GearBits

Review: 'The Matrix: Revolutions'

After watching The Matrix: Revolutions, the third (and hopefully final) installation of the Matrix trilogy, I found myself trying to choose among three words to describe the movie: tedious, trite, and unsatisfying. Warning: this review contains spoilers (but if you care, you've probably already seen it).

Regarding "tedious," the movie could have easily been 45 minutes long and still contained the same basic plot elements and storyline, and it might have actually been a better movie. The scene with the squids attacking Zion was about 400% too long. Trinity's death speech is about 1000% too long. The scene where Smith is trying to get Neo to guess that he has taken over a human form is just ridiculous -- I expected Smith to next say "It's me, Smith, the program...don't you recognize the voice, you idiot?" And don't get me started on the slow-motion effect (don't you guys have any other buttons on those CGI machines??).

Regarding trite, there were more cliches and predictable one-liners than I could even keep track of. The only two entertaining characters in the whole movie were Agent Smith and the Frenchman -- they had decent dialogue and were sufficiently animated as to actually make you care. In this film, none of the main characters had even as much personality as the machines they were fighting.

Finally, the ending was highly unsatisfying. Suddenly, in the span of about 5 minutes, we go from the end of the world to Paradise. And to add just a slap in the face, the brothers Wachowski made it blatantly obvious that they were leaving the door open for yet another sequel ("who knows, dear, we might see Neo again someday"). Gimme a break.

I was entertained about 30% of the time I was in the theater seat (not counting previews), with the remaining 70% of the time spent alternatively wondering "who wrote this stuff?" and "I wonder if my phone has service." Overall, my rating is a 5 out of 10. The first movie was good, if not great (9.5/10) and the second was somewhat disappointing (7/10), but the third was just a big, fat dud.

I didn't check ratings or reviews much before seeing the movie, but it appears my sentiments aren't mine alone. RottenTomatoes.com's aggregated reviews puts it at a rather lame 34%, and IMDB users rated it a fairly pathetic 6.5 (heck, even Terminator 3 got a 7.0). Here's hoping we've seen the last of Neo and his slow-mo gang.