Changing Horses Midstream

Rating: Null/10 (9 November 2003)

I really enjoyed watching both The Matrix and Matrix Reloaded thoroughly, as well as the Animatrix. I even fought with friends who did not like the second movie, explaining that the nature of a middle movie was not to have all questions answered, but to build up suspense for the final chapter. I was very excited about seeing this moving this afternoon, and while I didn't totally hate it, I did think that it did not deliver the punch that many people were waiting for. I felt like there was too much action and not enough thought. I felt that some of the concepts that were so well developed were dropped and while in real life this may or may not be acceptable, in a story that we have been following since 1999, it is very disappointing. I hope that when everyone reads this, they understand that this is just reality from my perspective and not take it as me trying to bash the movie. I genuinely wanted to like this movie.
I really felt that the Matrix jumpers, from Morpheus to Neo, all deserved better endings. Do we save Trinity in one movie just to kill her in the next? And Morpheus seemed powerless in this movie, kind of like a back seat driver. Even Neo seemed not to matter as much in this movie. Ultimately, he was defeated in the end. His only job was to be assimilated by Smith in order for the Master Control in Machine City to delete the virus, which was Smith. Watch Reloaded again if you don't believe this next point. In Reloaded, the Oracle was never meant to be the mother of the matrix. When Neo assumes this, the architect sets him straight by sarcastically saying "Please!" There was no room for interpretation because of the way he said it. Many of us believed Persephone was living in the Matrix, researching human nature as she did with the kiss between herself and Neo. It was dissapointing to see her do absolutely nothing in this movie. It would have made for a great turn of events, as well as not left everything to the oracle. After all of the philisophical discussion of the first movies, I think that all of the violence and heartbreak of the last movie was uncalled for; it was a sort of betrayal to many of the fans that were hoping for more creative writing instead of a buyout to violence and "neat movie effects."
I have read a lot of comments and I wanted to say that I don't think that Neo was a program. I believe that the Matrix wrote programs for all humans that lived within it and Neo's role was that of "The One." Remember the line where Cypher says something like, "The Matrix tells my brain that this steak is delicious...." the Matrix does have the ability to add code to the human brain and interact just as it does with programs. This is also why it is hard to tell a program from a human in the Matrix. The movies did raise many interesting questions and it was fun while it lasted, and as Revolutions states, "Every beginning must have an end." I think this movie became too general and tried to cover too much and therefore lost focus on what is was truly supposed to be about. True: the trilogy had an ending. Also true: not a memorable one. Thanks for letting me express my opinion. If I did not enjoy this movie as much as the last two; I at least am glad that they were made :)