From groundbreaking to rolling in the mud in three easy steps

Rating: 2/10 (19 November 2003)

"The Matrix" was revolutionary. The Matrix Revolutions ought to have been wired into the matrix and used as a battery. If you want to see a man in a big "mech suit" yell a lot while he shoots a couple of big machine guns at a billion sentinels, then go see this movie. If you are looking for closure to the Matrix saga in a way that all resembles the innovation of the first movie, then do yourself a favour and skip this movie.
Spoliers ahead...
At the end of Reloaded, I thought for sure there were two Matrices - a layer of control within control... a second Matrix nested in the first one... a place where people who rejected the first could escape to without really escaping. Reloaded introduced the idea that each person had to agree, at some level, to be locked in the matrix. They had to accept it in order to be kept within it. Neo, as "The One" had power over the matrix because, in part, he would not accept it. Neo's amazing feat at the end of Reloaded in stopping the sentinels made sense that way - when Neo left the Architect to save Trinity, this rejection of the second "nested" matrix would give him power in the second Matrix too.
And so it was with bated breath I awaited Revolutions... thinking for sure that there would be some wonderful twist on this theme. And while I watched I waited... and waited... until the credits were scrolling. There was nothing revolutionary in "Revolutions". Just a straining of my "willing suspension of disbelief". Telling me that "The Source", some machine God (??) gives Neo power over machines in the real world... sorry, but that is too much to swallow. "The Matrix" used the question "what is the matrix" masterfully throughout the whole movie. To get the full meaning of the show, you had to watch it more than once. The show was simply overflowing with symbolism and allusion. Reloaded at least made you wonder. Revolutions just rolled in the mud of the ground that was broken by The Matrix.