Review of The Matrix Revolutions (2003) by Stevenf — 20 Aug 2013

Perhaps the best course of action after 'Reloaded' was to sit back and enjoy Revolutions, we knew it wouldn't match the unprecedented heights of the first Matrix film, but that didn't matter, we had enough action and entertaining moments in the second to lead us into what should have been an explosive final bow, but sadly it wasn't meant to be, what we were given was an unexplainable, anti-climatical and emotionless mess of a finale, it has a handful of decent scenes, but the plot is irrelevant and simply doesn't make sense, too much time is taken away from pivotal characters, one of the redeeming moments of the film feels rushed and I was certainly left wandering what the point of it all was when the credits began to roll, the franchise has come a long way since Neo first realised his potential, but this is most certainly a case of going too far down the rabbit role, and forgetting where you should go afterwards.

We find Neo (Keanu Reeves) attempting to return to the real world as he is stuck in between, he manages to convince the rest of the do-gooders that he must go to the Machine City (which was a massive disappointment, by the way) where he will end the war, the problem here is that not very many of the main characters take part in the big Zion battle at all, the most prolific being Commander Lock (Harry Lennix) who appeared in 'Reloaded'. Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) is busy speeding towards the city while Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Neo are en route to Machine City. But perhaps the biggest letdown is the underuse of Smith (Hugo Weaving), who is mentioned when Neo is speaking to the Oracle (Mary Alice) as an afterthought but yet he is pivotal to the whole thing, yet his existence is still very much questionable as is the whole point of what we are watching, is it even real? Or is this some other Matrix style dream. While the set pieces are as visually marvellous as they have ever been, especially the battle of Zion, the plot uses all the same devices from other films to try and salvage what is left, a broken love story, a kid who plays hero and sunrise finale which was just overblown for the simple point that it didn't make sense and wasn't approached in the right manner, leaving us alienated to care as little for these characters as possible, Neo was interesting in the first two but takes a back seat to speak vaguely in this one and without much input.

Perhaps it may have been better had it not been filmed back to back with 'Reloaded'. While a fluid and continuing style can be maintained, a complex plot with little sense may have been avoided, instead we have got a satisfying ending, but not this time around.