The Matrix Revolutions

I am struggling to find my place in a society in which Avatar is considered a great movie and this film is considered a bad one. It boggles the mind.

This review will be positive, and also far longer than most of my positive reviews. Mostly because since I liked the film, I have to make a strong case for it since most people didn't. The problem there is ignorance on my end. I very deliberately avoided reviews of this film beforehand, and I still haven't read them so as not to color my own with them. The low score on Rotten Tomatoes means nothing to me because I don't know what people's complaints were.

I can guess. I can have sneaking suspicions. But I may be cartoonishly off-base. There is a strong chance for anybody reading this review who hates it, and has commiserated with other Matrix fans for years over how much it supposedly sucks, have an entirely different reason for hating it than I could have ever guessed. I might be simply arguing against strawmen constructed by myself. That is a risk and I could look foolish. Not for defending the film. But for potentially being wrong about why most people hate it.

I mentioned in the review for the last film that a secular and practical ending would probably ruffle feathers. There is lip-service played to belief at the end by the Oracle, but it's merely lip service. Faith had little to do with Neo or the humans' victory. Neo describing choice is much more accurate, and while the first two films WERE about that, it is a much more scientifically rational moral than destiny and fate. My suspicion is that the film doing a 180 from the first film's religious overtones made a lot of people unhappy.

I also mentioned it's possible this film was badly written. To be blunt, it's not, but it is the first and only one of the three films in which bad writing is present. For two scenes, one minor, one major. The minor scene is the cringey "No, we did it." But this was the era of film and television that routinely did that, and didn't understand how much it sucks. I can make fun of that in hindsight. I suspect that caused few actual problems for people who hated the film at the time.

The second plothole actually annoys me because it shouldn't be occurring at all. Both Neo and Trinity should be cottoning on to the fact that Bane is Smith far sooner than they did. They are almost as dumb as Harry Potter is with Tom Riddle at the end of Chamber of Secrets. When Neo says "That's impossible!" I'm wondering, "Why? What specific thing about that is out of line from all the other craziness you've just witnessed and accepted?" But the real reason the scene should never, EVER have occurred is because the audience was made to know it was Smith in the last scene of the last film. At least as far as Tom Riddle is concerned, Rowling believed we were as dumb as Harry was in that moment. Most of us weren't, but it's actually acceptable for a narrative to do that crap on behalf of readers and viewers who AREN'T that swift. It's unacceptable to do that move when you've already shown the audience the truth. It's narrative malpractice, in fact. In fairness, this is the only scene like that I have been able to pin down in these three films. Which is what makes it especially significant and unacceptable.

Now the review is going to veer into speculation, about how and why this movie could have triggered negative reactions in fans of the first film. Before we go that far, I want to acknowledge a couple of things about my reviews and opinions. I have been known to change my mind about a film after seeing it a second or third time. Most often a changed opinion will occur for a film I liked but did not love. If the opinion is changed, it's almost always for the worse. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. I did not love this film, so it's definitely possible that if I saw it again I would see more wrong with it. The thing is even if I didn't love it, I DID REALLY like it. Whether it clashes with other fans or not, my unpopular opinion is probably baked in. I have similar controversial feelings of "like" for Wonder Woman 1984, but in this specific case I will probably be able to back my opinions up a little better. I like Wonder Woman 1984 because it made me feel good. That's the only reason. It wasn't a great film with a great villain. I simply enjoyed watching it. For this film I have solid cases to make for why I like it besides gut-checks.

While I am speculating on reasons people disliked the movie, the most obvious one to me is that most of it, particularly the action climax with the Sentinels, doesn't play remotely like a Matrix film. It's a classic sci-fi shoot-'em-up, and a pretty by-the-numbers one at that. The Matrix, especially the first film, blew people's minds because of its creativity and unique and boundary-breaking visuals. This film looks like every other sci-fi film. Let me offer you an unusual perspective. And this might be me punching strawman and not knowing it, but if you were expecting different from the premise you were kidding yourself the entire time.

Honestly? I expected the film to eschew the robot war entirely. For budgetary reasons. I am not disappointed we saw it. And of course it was going to be pedestrian compared to the previous actions sequences in the first two movies. Because the final battle between the humans and the robots HAD to occur OUTSIDE of the Matrix. No trick camera angles, gravity-defying flips, bullet-time, or slow-mo are acceptable in real-world battle situations. People going into this film had two choices of expectations: Either the film would stay true to the first two and totally Nerf and cop-out the robot war, or they'd pay it off and make the movie completely unlike the first two. They could not possibly have done both. It was literally one or the other. Speaking as someone who has consistently been denied what was promised from The X-Files, I am pretty damn satisfied we got it here. And yes, an actual alien invasion would entirely change the premise of The X-Files and turn it into an entirely different show. But I'm still aggravated that didn't happen as long as that was promised. I am not going to penalize this more "by the book" sci-fi outing for simply meeting expectations I didn't expect them to have the budget to meet at all to begin with.

I also suspect (possible strawmen, put up your dukes) that a lot of people might have been annoyed that a lot of the mystery of the premise and how things worked in the Matrix remained an actual mystery to the end. This is another thing I'm familiar with, not just as a fan of Twin Peaks. But as the only person who liked the series finale of Lost. Lost settled all the characters in a good and satisfying place, and answered almost nothing about what the hell was going on on the island. And the reason Lost didn't answer that, is the same reason I doubt The Matrix films did. A lot of people (and I mean probably the majority of Lost viewers) expected that since Lost was mystery show, it was gonna have an M Night Shyamalan twist ending that turned everything on its head and made you see everything differently when you rewatched the entire thing. Like that the island is Hell, or an alien experiment, or a virtual reality. I think the problem was people were watching the wrong show if they expected that. Just based on all of the random unrelated crap that happened on Lost during its six seasons, I knew going into that finale that there WOULD be no grand unifying theory explaining the island and the weirdness. It was tons of random unrelated weirdness happening in the same place for entirely different reasons. I figured that out by the end of season 2, and my opinion about that never wavered. And I was right. There couldn't be a grand unifying answer because no plausible one could exist with all of those disparate elements occurring in the same show. Technically, ONE unifying theory that could work is if the island took place in an autistic kid's snowglobe, but that's the only scenario it would work for. Would you WANT that? Of course not. And if that is so, it remained in the series' best interest to answer as few of those questions and mysteries as possible. I think learning Who Killed Laura Palmer makes Twin Peaks VERY interesting to watch a second and third time in hindsight. But it definitely hurt things for that franchise going forward. It damaged it so badly that Lynch had to wait 25 years to get back to it and finish it on his own terms. I would much prefer to not have my questions tied up in a bow, and for me to be allowed to continue to believe whatever wacky Lost theories in my head were right. That is a gift.

The Matrix still being open to interpretation is GOOD thing, that I doubt a ton of audience members will be properly grateful for. There are several answers a viewer could potentially put together themselves. Be an adult. Come up with your OWN explanation to what you just saw instead of having it spoon-fed to you. It's a wonderful thing that The Matrix franchise is allowed to still be bizarre and confusing in hindsight. I repeat: That is a gift. Enjoy it, people.

Everything you used to like about the first Matrix movie is still true. Because nothing's really been settled. I especially like that the fragile peace between the humans and robots going forward is an unresolved tension. The last scene did something dynamite when the Oracle asked the Architect about the people who wanted to escape the Matrix, and him telling her they were free to go. Her asking that stated a truth I voiced in a previous review. If I were in the Matrix and learned the truth, I'd want to remain in the Matrix. And that's probably true for most people. The Architect expressing surprise that the Oracle believes he'd be dishonest about that is probably because so few people actually decided to become unhooked, and it was no great for the loss going strictly by the numbers. That's my feeling, and why I felt that that specific bit of wrap-up was needed, wanted, and appreciated.

Trinity thanking Neo for giving her a second chance to say what she wanted to say was heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time. How anybody hate a movie with that tearjerker of a scene in it? I repeat: It boggles the mind!

So in conclusion, I might be wrong. There may be entirely different reasons you hate the movie than I guessed you did. The thing is, even if that's true, whatever those reasons and arguments are, are probably not going to be enough to dissuade me from liking the movie. It was solid and the correct way to end things. So there. ****.