Matrix Revolutions

How much better it would have been if Neo, in a last desperate attempt to defeat Agent Smith during the climatic fight, declared to his adversary, “This statement is false,” and then watched as Smith staggers around the muddy crater they’ve carved in the virtual street, muttering, “Does not compute…” until his head explodes? Arguably, this would have been better at keeping with first movie’s philosophical references than what actually did happen. Thus ends the Matrix trilogy, another movie series in which the sequels drag a truly innovative, enjoyable first film into the gutter. Yes, all things that have a beginning must also have an end. But does it have to end with such a whimper?

By now, the philosophical and religious threads from the first Matrix have all been worn through. So unexpected in a sci-fi martial arts movie, the Matrix’s koans and Cartesian doubt launched a thousand pop culture dissertations. But the koans had transformed into leaden monologues by the end. The writing in the first movie was like the bright grad student discussing epistomology late at night in the study lounge, with everyone just a little bit stoned. By the second movie, the conversation had become tiresome and repetitive, and you got the feeling that the grad student wasn’t so bright after all; the weed’s run out. And now, the suspicion has become conviction, you’re tired and hungry and just want to go home.

Yes, this posting is merely piling on. But what can really be said about a movie where there was a collective despairing groan from the audience when Trinity (so supercool from the first movie, so uninteresting in the third) said, “I have one more thing to tell you”? And where there was hearty applause when she finally (an eternity later, long enough for Neo to call 911, ride with her to the hospital, get the insurance statement in the mail for her ER visit, and contest the charges) expires from her wounds? By then, the audience had been fairly well tortured by this and all of the terrible dialog that had gone on before, but we still stayed because there was the glimmer of hope for redemption in a final Neo-Smith confrontation. We’re there for imaginative fight scenes, after all.

What we got was something that Superman II did better, and an unexplained mystical solution to everybody’s problems that just reeked of “we have no other way of resolving this” desperation among the writers. At least the semi-mystical solution in the first film was built up in a sensible progression, as Neo graduated from one metaphysical stage to another during the course of the movie. Here, the mystical was delivered without build up, merely as an afterthought to a muddily shot, computer generated game of human billiards that makes you long for the days of wire-fu and bullet time, days that were a mere six months ago.

The best, most imaginative effects were produced for the battle for Zion’s loading dock. Perhaps the high point was when you realized that this sequence would be what a 1st person 3D version of Galaga or Centipede might look like on the Sony PlayStation 5. Still, watching the big fight at Zion, you get the feeling that the US 4th Infantry Division could have wiped the floor with the human resistance. Like in Starship Troopers, the humans invariably got in close with oversized assault rifles to kill the bugs. We’ve lost the technology for stand-off weapons and explosives. No wonder the robot bugs win! In fact, humanity has lost the common sense needed to realize that one guy with an EMP device, whose sole job would have been to push the big red button on it every few minutes, would have stopped the whole machine invasion in its tracks. Clearly this is a future in which the bong has been passed around too much.

Well, we still have The Return of the King to look forward to. And no one has that sinking feeling before seeing the movie.

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