...more of the same, with nothing surprising, nothing any longer mind-boggling, and nothing most viewers couldn't guess would happen going in.
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"The Matrix Revolutions" is well named. It continues to go around and around and around. Sometimes, it's better to quit when you're ahead.
If you've been with the series since the beginning, you'll remember that "The Matrix" (1999) was an enjoyable sci-fi experience because it introduced the world to some mind-boggling special effects, and it had at its core an interesting, although not entirely original, premise. The film's makers, Andy and Larry Wachowski, informed us in the first movie that we were all living in a dream. Machines had taken over the world, and each of us "humans" was really a prisoner curled up in a little pod being fed a program that simulated our existence. These ideas were not unprecedented. The view of life as a dream had been around since the ancient Greeks, and the idea of machines taking over the world had intrigued moviemakers before--in the twenties with "Metropolis," in the fifties with "Forbidden Planet," and, of course, in the eighties with "The Terminator," among others. But the concepts had never been elaborated so thoroughly or so graphically until "The Matrix."
You'll also remember that in the first film a small group of human resistance fighters were doing all they could to thwart the machines while waiting for a savior, who turned up in the person of a computer hacker named Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), later called Neo, presumably the new deliverer of Mankind. The plot of "The Matrix" unfolded slowly, finally revealing the predicament the world was in and implying that Neo would save the day. It was fun. And it probably should have ended right there. But where would the profits have been in that? Sequels are a time-honored Hollywood tradition.
So, we got "The Matrix Reloaded" and "Matrix Revolutions," made back to back and released in 2003. It was a two-for-the-price-of-one deal. Frankly, though, one movie would have been enough, since there really wasn't enough material to spread out effectively over two complete films.
"Reloaded" started out several months after the first movie left off, the machines marching against the last remaining human city, Zion. Added was the script's exploration of free will versus fate, a point pursued only to a minor extent and which I had hoped would be amplified in the final segment, because the way it was handled in number two had simply left things muddled. Alas, it is not to be. "Revolutions" only expands upon the action-adventure aspects of the previous movies.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed "Reloaded" for its extended visual style, meaning that its sets and special effects were more complex and more fascinating than ever to look at. The second film was less innovative than the first film, true, but it was still enjoyable to watch. Unfortunately, this third episode, "Revolutions," does little new in terms of storyline or visual-effects. It is basically just more of the same, with nothing surprising, nothing any longer mind-boggling, and nothing most viewers couldn't guess would happen going in.
The usual supporting cast members are back in "Revolutions": Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus, now relegated to the background; Carrie-Ann Moss as Trinity, Neo's continuing love interest; Mary Alice as the Oracle, inscrutable as before; Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe, a resistance fighter; Harold Perrineau as Link, a ship's operator; Anthony Zerbe as Councillor Hamann, a political leader of the resistance; Helmut Bakaitis as the Architect, the creator, the godlike father of the Matrix ("What do you think I am? Human?"); and, most important, Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith, more powerful and more evil than ever.
As the movie begins, there are only some twenty hours left until the machines reach the human citadel of Zion, and it's up to Neo to rescue the human race. He must go to the Emerald City, speak to the Wizard, and free the land of the Wicked Witch of the West. Or something like that. If you're the sort of person who enjoys finding pieces of "The Wizard of Oz" in Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon," you'll have a field day with this picture.
As "Revolutions" starts, Neo is trapped between the real world and the Matrix, and only the Frenchman can help transport him between the two planes. Next, a whole lot of stuff happens inexplicably, just because it looks good. We meet some program people, for instance, who turn out to be more human than most humans. But practically nothing is made of it.
In fact, the whole movie comes more than ever to resemble a video game, with one encounter after another, each bigger and more eccentric than the ones it left behind, each with increasingly more-exaggerated special effects. The movie is overlong at 129 minutes, but if you take out all of the punching, kicking, shooting, somersaulting, jabbering, and intense staring, it's about two minutes, probably long enough. And don't forget the old war-movie clichés and red herrings, which don't help, either.
People in the film continue to indulge in the same manner of fortune-cookie philosophy they began spouting in the film before, like the Oracle saying, "No one can see beyond a choice they don't understand." This kind of pseudo-mystical dialogue permeates "Revolutions" for no other reason, I suspect, than to make the movie appear more profound than it really is. Apparently, the filmmakers expended their repertoire of abstruse ideas in the first film and had to resort to nonsense in the second and third segments. The "Architect." The "Source." The "One." Whatever happened to the magic and mystery of the first installment? They've been replaced by more diffuse language, more extravagant computer graphic imagery, and more mundane explanations. Arthur C. Clarke did not improve upon "2001" by over-explaining things in "2010." Neither do the Wachowskis improve upon "The Matrix" by taking us behind the curtain of Oz. More is not necessarily better.
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