Den Beste complained about having to watch what he read for a while due to the likelihood of spoilers from The Matrix: Revolutions being broad blog topics. For what it's worth, Mr. Den Beste, this topic meets your expectation.
The following article is chock-full of spoilers and unvarnished opinion about The Matrix: Revolutions. Do not click "Continue Reading" if you don't want to have the movie spoiled. To steal a theme from Reloaded, the choice is yours.
Carrie-Anne Moss sums up this movie in one classic sentence, right before she proves why she's easily one of my favorite movie heroines: "I don't have time for this shit." She says this while listening to the Merovingian talk about wanting the Oracle's eyes in exchange for Mr. Anderson's freedom. Immediately after she snaps out this terse remark, she does some sort of somersault, kicks a pistol out of some guy's hand, and reverses the tactical situation: The supercilious 'Merv', as she refers to him at one point, winds up with a Beretta (model 92, I think) planted firmly against his forehead. The tarted-up Monica Bellucci (who's also in the "been drawn on by Trinity" category) tells her boyfriend that yes, Trinity will shoot. Miss Trin then thumbs the hammer back and notes that she's tired of waiting and that she doesn't mind dying since the Merovingian would go with her. Classic Mexican standoff.
This all takes place in the S&M club from hell. There's more latex rubber, PVC, and other vinyl/leather being worn than I ever care to see again, but yet there's still a lot of copiously displayed flesh. Even the bloody guards to the place are kitted out as if they were playing for bit parts in "Dungeon Torture Paradise" or something. A buddy of mine wisecracked that every S&M shop in Australia must've been cleaned out to shoot that scene. I'd believe it.
The lead-in to the S&M club gives us our one good gunfight in classic Matrix format, wherein Trinity, Morpheus, and that annoying Seraph go shoot up some guards and barge into the club. That's a plus, but it's the first and last time that something really nifty happens. (Admittedly, the trio walking past an advertisement for Tastee Wheat was amusing.)
The other good line in this movie is uttered by Neo early on. He's stuck in a subway station and has just finished talking to the Matrix's version of Apu along with his good-looking wife, plus their annoying kid. Neo gets whipped on by some dirty-looking maniac named the Trainman, who's on the Merovingian's payroll. He's apparently built some sort of subway system, but its exact place in the grand scheme of things is unclear to me at this point, and we don't get much explanation about the Trainman. I just got the feeling that a lot of effort had been spent building this guy up, and then he just goes away. Anyways. Neo gets up from being slapped around and decides to walk down the track to get out of 'Mobil Station'. He exits stage right and then reappears shortly stage left. He then utters "Shit" in a disgusted manner.
That's my reaction to The Matrix: Revolutions. I'm not a disciple of this series. I like them kinda-sorta and I've got the two movie releases. Revisited and Animatrix I don't have. Thus I may not be fully part of the whole mythos, but still. Anyone who goes into Revolutions expecting something wonderful will probably be sorely disappointed. It's a great movie and all, but it struck me as being notoriously absent of what I considered to be the heart of Matrix mythos, i.e. significant questions of belief and questioning reality. Toss in leather-clad chicks who probably fit the definition of "weapon of mass destruction" plus the Agents, and you've got a good movie.
This ain't your daddy's Matrix film. Instead, it's more of a mix of Mobile Suit Gundam, Return of the Jedi, and maybe Starship Troopers. Much of the movie is concentrated on the battle for Zion, but it's an unsatisfying battle despite considerable effort expended by the effects team. We know that the Zionists (hee hee) know just about everything about the advance of the Sentinels and their drilling rigs. They pretty much know where the things will break through, and it's clear that they're prepared for that. That's nice. But we're treated to a sight of mobile suits (as opposed to mecha, which I think is reserved for variable-configuration stuff) trudging around like the Colonial Marines' power loaders with large-caliber weapons and so forth. However, they forgot to put an enclosed cockpit on the things. Bummer.
The Sentinels do finish their drilling of course and the firing begins. It's pretty impressive, and one would think that as withering as it was, not much could survive it. Assuming that not every round is a tracer round, these guys were putting out some serious fire. Of course the Sentinels breach the defenses of the humans, and an all-out slugfest begins. The problem here is that the defense of Zion is relegated to a handful of "APUs", the name given to the mobile suits, some people armed with ersatz rocket launchers, and (later) a series of gun turrets mounted on the Zion air traffic control tower. That's it. Off-hand a century or two to prepare, and that's the best that can be come up with. I suppose the vast majority of the people were too busy wearin' next to nothin' 'cause it's hot as an oven and dancing at Morpheus' love shack to build more of a defense.
All is not lost---the rockets are pretty effective. Or at least the ones we see; there's never much to suggest that many of the troops are deployed. There's a fundamental disconnect between reality and the opinion of the Council which may have contributed to this. The commander of Zion's defense says that he would have given every man, woman, and child a weapon and sent them to the dock in order to repel the Sentinels. The old white-haired lady who seems to run the show announces in an arch voice that perhaps it's better that he doesn't run things beyond the defense. Right, lady. This isn't exactly the first Gulf War wherein our people kinda ran over defenseless Iraqis. Rather, it's more like Rorke's Drift (seen in the 1964 classic Zulu) with the potential to turn into the battle of Isandhlwana if not careful. I concurred with the commander, and was half-expecting to see something out of Enemy at the Gates, namely "The one with the rifle shoots! The one without, follows him! When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots!"
Instead, we see precious little of the surprisingly effective rocket troops and the entire defense of Zion is seemingly left to the mobile suits. I would have expected that the bloody tower would have been the focal point of pouring fire into the incoming Sentinel horde, but I suppose not. You must unlearn what you have learned, eh.
The Zion battle sequence comprises a lot of this film, it seems. I didn't clock the thing, but an awful lot happened without the presence of Trinity, Mr. Anderson, or the participation of Morpheus. Instead, we got to see a lot of Will Smith's wife (yawn) and a standard base under attack. News flash: That's been done better, nearly a quarter-century ago. Two words: Echo Base. The Battle of Hoth was far more interesting, and held my attention. This didn't.
Moving along, we find that Bane, the assimilated (is there any other word for it?) crewman, exhibits plenty of Smith when he gets up and starts sounding like Smith. In all honesty, that was about the only creepy thing in this flick. I don't know if Hugo Weaving or Ian Bliss was doing the talking at this point. Bane's dialogue conveyed (nay, screamed) "SMITH!" and I thought this was an interesting sequence. Bane/Smith manages to ruin Trinity's day at one point, and really does a number on Mr. Anderson. But, as Jason Mraz writes, "It all amounts to nothing in the end." Mr. Anderson discovers the burning truth behind Bane after receiving God-only-knows how many clues and we see him copy Luke Skywalker on Dagobah as he swings for the fences with Bane.
One other sequence is noteworthy on a positive basis, and that's the approach to the machine city. Trinity and Mr. Anderson become the first humans in a while to see the real sun while practicing their ballistics. I thought something was going to be said, but it got glossed over, unfortunately. Or perhaps skewered over.
Making an immediate segue, the Oracle (played by Mary Alice, replacing the deceased Gloria Foster) is revealed to us as more of a grand scheme plotter as opposed to a mere mystic. She's apparently on speaking terms with the Architect, 'cause they share a strained exchange at the end of the film. Nevertheless, she seems to paint the guy as the ultimate Robert S. McNamara, endlessly balancing equations in a presumptive effort to retain control of the Matrix.
Now, the Ugly:
YOU BASTARDS, YOU KILLED TRINITY. She dies. 'nuff said. My favorite human of the bunch and she's dead. Great.
Agent Smith: To quote Ellen Ripley, "Did IQs drop sharply while I was away?" I know that part of the Smith arc is that he has slipped a gear. More than slipped, say stripped a gear or two. Part of his appeal was his understated menace, the man in the gray flannel suit who was ready willing and able to kill you. In Reloaded, his intensity ratcheted up a notch and he developed a healthy sense of ominous humor. Revolutions ruins him. After assimilating the Oracle, he (or one of himself) busts out laughing. Not in the "hmm hmm hmm" mode, but in the "YAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!" mode. It's about as disturbing as seeing Sybok laugh in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was supposed to be. Later on, the big fight sequence with Smith v. Anderson for all the marbles left me sorely annoyed. The climatic battle that now is to save mankind and machine from the evil anti-Anderson, and all we can manage is something that looks like it's from Superman II or some children's power fighting cartoon. But wait, that's not all: As Smith continously fails to kill Mr. Anderson, he starts whining like a Scooby-Doo villain.
What the hell. "It's not fair! You tricked me!" Is this the best Andy and Larry could manage for a character who once previously stated, "Hear that, Mr. Anderson? It is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of your death. Goodbye, Mr. Anderson." We see the phlegmatic and intense killing machine of the first two movies reduced to a pale copy of Khan Noonien Singh in the final moments of his existence aboard U.S.S. Reliant.
Bottom line: Bane was a better Smith than Smith in this movie. I don't blame Hugo Weaving. I blame the jerk who gave him the orders to act that way.
The third strike against this film was the ending. I half-expected that kid to break out in song at the close, singing "...gonna be a bright, bright, bright, bright sunshiny daaaaaaaaaaay."
Three strikes, you're out. My two favorite characters either died or were rendered shells of themselves, and the movie spent way too much time on worthless battle sequences (I'd prefer the Burly Fight from Reloaded at this rate...) or treacly interpersonal moments between people who I didn't care whether lived or died.
The upshot of this viewing was that I saw Galadriel making an appearance in the Return of the King trailer. Woo hoo. She's the uber-babe of the whole LOTR series, and the middle entry was far weaker because of her absence.
Addendum: It struck me that the machines won. Mr. Anderson is seemingly dead, Smith is eradicated, and some argue that the Matrix has been reloaded yet again. An agreement was secured whereby some humans would remain in the Matrix, and so basically the entire truce is dependent upon a malevolent machine intelligence that probably has as much notion of honor as it does love or affection and the effect those two can have on the minds of men.
We've come a long way from David Lightman and Professor Falken tricking Joshua into a self-defeating loop of atomic tic-tac-toe. We've come full circle, perhaps. The machine intelligence found that Mr. Anderson's "choice" was to give the machines what they wanted. I betcha as soon as the human guard is lowered and the bodies start slappin' (from doin' tha wild thang (yes, the Pundit knows some of his 1980s music, and this is Zion where nobody seems to understand that death could be coming at any minute and should be fought), the Sentinels return.
This movie was thoroughly unsatisfying, downright annoying, and I'm sorry I paid what I did to see it. The fourth movie better be in production.
Posted by Country Pundit at November 7, 2003 10:51 AM