...with a whimper...
by Ed Owens

 

"Well, it's better than episode 1..." That was how Star Wars fans buoyed their flagging hopes after watching Anakin bronco-bust a giant tick in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. But, as anybody who's seen both movies knows, that's not saying much. Lately, the chorus has begun anew, this time with reference to the trilogy-ending Matrix Revolutions: "Well, it's better than Reloaded..." Again, that's not saying much. What's worse is that in this case, it may not even be true.

Revolutions picks up exactly where Reloaded left off (minus the 13-minutes of closing credits and the teaser), continuing the saga of our reluctant cybernaut Neo and the inhabitants of Zion, the last remaining human outpost in the war against the machines. Unfortunately, it also continues many of Reloaded's negative tendencies, albeit elevated to absurd extremes. The pretentious double-speak of Reloaded has been elevated to a language all its own--the Wachowskis are so convinced of the importance of every word that they've stopped worrying about whether or not the dialogue even sounds meaningful; the religious overtones of the first two films have been amplified ten-fold, resulting in a shrill (and alarmingly superficial) Christ-allegory that any conscious viewer will spend most of the film dreading; and the characters are even less developed than in Reloaded, largely the result of an over-abundance of secondary characters who serve little purpose beyond embodying clichés.

The Wachowskis "borrow" from a long list of other films, including their own: an early shootout in a nightclub feels awfully familiar, and should to anyone who's seen the lobby shootout from the original. To the brothers' credit, they do tweak it a bit, trying to raise the bar a little higher, but the result is guffaw-inspiring, so completely over-the-top silly that it's hard to believe they actually thought it might be taken seriously. The film's money shot, Zion's last stand against a swarm of sentinels and other mechanical baddies, revives every military stereotype and caricature one can imagine, making the cartoonish cgi even more unbearable than it would have been--wide shots look and feel like a videogame without the enjoyment or emotional investment.

But the biggest problem, and that is saying something in a movie this rife with them, is the film's crushing ambiguity. For every question answered by Revolutions, there are five more asked. Even answers that were given in Reloaded are dismissed or ignored, as if the Wachowskis got halfway through filming Revolutions before realizing the pieces didn't fit. What was relatively straightforward (and somewhat thought provoking) in the first film has become a tangled (and migraine-inducing) mess. Characters come and go at random, characters that complicate the narrative without the benefit of a resolution...whims the Wachowskis would have been better off not indulging.

Thinking back on the first film, it's hard to remember what exactly drew me into The Matrix in the first place. Sure, the special effects were ground-breaking, but visuals alone are hardly compelling enough on their own. Sure, the premise was thought provoking, but it always had been, each and every time it had appeared in countless other movies, novels, and comic books. What drew me into the first film was its sense of fun, its playfulness, before the Wachowskis (and the rest of the cast and crew) started believing their own hype. The joy is gone, stifled by Revolutions' solemnity. The film's tagline reads "Every beginning has an end"...too bad this one didn't end sooner.

 

©2003 Ed Owens
CineScene