The Matrix Revolutions (*)
review by Jon Waterman

Neo is back with his raggedy-clothed buddies to defeat the massive armies of mechanical squids and keep the human race alive. Can he do it? Is he the one? What will happen to the real and fabricated societies?

At last, the final chapter has come and gone. Hopefully, most of the talk about how great this series is will end. Let me just reaffirm right off the bat that I am not a fan of the trilogy and found the third installment to easily be the worst.

Never mind that the conclusion to the whole saga held little weight in the overall effect of the trilogy, let’s get down to good old fashioned story telling. The Final two parts seemed to be very stream of consciousness. It’s as if the writer/directors (The Wachowski brothers) said, “Ok…now what?” and put their thoughts down on paper and filmed it. I know this isn’t true, but there are many elements of the story that are constructed so poorly that it’s hard to believe much more thought was put into the script than a student puts into a term paper written on the bus ride to school.

For instance, the war that ensues between man and machine was thrown at our face. There was a lot of talk in the second film about it happening, but there was little build up in this part. All of a sudden we’re seeing thousands of horribly CG’d tentacles flooding the screen and hundreds of horribly CG’d sit-in machine guns firing back at them. The result is several overly long, non-exciting scenes filled with some of the worst visual effects seen this year.

In fact, “overly long” can be used to describe the movie in general. Everything was drawn out to laughable extents. The horrible, seemingly improvised dialogue got on my nerves and made me laugh aloud. When Agent Smith starts talking about the meaning behind the placement of a tray of cookies, you know the movie has gone off the deep end in it’s attempts to be profound.

Honestly, any deeper meaning that one could grab from this whole trilogy can really only be found in the first movie where they introduce an interesting and slightly fresh notion. After that, it just seems like they got stuck in the fervor and had to do something with it.

All in all, it’s the same weird shot composition, the same incredibly awful acting and less fighting that is less exhilarating all wrapped up into one annoying and idiotic long piece of eye candy that leaves a bad taste.

It’s truly hard to imagine that such anticipation surrounded this movie. One would think that considering how lackluster the sequel was, more people would avoid the third part. It probably goes without saying, but the movie assumes you’ve seen the first two, so if you haven’t…you won’t exactly be lost, but you’ll enjoy it less (if that’s possible). Well, anyways. If you’re a diehard fan, then you’ve probably already seen the film and will write me an angry email. If you haven’t bothered to check it out yet, don’t. Let someone else rent the video and then fast-forward to any substance.

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