MonsterVision > Modern Horror

Matrix Revolutions flop

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Marc Eastman:
Back when I was thoroughly disappointed, though fairly entertained, by The Matrix: Reloaded, Matrix loyalists were not to be swayed. Not because of what I had to say (though perhaps because of that as well), but because according to them there was a sense in which reviewing Reloaded didn’t count in the first place. Even if there were problems with Reloaded, it just didn’t matter, because it would all get sorted out in Revolutions. Criticizing Reloaded was like criticizing half a movie without seeing the other half. Once Revolutions came along, and things could be reflected upon in their entirety, they assured me, all would be right with the world. That, it turns out, was a bad bet.

The Matrix, as I’ve said, was a wonderful bit of mental candy (as opposed to, let's say, an actual mental meal) thrust into an action-rich world. It was a nearly genius endeavor which latched onto, basically, idealism (the philosophical version), ran with it, and presented it in such a way that people could think fairly seriously about the question, and be refreshingly entertained at the same time. The Matrix: Reloaded ran out of ideas (and how could it not really, the idea was over with the first movie), and made the grave error of thinking it knew the answer to something, as opposed to just knowing really good questions. Since it didn’t actually know any answers though, it had to just keep talking. Reloaded was the little monkey at a typewriter, but with an ego. “Eventually something I say will be interesting, they call it the law of averages or something..., look at me go.” But, there was some decent action, and I have to admit there were some entertaining moments. I would say that The Matrix: Revolutions ran out of ideas, but of course I’ve already said we’d run out before. No, what Revolutions does is just to chuck thinking altogether.

Where The Matrix made a go at a philisophical point of dispute, Revolutions, apparently having nothing else to go on, is a ludicrously self-indulgent rehashing of the Bible, or at least the highlight reel from the Bible. As if it's not bad enough that the thing spits bits of New Testament at each other, it also throws in bits of other biblical rehashings. Sure, the Bible is really cool, but when Frank Herbert did it his Messiah was blinded, yet could still see. He could even see better, and (Oooo) in a 'different way'. Let's do that. So it is that Revolutions has martyrdoms, gaping maws of hellfire, a blatant crucifixion reference, Philistines, a snooty Frenchman, and transforming robots.

Revolutions begins
right where Reloaded
left off (you don’t
remember where that is,
do you?), sort of. Neo
is in a sort of a coma,
and it turns out he is in
a place between The
Matrix and the real
world, although this is
referred to as ‘my
world’ and ‘your world’.
I suspect this is mainly
because none of it makes a lick of sense, and it seemed that we could probably steamroll right over ‘the place between my world and your world’ and people would just swallow it down, and we could move on. Whereas, if we said ‘the place between The Matrix and the real world’, someone might dip an eyebrow. Welcome to the world of Revolutions. If anything doesn’t seem to make sense, you’re in the right place. What can it possibly mean for there to be a place between The Matrix and the real world, what purpose does it serve, and how is it relevant to anything? The answer to all these questions is that we wanted to have a place where Neo could listen to a program talk about love. In the first few moments of the film Neo meets up with a program who has a wife and, I can hardly say it, the two of them have a child. A little girl program who is using this ‘between’ place to escape from ‘their world’ to The Matrix, where, I suppose, she can go on being a little girl program in the illusory reality that is The Matrix. This apparently saves the little girl program from being deleted..., because the movie says so.

Now, at this point you might be wondering what the hell I’m talking about, and frankly, so do I. But, wait. Soon Morpheus, Trinity, and Seraph are on their way to see Merovingian because he controls the ‘between’ place (seriously, you aren’t getting any more explanation from the movie than ‘between’ place), and they need to get Neo out. Our by now normal, and thus pretty boring, stunts get them into Merovingian’s S&M nightclub, which exists because the Wachowskis’ always wanted to do a scene inside an S&M nightclub, and yadda, yadda, yadda, Neo is freed. Now we’re back on our ship where Bane is doing, I must admit, a really good Agent Smith impersonation.

At this point we’re about ten or twenty minutes into the movie, and for all intents and purposes there’s about ten minutes left. The entire remainder of the film goes like this... One ship races back to Zion because they have the handy EMP that can disable the machines. Zion prepares for the arrival of the machines by getting ready hundreds of robotic exo-skeletons, because the Wachowskis’ played a lot of MechWarrior. Billions of rounds of ammunition are fired. Meanwhile, Neo takes the other ship to see the wizard of Oz, and then engages in a final battle with Agent Smith which makes no more sense than any of the fighting he did in the last movie. That's it.

Oh, there’s other stuff along the way, but not much. In fact, the scene where Neo decides he has to take a ship isn’t bad at all. It rather screams of drunk writers sitting around saying, “Pfff..., I don’t know. What do you want him to do now?”, but it’s not bad. There is also a generous helping of attempted character development among the residents of Zion, all of which is completely meaningless and useless. We get to look at a lot of nifty-looking weaponry, and we get glimpses of life in Zion. All of which, of course, is designed only to look cool, and without the slightest thought toward any sort of internal consistency. These people in Zion can build this amazing ‘retro-tech’ machinery, and live in a city that is not only underground but surrounded by a huge, concrete dome with massive portals, and they can’t put their MechWarrior pilots in some sort of cockpit that might offer a tiny bit of protection? They can build ships that fly using some anti-gravity hovering whosit, and EMP generators, but they don’t have hundreds of the bastards laying about, and haven’t devised a way to shield one generator from the pulse of another?

In the end, both sides are too strong for any of it to have any meaning. Zion has too much in their arsenal to be as afraid as they are, though they are not opposed in the least to saying that they are very scared over and over. But, since we want a really wicked battle we have to give it to them. To compensate for that, we have to give the machines even more. So now there are just billions of machines everywhere. So many that there isn’t the slightest hope that the humans can survive, nor the slightest reason that the machines haven’t gotten rid of them long ago. It may look quite neat, but it’s all nonsense. Neat looking nonsense, as Grandpa used to say, is better than two in the bush, but not by much. Of course, we heard in our last episode that Zion does keep getting destroyed, and really the machines are in perfect control, slaughtering these rebels down to a tiny population that are left to rebuild, so the whole process can start over. How that makes any sense, however, isn’t explained any more than any other piece of nonsense you might pick from the last movie.

And, don’t forget, there is much along the lines of various characters spouting such things as ‘Everything that has a beginning, has an end’ as though it were some Zen Koan, and we were all supposed to have some sort of epiphany. At the very end Neo makes a play at culminating all the ‘choice’ garbage (and choice garbage), but by that point there’s about as much thought going into things as you’d find in the average AfterSchool special.


I freely admit to liking the first movie quite a bit. The second movie was disappointing, but kept me fairly entertained about it. At some point during Revolutions I realized that I had been watching ‘The ship Morpheus is on races toward Zion, and we cut between this and the battle at Zion’ for going on an hour, and I couldn’t think of myself as anything other than bored out of my mind.

It looked really great, certainly moved along far better than the last one, and had all the action and flash you could ever hope for. If you want to go at it as something in the same category as XXX, or The Fast and the Furious, have at it, and good luck. You won’t be disappointed. If you want a movie to even pretend to make any sense, or have the slightest clue what it’s doing beyond really pretty effects, stay away from this one. I will say, however, that it did have really great music.

Marc Eastman:
I'm just curious who posted my review and why I suppose.

Loki:
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kkk:
=.=''' sad to say, i didn't really quit agree with you... this movie actually make sense to me...

ok, first of all, about "the world between matrix and real world"... actually you can think of that place as the "telephone line". when you're "calling" from the real world to "reach" matrix, you have to go through it. and when you "hang up/unplug", you'll have to "travel" back from the matrix, to the "between world", and finally back to the real world. what happened to neo is that he didn't reach the reacl worl in time and was stuck  in the "woeld between".

secondly, about that girl and the "love-talking-machine", actually the girl was a illegal program, a program that has no use of. that is why matrix is trying to delete her, and her father is trying to take her to the franch guy, so that he'll give her a usage, thus giving her the license to stay in matrix. (i might have wrong in this part because it's quite a long time since i last saw this movie). at the end the girl has gained the abi;ity to make the world more beutiful, so she will not be delete by the matrix.


and in case you don't know, the wizard of Oz is actually the old man, architecture... and the prophecy, the fat-know-it-all, is actually a program that human has put into the matrix... i'll explain more of the out-of-storyboard history background later...

for the invading part, it's not that the achine city don't want to destroy zion, it's that they cannot find it... somewhere in the movie they've exposed thier position, and the machine city start to attack... i think cyphur has given the location of zion to the machine city... and if they've build the emp field, there's not that much action to see anymore doesn't it... ;) you gotta admit that invading part is the second best action scene...

"eveything has the beggining, has an end"... this is the part that decide whether zion is gonna be destroy or not... in all the past version of matrix, neo is the one who said that line... and cause him to die... i think it's a "password" to eliminate certain program... this time, neo decided not tho say the line, and agent smith is the one who said it... so instead of deleting neo, smith was deleted...

ok... here's the history part, for those who didn't know... actually the world matrix was created by machine, like we've all knew from the beggining, and before this matrix that we are viewing, there are other version of matrix, and everything is almost the same. every version there is neo, agent smith, and end up that agent smith has destroy everything. and like what they all said, agent smith is a virus... to be more specifically, a program that was infected by virus... that is why he can create more of him, by infecting other program the same virus... neo is the unofficial anti virus program (the official nortan anti virus is Agents), and he's the only one who can delete agent smith... and in the first episod, neo can "deleted" agent smith, who is not yet a virus, thus the there's something wrong with the "agent smith" program, and so neo has created the smith virus.

to make things clear, virus is like a train that was out of it's rail... it's still a train, but the purpose, how it work, and most of the things has changed. agent smith's program was tweaked by neo when neo entered his body, thus neo created the virus version of agent smith...

i hope my explanation is well enough... to be honest, i too love the first episode better, hate the second, and love the third... and hopefully my post didn't offence anyone... anymore question please give it a shout, and hopefully i have the answer for you...

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