Amazing movie in my opinion - hated and not understood by many

Rating: 9/10 (30 September 2008)

Matrix Revolutions is deliberately constructed as a puzzle in which you have to work out the complete picture for yourself. It contains some fundamental questions of philosophy, a war story of a hopeless struggle against the machines who besiege Zion and it comes to a conclusion which is not understood by many viewers. The philosophical questions are answered (e.g. some choices lead to a string of consequences which may often appear as predestination), the war scenes in Zion are overwhelming and the final scenes depict the reestablishment of harmony between body, mind and soul. The absence of this harmony being one of the major reasons for conflict and war.
The Wachowski brothers did also make some mistakes when designing Matrix Revolutions:

Scenes like the train station take a bit too long although they contain important hints for the story that is about to unfold. This way the movie loses pace at times. Some viewers also felt that the war in Zion occupies too much space - but come on, this is mankind's last stand so this fight is bound to have epic proportions.

The Wachovskis do NOT explain their story design and its implications. Viewers are expected to figure it all out for themselves. This is simply rejected by many people who -not without any justification- expect to be told a little more what the plot is all about instead of following hints in dialogues and imagery.

The philosophy is often criticised as basic. But the questions raised are fundamental by nature: choice vs. predestination, harmony of body, mind and soul, do humans define themselves through suffering etc.. Furthermore, how should machines completely understand deep mythology and philosophy of humans and depict that convincingly in their artificial construct known as the Matrix? The stereotypes in the Matrix (e.g. the Merovingian) are to me a natural consequence of machines trying to reproduce human myths and ideas.

But the negative points of Matrix Revolutions are by far outweighed by the positive aspects of the movie:

There is a colour code in all Matrix movies. Blue is the physical world, green represents mind/rationality and bright yellow or white stands for the soul of a being. All scenes in the real world have a blue hue, the Matrix is always somewhat green and e.g. the machine city, many images of the sentinels and the power lines from the fields where humans are grown - they are all coloured in bright white or yellow. This represents the separation of body, mind and soul which is overcome only in the final scenes of Matrix Revolutions where all colours are mixed in the sky's clouds - this is by the way the contribution of Sati to the revolution/recreation of the (new) Matrix.

The connection of the real world and the Matrix is the spirit or soul the machines acquire from the humans. Programs and machines now have emotions and feelings (remember the parents in the train station?). Even Agent Smith has some twisted soul. Neo can feel and manipulate the spirits of simple machines but he has significant difficulties to handle more complex machines like sentinels. Similarly, Agent Smith has to struggle hard to control the human called Bane who becomes schizophrenic in that process.

The energy which the machines drain from the humans is not so much physical or electrical power but mental energy (soul). Like the Architect said in Matrix Reloaded when Neo claims that machines need humans to survive: "There are levels of survival we are willing to accept!". So the machines tap into the souls of humans in order to get something their human creators could not grace them with: a real soul and real feelings. The machines are, however, willing to sacrifice these gifts in order to ensure their mere physical survival. It is quite an amazing outcome of the Matrix storyline: humans exist only because they are useful - they provide real feelings and emotions for the machines and they can even be used to control rogue programs in the Matrix which challenge the existence of the Matrix itself (Neo is used as a carrier for life-force in order to overcome Smith who represents death).

Neo has to finally realise that only his own sacrifice can end the conflict between machines and humans. He has to accept his evil twin brother Smith and reunite with him in order to become complete. This resonates with Asian Yin-Yang philosophy.

The Oracle has an interesting role. Neo has become too powerful even for Agent Smith and his duplicates. So the Oracle merges with one of the copies of Agent Smith in order to create the one copy of Agent Smith with enough power to really challenge Neo. It is the Oracle's deliberate sacrifice which finally leads to the death of Neo while he reunites himself with his evil opposite Smith - Neo has to realise that he cannot win against Smith and instead of continuing the final fight with Smith he chooses to sacrifice himself in order to end the war and the domination of the Matrix by Smith.

Sadly it's impossible to provide guidance for understanding the Matrix Trilogy without spoilers. The Wachovskis made some mistakes by not involving their audiences in the plot developments. They kept their ideas to themselves and only provided hints for the viewers to make their own discoveries. I was quite pleased by the challenges provided in getting a (rather) complete understanding of the Matrix Trilogy. But I can also imagine that many viewers were lost in the process and did not find the whole exercise worthwhile. As you might guess by now, I recommend that those who dislike Matrix Revolutions give this amazing movie another chance. I sincerely hope that my comments open up some new perspectives on a film trilogy that blended Sci-Fi, action and philosophy in such a brilliant and innovative way.