The Matrix Revolutions
“The Matrix Revolutions” is a baffling epic. Ideas go unexplored or abandoned altogether, story threads go unresolved, and when the end does come, what exactly has been decided? Granted, to call a “Matrix” movie “baffling” isn’t saying much- both the original 1999 cultural phenomenon and this year’s much-anticipated first follow-up (May’s “The Matrix Reloaded”), and (for good measure), the startling Anime anthology that is “The Animatrix” are about as easy-to-follow as a chameleon through the woods. However, “Revolutions” isn’t baffling in the same happy-go-lucky, brainfrying way its’ predecessors were. What’s most baffling is how poor the storytelling technique- and how inconsistent that technique has been- throughout the trilogy. It’ll baffle your mind at one time, and then attack your senses with visual and aural overload the next, and then at times, ignore the mind-blowing concepts it introduces altogether, and not think anything of it. (Neo being able to see the code of the Matrix, and break it at the end of the first film? It doesn’t amount to much. The arch prose the Architect teased Neo with at the end of “Reloaded,” which I took to mean that Zion itself- the last human city in the “real world”- was in fact just another part of “The Matrix?” Apparently we won’t be going there. Neo’s stopping of the Squiddies in the real world at the end of “Reloaded,” which lands him in a coma between the real and machine worlds? No worries, he’ll escape in “Revolutions'” first fifteen minutes with a little help from his friends.)
That said, “Revolutions” is still the best movie of the trilogy. Faint praise I’ll admit from a person whose only been a minor fan of the trilogy from the get go, but when you see the movie (if you haven’t already), maybe you’ll be able to see where I’m coming from.
What makes “Revolutions”- in my opinion- the “best” film of the series? It’s the one movie that knows what it is. The uneasy blend of Hollywood action film and pretentious “thought-provoking” sci-fi I found in the first two is eschewed in “Revolutions.” This is straight up action epic- this is the trilogy’s “Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi” rolled into one, and watching the movie, the similarities between “Jedi” and “Revolutions”- in terms of how the two play out- are inescapable.
That said, whatever ambition to create something technically “innovative”- something that marked the appeal of the first “Matrix,” and marred the hype of “Reloaded”- has been seemingly abandoned, and replaced with the ambition to make a thrilling visual effects blowout to end on. On that level, “Revolutions” works exceedingly well (the visual effects will garner the series its’ second Oscar nomination in the category (authors’ note- when the films that will be considered for the Best Visual Effects Oscar were announced last week, neither “Reloaded” nor “Revolutions” were on the list)). But did it thrill? Not for me, and that’s part of the problem. You see, the characters haven’t really involved me emotionally into the epic story of a band of human separatists against the machines that enslave the human race, and I don’t care how great the effects are, spectacle should always be subordinate to the story, to character development, to the emotional pull of the circumstances the characters find themselves in. Does anyone really care about the love triangle between ol’ windbag Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne, more a man of action instead of the long-winded speechifying that marred his character in the first two films), his former flame Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith), and separatist captain Lock? I never did. Does anyone really find real resonance in the love story between Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie Anne-Moss) than just being a maudlin attempt at the inevitable and obvious romance between the hero and one of his fellow leaders in the war to come? I did a bit at the end of “Reloaded,” but for the bulk of the 6 1/2 hour trilogy, it fell flat and felt manufactured. Maybe if they had manufactured some real emotion, some real pathos, some real conflict, I would feel something other than cold watching this whole thing go on.
If you think I’m being a bit rough on “The Matrix” trilogy, wishing I would just accept this as the mindless escapism it is, keep this in mind- it could have been more, and it wanted to be more. The original trailer for the first “Matrix” was a mind-bending tease, promising to show you a world you had never seen before. For the most part, that first film worked in achieving that, at least until it dissolved into another “Lethal Weapon”-esque shootout that we’ve become used to from producer Joel Silver over the years. Is there anything wrong with a mere shootout? No, but when the possibilities for something greater, more original, is opened, you can’t help but wonder what could have been. And based on the lukewarm-to-downright dreadful response “Reloaded” and “Revolutions” found from even the most fervent of “Matrix” fans, you know I’m not alone in feeling disappointment with the tried and tired directions the Wachowski Sisters have taken their provocative and thought-provoking concept.
A final note from the author- The best part of “The Matrix Revolutions”- as it was in “The Matrix” and “The Matrix Reloaded”- is the music. With his score for “Revolutions,” composer Don Davis brings to close one of the most inventive and thrilling of modern movie music undertakings, creating a score of epic grandeur and propulsive adventure that feels the only natural conclusion of the “Matrix” trilogy soundtrack. The unique orchestral color that flourished in the original’s score- but was all-but-abandoned in “Reloaded”- returns on an epic scale that rivals “Lord of the Rings,” while the uneven fusion of orchestra and electronic elements (courtesy of Juno Reactor) that made “Reloaded’s” score both flawed and fascinating is more fluid and exciting. It’s a triumph for Davis among the wreckage of the final film trilogy, and one will hope it opens up broader horizons for this under-the-rader talent beyond the uninspired likes of “Jurassic Park III.”
