needed someone to root for during this battle, and the closest I got to this was the kid who was seen briefly during Reloaded.
This isn't the only gripe I have with the film, the whole thing is just bad to be honest. The ending to the trilogy was disappointing and underwhelming, as yet again the effects were great and everything, but I was expecting something really inventive to finish this whole trilogy off. Instead the final scene ends too quickly and it's predictable, recycling some of the ideas from the first Matrix film.
The Wachowskis failed big time on Revolutions, it lacks pretty much everything that made the first film exciting to watch, and everything that made Reloaded at least passable as a sequel. It's boring and doesn't deliver a satisfying ending to the trilogy after three films, tainting all the good memories of the previous two.