I'll be discussing the plot issues towards the end of this review, and those are spoilers, but I'll put in a space before then.  Read below that at your own peril, if you've not seen the movie already, and want some surprises.

So how was it?  And why are so many critics slamming it?

Matrix: Revolutions
Script/Story: 4
Acting/Casting: 6
Action: 8
Humor: 4
Eye Candy: 8
Fun Factor: 6
Replayability: 4
Overall: 6.5

I thought it was pretty good, until the ending, which was a complete let down. However, if we hadn't all seen and grown to love Matrix 1 for the special effects, the exciting action, and the intelligent story, we wouldn't have much cared for M2 at all, but we'd all think M3 was a marvel of special effects and exciting action, while having no idea at all what the plot was about.

My opinion on all of the negative reviews, for what is an undeniably exciting and gloriously-attractive movie to view strictly for the eye candy, is that it's all about expectations.  Most critics liked M1 a lot, and went into M2 with very high expectations.  Most people were disappointed in the sequel, but there was enough philosophical ramblings and interesting visuals to keep the viewer interested.  I think a lot of people left that movie with a sort of "The emperor has no clothes" feeling, where they didn't like it that much themselves, but tended to blame themselves for that shortcoming.  In the five months since they saw M2, probably assisted by a recent viewing of the DVD, they found their opinion of M2 dropping quite a bit, and grew angry, or felt deceived by it. What right did that movie have to trick them into thinking it was good?  How had they let their desire to think it would be awesome pull them into self-delusion?

They felt they'd been made fools, and determined that that would not happen again. They went into M3 with not just high expectations, but anger.  They were ready to kill someone if it didn't tie up the entire potentially-brilliant trilogy.  They demanded that M3 be brilliant.  And since it's not; it's merely pretty good at times and pretty stupid at others, they are taking out their M2 disappointment on M3.

At least that's my evaluation as to why there are so many negative reviews for M3.

It wasn't great, mostly since the characters didn't change or advance at all, and the whole plot seems sort of pointless, or preordained.  You aren't sure how it's going to end, and if anyone will survive, but someone you don't really care.  Morpheus is hardly in it, Trinity doesn't do anything of any importance, and Neo continues to be messiah-like and belatedly-powerful.  It's like every fight or confrontation begins and it takes him a few minutes to remember that he doesn't have to play by the rules of the Matrix, at which point he does something no one else can match and wins easily, as he should have done right from the start.

It's not that bad; there aren't any overlong battles with medieval-weapon wielding idiots in the foyer of the Marovingian's mansion that he should be able to win in 10 seconds with a bit of the super fast motion stuff the agents do in their sleep, but that he never seems to use except when he has no other choice.  In fact it's much like M2, where most of the actual combat and danger is faced by Trinity, Morpheus, or basically anyone but Neo, presumably since we still care about them in a fight, since there's a chance they might not win.  Neo engages in higher stakes battles in places other can't go, and while they are at least a bit more compelling (he can't just fly away whenever he wants to this time), they're still never as juicy or dangerous-feeling as any of the fights in M1.

I'm not sure why; parts of the freeway chase (the cycle racing mostly) gave me a thrill in M2, and I loved the twins, (who do not reappear in M3) but the rest of the fights seemed slow and redundant, and the ones in M3 aren't much different. Why were they so vivid and dangerous and tense in M1, when they were similar and featured the same characters, and why are they so perfunctory now?

I guess it's just all foreplay now; we know Neo really is The One, and we know he's not going to die in some minor fist fight with an agent, or in a traffic accident, and even though there's no such guarantee that Trinity or Morpheus or Niobe will survive, I never felt any real worry about their survival (even though one of them doesn't).  Whether that's because I figured they'd live, or just didn't really care one way or another since they've become irrelevant with Neo the only important one... I can't say.

The acting wasn't bad; the guy who plays the human that Agent Smith took over does a great job.  He looks dangerous and psychotic and once he is no longer pretending to be human, he starts to exhibit speech patterns just like Agent Smith does.  The whole thing where he pauses a lot between words and says things like, "It is... inevitable... Mr. Anderson." I thought his performance was excellent.  Everyone else does a decent job; Agent Smith doesn't do anything that interesting this time, in terms of creepy acting, and Morpheus doesn't have any more big speeches (thank God, that Xion pre-rave speech scene is just death in M2) 

So my overall on M3: Great action, decent fight sequences, good final confrontations, it makes sense, and it ties up most of the loose ends.  The problems are that the battles are just not very exciting, even though we don't know how they'll turn out, none of the characters change or grow or become more important to us, and the ending is a huge disappointment and feels very contrived and has big logical holes in it.

More below, and that's where the spoilers begin.

The ending was the biggest disappointment for me. But I'll get to that in a minute.

¤ The new Oracle (since the original actress died between M2 and M3 filming) is okay.  I thought the original actress did a great job with it, and her "the Matrix is like a box of chocolates" park bench scene in M2 was one of my favorite parts of the movie.  The dialogue and delivery in M3 is less interesting than it was in M1 or M2, and the actress doing it doesn't quite measure up.  The movie's excuse for her altered appearance is unclear, she's just like, "I changed, and it's odd.  I don't yet recognize myself in the mirror." but there's no reason given for her to change.  I couldn't watch it without thinking that the actress had died and they'd had to think of... something.  It took me totally out of the movie, but she's got major dialogue and face scenes in the movie, so I guess there wasn't any choice but to replace her with a similar woman.

But if I'd never seen M1 or M2 and didn't know this woman wasn't the original for the part, I wouldn't have disliked her.  I just wouldn't have been real impressed either way.

¤ Over the course of the movie, the matrix is revealed to be just a small part of the machine world, far from the be-all-end-all.  The Architect only shows up at the very end, for about 30 seconds, and does nothing of any importance.  It seems that as the creator of the matrix, he's the ruler of it, and must do what other machines outside of the matrix tell him to do.  Given that all machines on earth apparently require the energy from the matrix to run you'd think he could parlay that into greater autonomy, but anyway...

One interesting thing is that in the start when Neo is trapped in the train station, in between the Matrix and the "real world" he talks to programs in human form.  There are two programs, neither of them having anything to do with the Matrix, who are trying to smuggle their daughter into the Matrix to survive, since she's an unnecessary program outside of the Matrix and will be destroyed.  It's sort of a plot device in the movie, just to have them there when Neo awakes and then to see her again later, but I thought that was a damn interesting idea.  Programs with sentience, reproducing (somehow) and then smuggling their daughter into the Matrix to keep her alive there, even though they'll probably never see her again.

Does she grow? Does she age?  Does she miss her parents?  Does she pass for human and go to school?  Is she childish in mentality, compared to her parents?  Was she born and has she grown from a baby, or was she just created as a 10 y/o by her parents and she'll be that way forever?  How does she feel about that, if she's got full intelligence, and is stuck as a child forever, appearance-wise?

The other question about this is that The Source is tied into the matrix and the machine world.  Neo was supposed to sacrifice himself into The Source and thereby both doom and rejuvenate the world.  All Zion would die but it would be allowed to be reborn.  But The Source is outside of the matrix, if it exists in any physical form at all, right?  So if he goes through the door and sacrifices himself, that's entirely in the Matrix. How does the word go out form there to the machines who are attacking Zion?  How do the machines in the real world know not to go down and kill off the 16 founders of Zion that The One is supposed to pick out to begin the free human world once again? And why?  What good does it do the machines to allow any humans to be free?

The Architect says, in M2, that Zion is an escape value, a way to let off pressure and remove the 1% of humans who will not accept the artificial reality program of the matrix.  Which is well and good, but why let them go free and build up Zion if the machines are just going to wind up destroying it after a battle with The One, every time? Why not just kill the 1% as they start to question the system?  Why dick around with the Agents (who really just raise human suspicions) when you know who they are, and you can kill them instantly and painlessly, before they ever approach waking up or getting free of the matrix?

¤ I both liked and was suspicious of Agent Smith's new super powers.

I could buy the duplicating thing in M2, since computer programs replicate themselves all the time.  But in this one he's Neo-like since he can fly, and is in fact stronger than Neo, proving to be indestructible and self-regenerating in combat. Neither he nor Neo use their super fast hitting tricks very much, but that's been par for the course in M2 and M3, so I guess...

I don't like that he's just doing what he's doing though.  Why keep himself looking the same, and the same size?  Why not grow 500 feet tall, or split into thousands of pieces and duplicate himself over the entire Matrix?  What's his end goal?  We're told he wants to destroy everything, human and machine, to finally be able to cease to exist, but that's just what others say; he never gives any hint of that or makes it a threat. He seems to be entirely fixated on Neo, which makes it guess work what he might do once he beat him, if he'd survived that experience.

I suppose the concept is that he's not free enough, mentally, to really do anything amazing.  No turning purple or growing spikes or shrinking or growing in size.  He's just sort of duplicating what he sees Neo do, with the fighting and the flying and so on.

The other thing is that he's basically yin to Neo's yang, so perhaps he's limited in his powers to what Neo has so far been able to learn to do in violation of the rules of the matrix?  Or there are limits to how either of them can break the rules of the matrix.  But how can there be rules to breaking rules, when the Architect doesn't seem to know about it?

¤ I don't know what to say about The Source.  It's the explanation for how Neo can keep his powers in the real world, instead of just in the Matrix.  It's sort of the mythos of a lot of fantasy novels, where there's some enormous well of power that will grant humans super powers, if we can just tap into it.  But what is it in The Matrix?  God?  Karma? The Force? Where did it come from?  Did it exist prior to the machine wars?  Do the machines tap into it?  How is Neo supposed to sacrifice himself to it as the Architect wants him to in M2?

And if we're to believe in The Source, that means all of our (my) suspicions about Zion just being another deception inside of the Matrix is bullshit.  It really is just the one Matrix (Unless there are dozens or hundreds of different versions of them running simultaneously around the world, which would really make a lot more sense for the machines; stupid to keep all of your batteries in one charger. Not to mention the impossibility of transferring electric current over a long distance without losing most of the charge.) and Zion really is real and the people there really are awake and living, not just more fools under another level of the matrix.  So then how did Agent Smith keep control of the human?  Is he using The Source? Or did he just infect the man's matrix-implanted circuits enough to take control? One might suggest that it's entirely illogical and just exists since the plot requires it to exist.

¤ It's a simple question, but with their run of the entire earth, why aren't the machines creating plutonium and enriched uranium and powering themselves with nuclear energy? Why don't they just send some squiddies with nukes down to Zion and blow it up, if they want it dead?  Hell, why don't the Squiddies just have guns or missiles?  Hand to hand combat and small cutting lasers are cute, but impossibly inefficient.

¤ Why don't the humans in Zion have ways to shut off all of their systems, and trigger EMPs?  Every ship in their fleet does.  And where are all of those ships?  Why didn't they just have ten of them sitting around in the dock, and every time a new horde of Squiddies came in, they could shut down 9 and have the 10th trigger an EMP.

It's a clever plot point and an exciting sequence when Niobe pilots the ship down the tunnel, arriving just in time to save the defenders with an EMP... but when there are like 100 ships there already... why does she need to?

Also, they were cool and all lurchy and anime-inspired, but there have to be better weapons to fight squiddies with than machine guns on very fragile and slow mechs.  Heard of tanks, guys? External armor? Gun turrets? Bombs? Short range EMP devices?

What, is there some sort of non-proliferation agreement where the machines won't create any ranged weapons other than those slow ass bombs the Squiddies throw, so long as the humans won't make any logical improvements to their weapons either?

¤ The scene when Trinity and Neo are flying towards the machine city and they break through the clouds and get some sunlight is nice, and all symbolic with Trinity getting that one brief glimpse of the real sun before her noble and tragic death, but didn't the cloud ceiling look a bit low?  I mean they flew up slightly, and they were there, and they fell down from it in about 15 seconds.  So the black clouds end at what, 5000 feet?  That's not very high...

Wouldn't the machines have every mountain on earth covered with solar arrays?  Or just have built towers everywhere?  Or hell, just find a way to clear out the smoky clouds; it's not like the entire upper atmosphere is destroyed, and humans can still breath the outside air as they prove when they exit their ships and wander around in the sewers, so the atmosphere is intact.  Not that the machines would care one way or the other.

¤ Here's the plot hole that so annoyed Malaya.

Agent Smith returns and his massive duplication is apparently causing huge problems in the Matrix.  Since all of the machines on earth require the matrix to run smoothly to keep their power flowing, defeating him in the Matrix is of total importance, so much so that Neo can bargain to stop the invasion of Zion in exchange for him defeating Agent Smith.  Okay, I'll buy that, and it even sort of makes sense.

The problem we both had with it was why?  Why do the machines keep their word, or call off the attack on Zion once Neo succeeds?  They don't benefit from having the humans alive, and in fact it's an enormous drain on their resources to keep battling humans all the time.  The Architect said, in M2, that Zion was necessary as an anomaly, a way to scrape off the 1% of humans in the Matrix who rejected the program.  Why?  Why not just kill those humans, or feed them into a special version of the Matrix where they think they're free and in Zion, when they're actually still in the Matrix?  In fact this may be what's happening, and it was a hot suspicion after M2 before the hokey crap about "the source" but there's no hints given about it in M3, so no reason to believe it.

The machines needed Agent Smith destroyed, and Neo did that, but why do the machines keep their word and stop when they had Zion totally beaten after just a few more minutes of attack? What, did they promise not to?  Swear an oath?  Become blood brothers with Neo?  Are we supposed to conclude that they've somehow programmed themselves with some sort of George Washington algorithm, and are incapable of telling a lie?

Moreover, what's the ending?  There is no ending; we're basically back to the exact place we were before M1 began, except that Morpheus doesn't have The One to try and find.  Almost the entire human race is enslaved by machines, living as batteries for them, a small group of humans are living free in Zion, and the machines control the entire surface of the earth.

So are the people in Zion going to rebuild their city and fleet and begin freeing humans again?  I can't think that they aren't still committed to freeing the rest of the human race, or fighting against the machines.  Is the knowledge that the machines could come back and finish the job of killing them kill at any time supposed to give them solace?  What's changed for the better, other than them not being killed outright during the battle?

Supposedly the unspellable W brothers have said there will be no more Matrix movies.  I guess that's cool, that they have some integrity, or just want to go work on other things, but why not? Nothing has changed in the state of the matrix and the world; we just know more about it now.  There's nothing to keep them from picking right up a month later with Matrix 4, in which Neo is held by the machines but reinserted into the Matrix, or in which the humans decide they must keep fighting to destroy the network, or the machines decide leaving Zion alive was a bad idea after all... etc.

I'd like to see it just to find out what's going to happen to Neo.  I keep envisioning him showing up like a younger, dumber Locutus, freshly Borged out in some snappy new implants.  New eyes, to start.

Follow Up

And what did the machines make a big face for, when Neo was blind anyways? Don't give me any of that "He's got that flame-vision, he can see it!" shit. Seems like the W brothers just wanted to put a human face on the machines so that we could feel some sympathy for them, too . . . if Smith got out of control, the poor little machines would be dead doggies. 

Here's an email from a reader that came in yesterday, about the Matrix.  The following is pretty spoiler-rich, in terms of the ultimate ending of the movie, so you should skip if you've still not seen Matrix 3 and are planning on doing so.

I think the Wachowski brothers have tremendous balls for giving the Matrix trilogy a sad ending. The machines are still in control and always will be until the sun explodes, destroying Earth. I think most people's disappointment in the movie stems from  that sad ending.

My one complaint is not knowing what happened to the  Merovingian and Persephone. It would have been cool to see  Smith copy himself into them. A conversation between Smith and  the Merovingian would have been great:

"At last...the Merrrrrrovingian...we meet...surprised to see me?"

"Sacre bleu, un qui a le sexe avec des mères!"

"Crown blue, one which has the sex with mothers."

At least according to the Alta Vista bable fish bot.  I think we all know that "sacre blue" is more often translated as "my god," and I think you can probably guess what the rest of it would be, in conversational language.

As for the email's point, I don't disagree, but that's not why I didn't like the ending.  True, the W bros did the unusual by not just having it all be happily ever after, and I often bitch about how lacking in suspense most Hollywood movies are, since you just know the good guys will win in the end.

My objection is that the ending is illogical; there's no reason for the machines to stop their attack just because Neo became the virtual anti-virus to destroy Agent Smith.  It's not like their entire attack was some sort of clever ruse to draw Neo to them so he could sacrifice his matrix-self to destroy Smith; they really wanted to kill off the few remaining living humans, and have every human on earth living purely to provide them with power.

We're ignoring the whole, "why not build nuclear power plants, towers with solar cells, harness geothermal power, build a lot of dams, burn coal and oil, etc" series of arguments for other, far more efficient and less prone to rebellion techniques that they could use to provide for their energy needs, but you just have to go along with that or the whole movie becomes pointless.

And besides the machines not attacking further when they were clearly going to win, the entire 2nd and 3rd movies did nothing to advance the plot.  We're right back where we were before M1 began, with the humans in Zion, the machines on the surface, the matrix running smoothly, and millions of humans enslaved by the machines for their power needs.  Except that the humans' ability to resist is largely destroyed with Zion in ruins, The One is gone and in enemy hands (but apparently not dead), and thousands of the humans in Zion are dead.

So yeah, it's an unhappy ending, but I'm very dissatisfied with the evolution of the plot during M2 and M3.  They did a nice job with the action, for the most part, and they introduced interesting new characters, but what happened to the whole drive to end the matrix and free humanity that Neo and the other humans felt at the end of the first film?  There has been zero progress towards that goal, and in fact it's been negative progress.

I don't demand a happy ending, but I'd like there to be some sort of ending, rather than paying to see two movies that basically just tread water in terms of plot development.  It's like they've just set things up for their whole ongoing cash cow universe of books and comix and games and such, with the matrix going on forever and no hope of change or salvation from Zion or The One.

The odd thing is all the talk about how the W bros had the plot all worked out in advance, and thought it was this perfect three-movie trilogy, etc.  When the plot advancement in M2 and M3 together was negligible.  So were they just bullshitting all along, and they had no idea what would happen in M2 and M3?  I mean the actual plot events in both films are very minor; the majority of the screen time is taken up by huge battle scenes and long fights and car chases and such, all of which require about one paragraph to describe in an outline of the film.  There were a lot of battle scenes in M1, but it seemed like they really moved the plot and story along, while in M2 and M3 they were just things to fill up the 2 hour running time in between the brief bits of plot advancing dialogue or confrontation.

I've got no desire to see M3 again in theaters, but I suppose in 6 months I'll be curious enough to see it again on DVD and might get a different impression of it then.  I didn't dislike it, but looking back it's feeling a lot like Underworld, with better action.  Both movies had a great look and cool character types and a great back story, but neither of them even scratched the surface in terms of their own plot potential, leaving viewers to think back on what they liked, while wishing the movies had done more with their potentially great material, rather than just settling for flashy visuals.

And if you'd bet me a week ago that I'd be comparing M3 to a piece of crap like Underworld, I would be writing you a check today.

Returning once again to the Matrix 3 topic, here's part of a reader email on my comments on yet other reader emails about my initial comments.  Or something like that.

I finally saw revolutions over the weekend and it seems like everyone missed the ending (at least from their arguments regarding it.) When the oracle asks the architect if he is going to keep his word, he very plainly says “what do you think I am, human?”, or something to that effect. Machines don’t lie, at least in the world of the W brothers. As a programmer myself, it wouldn’t make sense for a machine to lie. The goal for a program is perfection, ie: 1+1 = 2, and misdirection and subterfuge doesn’t fit in with that. 

All in all I found it a good movie, and a good trilogy as a whole. Sure, there were problems, but how many people had equal problems with Star Wars when it came out? (I know that I will probably be flamed by a billion and one little lucas-ites for daring to compare the two series now) Great special effects, great action, memorable characters, and a reasonable plot-line (assuming we suspend our disbelief, just a little)

Dan

By the way, why hasn’t the actor who played Agent Smith gotten more attention? That man is incredible, at least on a par with good ole Darth. Mr. Anderrrson. Nuff said.

I'll comment by paragraph.

As for the machines lying, maybe they do and maybe they don't.  They're sentient and flexible and want to win a war; why wouldn't they lie to achieve their ends? The machine's goal is to eliminate the human resistance, right?  If it weighs the goals of achieving that, vs. creating some sort of error by lying, I'd think it would risk the error. Of course I'm only human.  Also, it was the Architect who was obsessed with removing anomalies and errors, and who might not lie since that would throw off his internal feng shui.

Also, the movie cuts away when Neo goes to talk terms with the machine king (or whatever it was) so we don't actually know what he said he wanted in exchange for eliminating Agent Smith.  We're assuming it was to free the humans who wanted out of the matrix, and to stop the attack on Zion, but we don't know, so we don't know if the machine promised that and lived up to its word, or if it just did it out of the goodness of its central processor.

As for the Star Wars comparison, I'm not sure if he's talking about Star Wars originally, back in 1977, or Episode 1 and 2.  I suppose Matrix is somewhat comparable to Star Wars back in 1977, since both were movies that took a whole new approach to movie-making, and that traditional critics didn't much "get".  Both of them launched a world of fandom and sequels and action figures and led to infinite movies that imitated their style and look and everything else about them.

I'd say there's a pretty good comparison of M2 and M3 to SW Episode 1 and 2 as well.  Both were eagerly awaited for many years, both had much improved technology and bigger budgets, and both disappointed the majority of their fans. M2 and M3 aren't actively dreadful, like Episode 1 and 2 are; I never yawned or groaned in pain while watching M2 and M3, at least not until they were over and I realized how disappointed I was with what had just transpired.  Or what hadn't, since the greatest failing of the movies, to me, is how much more they could have done but didn't.

As for Hugo Weaving's performance, I thought he was great in The Matrix.  Very sinister and also robotic, but with a totally different vibe than the guy who played the T1000 in Terminator 2.  I liked his performance, very androgynous and emotionless and monotone, while Agent Smith was manly and charismatic, but in a robotic way, mostly through body language and dialogue delivery.  I thought he deserved a best supporting actor nomination for his work in M1, really.  As for M2 and M3, he kept it up nicely, but he did about what we expected him to do, so it wasn't new or surprising.

His filmography is funny, since he's been in 6 of the biggest movies ever, staring in M1-3 and LotR1-3, and other than that... he was the voice of a dog in Babe 2. Just one obscure low budget movie after another, and suddenly, he's one of the most famous faces on earth.

I wonder if he's got any money? They had to pay him pretty well for M2 and M3, but none of the actors in LotR got much money. There's also no telling if he'll get any money in the future, since while he's got a famous face and impressive résumé, and he can clearly act, he's not really a movie star, in terms of being a reason anyone buys a ticket to a movie. No one is pitching him a lead role and a $12m salary.  In fact he's almost too famous for his own good, since the minute you see his face you'll forever think Agent Smith/Elrond.  Of course most of us did already, thinking, "Welcome to Rivendale, Mr. Anderson..." when he first appeared in LotR:FotR, but now it'll be even worse.

The actor in M3 who I thought did the best job was the guy who played Bane, the human who was taken over by Agent Smith, and I thought he did a good job in M3, once Smith took him over entirely and he stopped pretending to be human.  Ian Bliss was the name of the actor (which you can now safely forget, sine he's never been in anything anyone saw, and likely never will again) and he did a great job channeling Agent Smith, circa Matrix 1, especially in his dialogue pacing and cadences.  Not exactly Oscar-caliber work, but I had no trouble suspending my disbelief enough to accept him as a human, possessed of Agent Smith.

I would like to respond to your response to Dan's remark on the Matrix.

You say: "They're sentient and flexible and want to win a war; why wouldn't they lie to achieve their ends? The machine's goal is to eliminate the human resistance, right? "

The answer is NO. Their goal is to eliminate those from the Matrix who reject it's program. Zion is designed to exist only to "temporarily store" those who have been removed from the Matrix because of disrupting it; and the "war" is nothing more than "resetting" the temporary storage facilty. It is thus allowable for Zion to continue to exist, especially if the machines manage to keep control over it. To me, "You get to live, but no more building armies, and PLEASE do free all the misfits from the Matrix, we want them out anyhow" seems like a reasonable agreement between the machines and the humans.

Anyway, to get back to this email, if the machines don't want to destroy all of the humans and want to end their resistance, why do they even bother to build squiddies and hunt the human hoverships around the Matrix?  And why do they send hundreds of thousands of them down to Zion to destroy the humans?  They were working pretty damn hard to kill every human off, as far as I could tell.

True, the Architect says things about how Zion is required as a way for the matrix to vent the 1% or so of people who wouldn't accept the program, but he's the program that designs the matrix.  The robots on the outside, in the real world, don't necessarily cotton to that concept, and if you judge them by their actions they seem quite determined to kill off every single living soul in Zion.  They certainly didn't escort Neo in to the robot king and ask him humbly to enter the Matrix and deal with Smith...

Also, what possible reason do the machines have to allow Zion to exist?  The humans in it are scheming and crafty and want to destroy the machines, and do damage and disrupt things when they hack into the matrix. As I said in some past comments, why don't the robots just kill the humans who refuse the matrix program?  Why the hell do they flush Neo down and out rather than just killing him and liquefying him to feed the other humans?

In other words, I'll accept that some humans won't fit into the matrix and need to be removed, and I'll accept that the whole "what is the matrix" question from movie 1, but why do the machines allow it to actually exist?  Why not just kill the rogue humans, rather than freeing them to cause mischief in the real world?

Also, how are the humans going to carry on?  Their dock was entirely destroyed, and while the disappearing hoverships mystery was never revealed (where did the hundreds of their ships go during the battle?  Why couldn't they have been discharging their EMPs, rather than hoping the one ship could somehow fly back and do it?) assuming they have some ships left or can make some, are they going to fly up and pick up the thousands and thousands of matrix-rejecting humans the Architect has apparently agreed to allow to go free?  Are squiddies going to just carry those humans down there to them?  What about the huge tunnels through the earth the machines have created? Are the humans going to fill those will millions of tons of earth and stone?  And so on.

There's material there for another half dozen movies; how the humans rebuild, if they're bound to not attack the machines anymore with this peace, if they harbor plans to destroy the parasitic machines and free all of the humans serving as power sources, etc.  Unfortunately, the W bros have said there won't be any more matrix movies, and that the only continuation of their world's fiction will be through books, comix, games, and so on.  I wonder how long they'll stick to that, if they try 3 or 4 other movie projects and don't have much success with any of them, and their available funding is steadily shrinking... a return to the Matrix might start to look pretty attractive, eh?

You say: "the movie cuts away when Neo goes to talk terms with the machine king".

Well, in the version I saw, he did say "Peace". Then again, the version I saw had no sound for like 5 minutes, so versions might varry (ok, it could've been a theater problem).

I had sound through the whole film, but yeah, Neo says "peace." and then they cut back to events in Zion. I'm assuming there was some sort of negotiation at that point, being as "peace" is a rather vague term.  Would Neo accept peace to mean that humans can live on in Zion, but with thousands of squiddies constantly flying through the skies overhead, and threatening to kill humans at any minute?  Or squiddies packed into every tunnel leading out of Zion so that no human ships could ever again leave the area?

There are a lot of ways "peace" could be construed, and I assume they debated that in some more detail in scenes we weren't shown, both since they'd be boring to watch and since this way they could keep us from knowing exactly what was determined, and could then surprise us with the final result.

And finally you say: "In fact he's almost too famous for his own good, since the minute you see his face you'll forever think Agent Smith/Aragorn." 

He does not play Aragorn in Lotr :).

Yes, he plays Elrond in LotR, not Aragorn, and I went back and fixed that the next day, after several emails pointed it out.  I knew Viggo Mortensen played Aragorn, but I wrote it quickly and didn't give it much thought, and anyway, I'm never good with those elf names.

(Pity I don't hold Lotr in bemused contempt, as I feel about oh... Star Wars, since I could have just said "I'm not good with those elf names." and left it at that, and then I'd have enjoyed several emails pointing out that Aragorn is not an elf, and so on.  Unfortunately for comedic purposes, I like LotR, perhaps more than my past comments on Tolkien's writing would lead you to believe, so I can't go there.)

Ok, the last remark is not about the Matrix. And mind you, I do not find the movies "perfect". I just find the arguments I read in your replies weak. The thing I want answered is more crucial (I think): how on EARTH did Neo have powers over the machines outside the Matrix? Now come on. In M1, we all learned that the Matrix is a virtual reality "programmed" lifelike, thus you could assume that someone can "reprogram" the matrix, thus be able to do all the crazy stuff Neo was able to do. In M3, the Oracle says "The power of the One extends beyond the Matrix" and rambles on about it coming from "The source". The explanation we had in M1 was "reasonable"; whereas this is unacceptable. How is he connected to the source? Was he born with a little WiFi in his head? This was silly. The whole thing could've been avoided altogether (leave out the confrontation with the sentinels from the end of M2, and Neo does not have to go to the machine city; he talks with some representative outside blah-blah). That way the movie would've kept it's logic, this way it just became another "jedi" thing.

Then again, this is just my opinion.

I have less problem with this, though it is pretty cheesy.  "The Source" seems to me to be God, or spirituality, or karma, or The Force, or Gaia, some other unknownable earth power, something beyond human or machine knowledge.  True, it's a bit of a cheesy Jedi thing, but it's consistent with the view of the universe postulated by the W bros in the Matrix movies, where there are unseen forces and powers, but no strict interpretation of an all powerful deity pulling all the strings. And no, I'm not about to get into a whole analysis of their Gnostic leanings.

November 20, 2003

Regarding the M3 movie (actually now its the whole trilogy itself) and you might have mentioned this before but what bothers me is the fact that with all this "intelligence" those machines are so proud of, why did they not bother to use a lifeform less likely to revolt...cows, dogs, hamsters, etc. 

Humans are probably more efficient, but high-maintenance as well. They (the machines) could have enslaved the worlds population of hamsters and when the time was right, wipe out the human race in one attack. It would be like attacking Russia now...they'd never expect it. (I am not saying its a good idea...just making a point)

I mentioned this at some point, in my scattered updates about M2 and/or M3, and it's been joked about elsewhere as well.  I mean why not cows or dogs or something; they breed pretty quickly, are as large or larger than humans, and would be far less difficult to keep pacified while floating in an eternal bath of pink goo. Of course they live a lot shorter lives, so there's be a higher turn over rate.

My conclusion long ago was that 1) perhaps the machines vs. human wars killed off almost all other species on the planet, or at least cut their numbers down so greatly that there weren't enough of them to start off with, or 2) since the machines are thinking creatures, apparently possessed of emotions (or something close to them) they are doing it to humans on purpose, in the grand human tradition of raping and pillaging and enslaving your enemies once you defeat them in combat.  They were betrayed and mistreated by the humans when they first gained sentience and independence, and now they're enjoying their eternal ironic revenge.

None of this explains why they can't get better energy from geothermal power or wind power or solar power or nuclear power, but let's not get into that argument again.

Pre Movie Discussion

August 21, 2003

Apparently it was just released yesterday, but the first teaser trailer for Matrix: Revolutions is now online. I think it looks pretty awesome, personally, but then I thought Matrix 2 was damn good, while a lotta people found it unsatisfying.  The M3 trailer is almost entirely action, and it looks like all hell is breaking loose, with the machines coming, hovercraft combat, Neo vs. Agent Smith, and innumerable other battle scenes, with the voice over by the Oracle as she prophecies doom.

I'm looking forward to M3 a lot, both for the fun of seeing it, and for the plot, which is damn rare in the case of an action movie. Is the whole thing all part of the Matrix?  Will the humans actually survive or even triumph?  If they do defeat the machines, what happens then, when billions of battery humans wake up suddenly, and Zion can't produce enough food to save more than 1/100th of them?  Where will the movie end?

It's supposedly been planned for a trilogy all along, so in theory we'll get a clean, final ending, and not just a set up for some potential Matrix 4 in like 2008.  I guess we'll find out November 5th. At least that's when I'm finding out, since I do not want to read any plot spoilers in advance.

Nice that it's only until November for the sequel.  Makes me appreciate their slight staggering of the films, rather than having to wait a year or three like most sequels.  However it seems to be cramping their promotion. Teaser trailers are usually released a year or even 18 months before a movie, with a full 2-2.5 minute trailer out a year or so in advance, and then often a second one a couple of months before the movie.  Here it is just six weeks to go, and the first teaser is debuting.  Well, the first if you don't count that recycled preview at the end of the credits of Matrix 2, and I'm not counting it.  Will they even get a full trailer out in time?  Are they running that late and still battling to get the effects shots done?

I guess it's better that they're late with the trailer than for them to rush it, and put out some commercials with crappy, buzz-killing beta-version special effects (see The Hulk's 2002 Superbowl debut), but damnit, I wants more preview eye candy.  And speaking of movies with overdue trailers, where the hell is the full Kill Bill trailer?  Much as I enjoy the teaser, I want more, after like 6 months of just the teaser.