Once again, I plunked down my money to see the latest Matrix movie sequel. One thing I can safely say is it will make a TON of money because it opened simultaneously in 10,000 theaters worldwide…all at the same hour, which the distributors/producers called “zero hour”. It started showing at 9:00 am here in Indy, although I didn’t go to see it until after work.
Before going to see it, I read a review of it at CNN before going to see it. The review in general didn’t look favorably upon the movie, but bowed to the inevitablity of a huge blockbuster weekend. The review also compared it to a video game, which after seeing the movie, I can understand. There are many scenes which seem to have a “video game” feel. And speaking of video games, I’m guessing that the Enter the Matrix video game probably filled in some plot points, but didn’t contribute too much overall to the trilogy.
SPOILERS AHEAD
A majority of the movie doesn’t even take place inside the Matrix, but in Zion, on the ships (Hammer and Logos), in the tunnels, and in the machine city. While it wouldn’t be a Matrix movie without some action, it certainly didn’t have as much action as …Reloaded. In fact, most of the action seemed a bit…gratuitous. The only really compelling action is when the machines finally invade Zion. The APU’s (didn’t catch what that stood for) seem like the Caterpillar loader from the movie Aliens, but on steroids and with Big Ass Guns[TM]. The scene at the Hel-Club was rather lame overall. It just seemed like some scenes from the original Matrix movie.
As far as the characters go, many of them are back. The “Kid” is back, and has a larger role, though we still don’t find out his name. Agent (or Agents) Smith is back, and in fact he is the only agent there is, although there a lot of him. BTW, I have to add that Hugo Weaving has a great evil laugh. Commander Lock doesn’t seem like as much of an asshole in this movie, though now we can more or less understand what he has to deal with. Bane is back, and the actor Ian Bliss does a good job with the speaking style of Agent Smith. The Oracle is back, played by actress Mary Alice this time, and the Wachowski’s do an okay job explaining the switch. The Architect is back, but only with a small scene at the end with the Oracle. Morpheus, Trinity, and Neo are all back, of course.
In general, I don’t want to get too much into the movie, other than to say that the scene at the end with the Oracle and the Architect mostly sums it up. It didn’t dawn on me until a few hours afterward. In a way, the movie (or at least the Matrix mythology) has a lot of duality. The Oracle is a black female, while the Architect is a white male. The Oracle is good, the Archtect is bad (depending on your point of view for both of them). In explaining the Architect to Neo, the Oracle says that he exists to balance the equation, while she exists to unbalance it. I think another way to put that would be to say that the Architect is quantitative reasoning, while the Oracle is qualitative reasoning. Both the Architect and the Oracle both want the same thing – they want the war to end (of course, so does everyone else). They just have different ideas about the best way to do it.
END SPOILERS
When I was leaving the theater, I heard someone saying to a friend, “The Matrix – a love story.” I thought that was pretty funny, especially because it seemed to fit…to a point. Not that you should get the idea that it was real love story. I wouldn’t call it a much of a love story. I wouldn’t even call it much of an action movie. It actually just seemed like the only point of the movie was to make money rather than entertain. It was an okay movie, but I didn’t feel it was as entertaining as The Matrix: Reloaded or even the original Matrix which at least had the good fortune of being original and novel. As a sequel, of course, …Revolutions isn’t going to be that novel or original, but even …Reloaded had some new and interesting stuff in it.
In Kevin Smith’s movie, Clerks when Dante and Randall are comparing The Empire Strikes Back to Return of the Jedi, Dante says he thought Empire… was a better movie. He goes on and explains the cool things that happened in Empire…, while summarizing his feelings by saying, “All …Jedi had was a bunch of muppets.” I can sympathize with that statement, and borrow it to say that all …Revolutions has going for it is some sentinels and APU’s. Will I see it again? Probably, but maybe I’ll wait until it hits the second run theaters or comes out on video.
