Despite the bad reviews in most major media outlets (Kate has a nice collection of snarky quotes), we went to see The Matrix: Revolutions on Saturday. We knew it would be bad, but figured it was probably worth seeing, just to know how bad it was.
For the first half-hour (or so-- up until the club scene with the Merovingian), it was actually fairly entertaining. And then it went right to Hell. The scenes with Bane were sort of entertaining (the actor did a wonderful Hugo Weaving impersonation), but the battle scenes were just amazingly bad, like the filmmakers were working off a checklist of the worst war-movie cliches of all time.
As Kate notes, this is a movie that desperately needs to be given the Red Mike treatment. It's hard to know where to start with the battle scenes: Why is it that a machine civilization able to build the many remarkable devices we see has completely abandoned the concept of ranged weapons? Why is it that the humans are unable to come up with a better strategy than yelling "AAAAAAUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!" while firing huge numbers of tracer bullets seemingly at random? Why can't they come up with a better resupply system than a bunch of kids with shopping carts full of ammunition? And, for that matter, why is it that a human culture capable of building and maintaining Zion is populated entirely by people in filthy cable-knit sweaters? Did they renounce laundry technology along with the Matrix?
The biggest problem with the movie, though-- bigger even than the gaping logic holes in the plot, and the incredibly awful dialogue (which makes J. Michael Straczynski look like David Mamet)-- is that the filmmakers forgot what made the first movie such a big success. The glory of the first movie was its sense of style, and the almost balletic grace of the wire-work combat scenes.
Article comments
1 - taliesin
I was going to venture to review this one myself, but given that I actually enjoyed most of it, with disbelief firmly suspended, I've got better things to do with my weekend than fight off the flak even a moderately nice review might bring!
One thing I do think, though (and I suppose I could argue a case for it): part three for me redeemed some of the worst failings of part two, managing to make a little more structural sense, despite all the quibbles about a long list of improbabilities.
I wish the mysterious brothers and Joel Silver had had the courage of their initial convictions and made one coherent film out of 'Reloaded' and 'Revolutions'.
It could have been a lot tighter, with a good half-hour or more on the cutting room floor instead of on screen (I already got bored during the first battle between Neo and all those Smiths) and re-edited into a movie which would have been less of an overall disappointment after the deserved success of Matrix the ... emm, "original".
The fights, especially most of the business about the salvation of Zion, did leave much to be desired, I agree. But the hackneyed old themes of the exercise of free choice and -- wait for it -- even the redeeming power of love are not so shop-worn after all.
Unlike some of you, I did care what happened to Neo and Trinity -- and would also be generous enough not to begin a review here with a sodding spoiler.
Life can be full of "what ifs", n'est-ce pas? ;)