Worst of the trilogy

Rating: 4/10 (22 February 2008)

Picking up where the last movie left off (meaning this film is of no use to viewers as a stand-alone movie by expecting you to see its predecessor) we pick up with Trinity watching over the injured Neo and our recently discovered survivor who we know from the previous movie is inhabited by Agent Smith.
Of the 3 films this 1 is unique because it doesn't start with a Trinity action sequence like the other 2 did.
1 of the themes explored in this movie is the idea of artificial intelligence, computers or programs able to comprehend human emotions and concepts much like the family of Programs that Neo meets in the station that exists as a transit point between The Matrix & the machine world.
The 1st hugely bad idea in the film is the coat check scene. This has really already been fully explored in the original movie when Neo & Trinity rescued Morpheus so this wasn't something we hadn't already seen. It also very closely mirrors going to find The Keymaker from the 2nd film so it's not like it hadn't been seen just once.
Once the film hits the 30 to 40 minute mark it really starts to drag its feet with the preparations for the war on Zion. It seems like at this point in the film they just ran out of ideas and decided to just drag scenes out for as long as possible whether they contributed to the plot or not regardless of how it effected the pacing of the movie in general.
Neo is incredibly stupid as are all the freed Zionites who have ever seen or spoken to Agent Smith. None of them recognise Smith's voice from the guy he took over inside The Matrix.
The Mech's defending Zion aren't anything new (Almost certainly stolen from Quake 2 or RobotJox, depending on your frame of reference). Their defence strategy is laughably American, shoot as many bullets as you possibly can in the hope of hitting something. (Clearly not a good idea when Zion obviously has limited resources?). I also didn't understand why they weren't using EMP weapons which would have been the quickest and best defence against electronic creatures like the squids. Zion had already shown they HAD EMP technology in film 1 (destroying the squid that boarded the Neb).
Now clearly they DO have EMP weapons as their using them to defend Gate 3 and the guys reloading the Mech's so why the hell weren't the Mech's fitted with them? It is obvious Trinity will die, really she has to for Neo to be able to truly destroy The Matrix and save Zion. Without the pain of her death he would never have enough power.
I did wonder exactly how he was going to get back into The Matrix without anyone to jack him in but they solved that quite nice with the machine intelligence doing it for him, leading of course to the final battle with all the Smith Clones.
Yes, it's ridiculously over the top and far too over done and goes on for too long. I assume by allowing Smith to infect him Neo then has the ability to control all the Smith clones and destroy them which in turns destroys the entire Matrix as Smith has become so many people in The Matrix.
In actuality by destroying all the Smiths Neo has simply reset The Matrix into its 7th incarnation. This is an incredibly weak and poorly explained ending which could have been done much better. as the ending of a trilogy this is not a good movie. It is not a good movie in its own right either.
The best of the trilogy as in most cases was the original. The 2nd and 3rd films really aren't worth bothering with.