One of the first highly popular film franchises has (presumably) drawn to a close, and after viewing the second and third installments, the first emotion that comes to mind is apathy.
Thankfully, the third film is several steps above the endless pontificating and tacked on action scenes that bogged down the second. However, after seeing the third installment, there is a feeling in the air of complete commercialism, and that the perfectly entertaining and passable first film should have just been left alone.
The Matrix Revolutions picks up where The Matrix Reloaded ended, with Neo (Keanu Reeves) in a coma after killing several robot sentinels purely through mental effort.
The robot army is drilling toward the last human city, Zion, and the full-scale war talked about in the first two films is getting closer and closer.
Neo is stuck in a spotless white train station, which is apparently some sort of limbo between the real world and the matrix.
Early on in the film, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) rescue Neo by striking a deal with the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson).
After that, Neo decides that to fulfill his destiny. He and Trinity, the love of his life, have to take a ship to the robots’ stronghold on the surface of the Earth. The two split with the rest of their group, who head back to Zion, presumably to offer the human forces aid in their battle against the robots.
Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) is still around too, multiplying himself in the matrix, despite the best efforts of The Oracle (now played by Mary Alice).
The film works much better than Reloaded, because the action scenes are actually exciting.
The exciting human/robot battle, where the humans occupy mechanized vehicles with guns for hands, is better than anything found in the heavy-handed and boring The Matrix Reloaded.
The ending is the reason many people may leave this film with such a bad taste in their mouths.
For such an epic series of films, the ending is shockingly anti-climactic, and actually leaves an opening for another sequel. For anyone paying attention to the subtext of the films, it is obvious what must happen to Neo, but for some reason, this is treated with no severity at all, and it is almost as if nothing happened.
As a stand-alone sci-fi action flick, The Matrix Revolutions works rather well. However, The Wachowski brothers should just cash their huge checks from these films, and not milk their original artistic vision any further.
Chuck DelRoss can be reached at cdelross@temple.edu
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