Why The Matrix Revolutions is Great To read the reviews for The Matrix Revolutions, you would think the final installment of the wildly ambitious sci-fi trilogy was a remake of Battlefield Earth. Having just seen it, I have to say to all the detractors, "Give us [the moviegoers] a fuckin' break!" I'm not exactly sure what these people expected, but apparantley a movie that is one of the most visually thrilling, fast paced and epic two hours ever developed to celluloid just isn't good enough. [SPOILERS AHEAD] The argument against The Matrix Revolutions is essentially this: All of the secrets and teases of the past two movies are either a.) not revealed enough, b.) betrayed or c.) revealed too much. I'll admit that Revolutions suffers from the X-Files Syndrome, in which tantalizing secrets always trump actual revelations, but looking at the movie as the Wachowski brothers intend it to be viewed; a trilogy of birth, life and death, you can't help but be impressed. Just as the original Matrix presented us with a hero for whom everything was new and every truth an illusion, and Reloaded gave us a hero who relishes his role, knowing his place in the universe and fighting for it, Revolutions gives us a hero who acts not for his own life, but for the life thereafter. The entire trilogy has been called cold by more than a few, but I find it splendidly expressionistic. The Wachowski brothers give us a wonderful rumination on the nature of endings: the end of love (both in the Trinity and Neo relationship, but also in Morpheus and Niobe's long dead love which in this movie transforms itself), the nature of death and war and destruction and also the end of conflict itself. There are also some amazingly kick-ass action scenes. What I'm saying here folks is that through the course of the three Matrices, audiences have been delighted by fantastic visual effects, have been introduced to some philosophical concepts (admittedly, watered down concepts) and enjoyed a fairly entertaining heroic narrative story. There has been nothing like the Matrix trilogy: it makes Star Wars look like a kiddie pool. Any careful viewer of the Matrix trilogy will see that the Wachowski's never set forth to create a solid-air tight narrative. The discussions that people have because of the ambiguities built into the Matrix are, I believe, deliberate. To turn marketing into tautology: Every ending is a beginning. Also- just to quiet the naysayers who say the ending goes against the whole humans must be coppertops premise: In Reloaded we learn that the humans have found an alternative source of power, so, in theory the new matrix (no longer green and all) could be a virtual meeting place for the machines and the humans to work out how to live in the real world. Neat!

posted by Japhy at 11/06/2003 07:31:00 PM || #