Andy and Larry Wachowski, “Matrix Revolutions” (2003)
Beneath layers of computer-generated pyrotechnics, film noir homage and stylistic posing, the story is fairly basic: it’s a celebration of the human spirit and its endurance beyond evil and hardship when inspired by the quest to understand the meaning to life, why we have been put on this planet and to connect with others. The third film in the Matrix trilogy, it deals with death whereas the other two films have birth and life as their themes.
When the film opens, Neo (Keanu Reeve) and a crew member of a space-ship from the city of Zion (from the previous film “The Matrix Reloaded”) are in a coma in a sick bay of the space-ship Hammer. Neo is travelling in a virtual simulation where he meets a family of computer programs who include Sati who advise him that the subway station where they are waiting for a train – in reality a link between the Matrix and Machine City – is controlled by a henchman of the program known as the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson). Neo meets the henchman while trying to board the train and is prevented from travelling on it. Neo is held hostage by the Merovingian but is later released when Seraph (Collin Chou), Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss) intercede on his behalf. Having seen hallucinations of Machine City, Neo visits Oracle for reassurance; she tells him that renegade program Smith (Hugo Weaving) plans to destroy the Matrix and the real world. Neo leaves, Smith enters and takes over the bodies and powers of Oracle, Seraph and Sati.
While all this is going on, rebel humans activate a space-ship, Logos, belonging to one of their own, Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith). They meet up with Neo who says he must go to Machine City. Niobe offers him her ship and he and Trinity go off in it. Unbeknownst to them, the guy who was also in a coma at the start of the film, Bane (Ian Bliss), has woken up and stowed away on Logos. Bane threatens to sabotage Neo’s quest and Neo, realising Bane has been assimilated by Smith, destroys him – but not before Bane has blinded him. While Trinity pilots the space-ship to Machine City, Neo realises he has the gift of second sight: seeing the world in golden light.
Morpheus and Niobe return to the city of Zion which is under attack from swarms of airborne machines called Sentinels. The Sentinels wipe out most of the city’s defences and soldiers and while the people manage to destroy or disable all the Sentinels, they are forced to leave their city vulnerable to another Sentinel attack which they know they will not survive.
Neo and Trinity reach Machine City under heavy Sentinel attack and Neo is forced to journey into the heart of Machine City where he meets Deus ex Machina. Neo explains his mission and he and Deus ex Machina strike a bargain in which he must battle Smith. As can be predicted, whoever wins the battle gets to determine the fate of the Matrix and the real world.
Quite an entertaining narrative but in true Hollywood style, “Matrix Revolutions” manages to turn a well-worn tale of individual quest and community team-work against a common foe into a bombastic and overly long science fiction war film. Much of the middle section of the film plays as a conventional and not very interesting re-enactment of America’s finest hours against Japan in World War II against sinister alien swarm forces. There is the obligatory romance between Neo and Trinity which is poorly developed and ends quite tragically if too lethargically, though at least in the moments when Neo and Trinity must part forever the two actors playing them display all the half-decent over-acting viewers will ever come across in the movie. Generally the acting suffices to get the narrative from Point A to Point B and significant characters from the first two films, with the exception of Neo, have very little to do. Even Neo disappears for large stretches of the film due to the parallel plot strands incorporated.
Severe editing could have cut the film to a manageable 90 minutes without losing anything significant from the plot or the film’s themes. The computer animation and details of the futuristic war technology look impressive although they lack consistent internal logic: why would you have people tramping around in giant war machines that can shoot impressive firepower repeatedly without the need to reload if those machines aren’t going to protect them from the tender ravages of the Sentinels? Messages about the nobility of the human spirit, the notion that the search for meaning to a life that begins and endures only to end is worthwhile, and how both individual effort and community effort can bring down an implacable and seemingly indestructible enemy are in abundance but these ideas are so well-worn in Hollywood that they appear banal. Taking risks, believing in yourself, self-sacrifice for noble causes (truth, freedom and giving freedom and showing the way to truth to others, even if it means hardship and giving up your own life) and having practically blind faith in one who seems sure of himself (or herself), no matter how batshit this leader is or how deluded s/he might be, are also important notions here.
There are Biblical references with Neo as a Jesus figure and the Architect (Helmut Bakaitis) as God who repeatedly destroys the Matrix when he realises it has flaws which cannot be repaired or are repaired imperfectly with severe and lasting consequences: one such flaw created Smith who goes on to replicate himself and infect other programs.
When all is said and done, and then swept away, “Matrix Revolutions” turns out to be stuck in a matrix far beyond even Neo and the Architect’s ability to fix: the matrix is Hollywood’s love of stereotyped war and action film templates and the clichés that go with them, including boring orchestral music, laughably outdated US war culture and tactics and the preference for style over substance, whatever that is in Hollywood.