Posted 22:21 by Grote 0 comments

The Obligatory Matrix Revolutions Review (WARNING: SPOILERS IN REVIEW)

What has become a tradition on Tuesday Nights, Jason Googash and I catch a flick before heading off to BW3s for 25 cent wing night. Tonight it was Matrix Revolutions. In all honesty, I'm not sure how I feel about the movie after only one viewing. It's not your typical trilogy ending. The war isn't won, the hero doesn't get the girl and in all actuality he doesn't even survive (maybe). Overall, I think it should been left alone as one totally, mind blowing movie (i.e. just the Matrix). There seems to be a paradigm shift in the story. As Scott Kurtz points out in his rant on how he didn't like the movie, we go from a war of liberation to a war about being left alone.

I think my biggest problem is, like others movies of late (Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings) Reloaded and Revolutions were filmed as one film and then broken up into smaller parts. I think this is where the movie fails. There is noticeable time between the first and second movies. I think that if they would have written the second movie as a stand alone film (say like, The Empire Strikes Back) using plots from the Animatrix and the video game, so not to make people not wanting to spend the time and money into peripheral products and then write the third film as a way to wrap things up (not necessarily changing much with the bigger plot points, but with the smaller ones). They could have had Neo discover his power in the beginning of the third movie along with Bane getting taken by Smith. Meanwhile Neo rescues the kid and the Oracle does her little change in the second movie (whatever that is, because I haven't played the game through).

This is not to say Revolutions is not a good action or science fiction movie. On the contrary, the fight scenes are great; they don't overuse the CGI effects (in fact I thought the machines forming a face that talks near the end a nice touch). Having said that, like Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within, it's not a good Matrix film. (I thought that if they had left the tag "Final Fantasy" off the aforementioned movie, it would have been better received). Whether it was because The Matrix had set the bar far too high for the sequels, or maybe it was the Wachowski Brothers foolishly trying to capitalize on something big Revolutions falls short of my expectations. The real question is if Neo was a Christ figure, who was he the Savior for? The humans or the machines? (If I ever decide to get a poll for my site maybe that'll be the first question...) I'll probably post an updated review once I see Reloaded and Revolutions on DVD. For now though, I'll just take the first movie and more or less pretend the second and the third don't exist.