My Review of "The Matrix Revolutions"

The Matrix Revolutions came out in 2003 a few months after The Matrix Reloaded. I had to watch it as part of my Matrix catch up for the upcoming new Matrix movie in December 2021. It's also been 18 years since that movie had come out and a lot of the details are really murky in my head. This was a great excuse to bring me up to speed and reflect on my new reactions of this film.

This movie starts off right after the events of The Matrix Reloaded. Neo is in some sort of purgatory after he finally got to meet the Architect of the Matrix. His discussion with the Architect came to the realization that there have been multiple times where the one has visited Architect. In fact this is all going according to the Architect's plan.

Zion is planned to be attached by the machines only to have a few select humans to repopulate into another Zion. Neo and us as the audience are stunned by this revelation and we're not sure what's going on. The world has been turned upside down yet again.

Meanwhile, agent Smith is now a rogue program in the Matrix. He has a new ability to merge with anyone in the Matrix. Recently he's figured out how to merge with a human being and use that human's body as a host to the human world. This was the big cliffhanger ending for the Matrix Reloaded. We knew that Smith was going to cause a lot of harm as he's now a Trojan horse in the human world. Nobody suspects anything.

After the events of Reloaded, Morpheus' hopes and enthusiasm wanes as he's heard uncomforting news from Neo that he really can't prevent the machines from coming in to attack Zion. We also have a lot of smaller side stories to help usher what's going to happen in this movie.

This movie is quite different from the other two movies. It's almost more like some sort of epic war movie. The first movie was somewhat of a mystery or suspense movie, and the second was a more philosophical ruminating drama piece. They're all stark contrasts from one another so I kind of understand why I didn't understand these last 2 movies.

The tone of the movies dramatically differ from one another even though they flow in and out of one another. You have to give it to the creators of this series though. They are quite creative and they don't care what others think. They're sticking to their vision no matter how disjointed everyone feels about it.

For the most part I remember liking this last Matrix movie. I was a lot younger and really the action in this movie is non stop. There's always something going on because the humans are constantly in danger. Everything is under a timer so the tension is there.

Watching the movie now I see some glaring problems that I never noticed when I was younger. There are a lot of situations in this movie that are miraculously remedy from some sort of convenient situation happening. I won't spoil it for you but if you decide to watch it, you'll probably groan at some of the things that happen in this movie. Admittedly, they are very precarious situations for our heroes but the way they get out of them is kind of far fetched.

Then again this series has always been somewhat a reflection of common religious themes and tropes. I can see how they can kind of get away with it because a lot of this movie is about hope and trust.

There are a lot of other messages that I never really saw before. One of them is a message that a lot of movies try to drill in our heads nowadays. They want us to be unapologetic at what you have to do in life. If you really feel compelled to do something you should be doing it. Neo is supposed to be a reflection of ourselves and we can see this. No matter how many people say he's crazy for going directly against the computer he felt compelled to do it. We had to trust in his judgement and believe he was doing the right thing. Obviously we know he needs to do it no matter what.

Another element that flew over my head when I first watched this movie was the yin and yang concepts in this movie. For every reaction there's an equal opposite reaction. We see this in a lot of pairings: humans with machines, Neo with Mr. Smith, the Oracle with the Architect. Everything has a yin and yang in this movie. It kind of gets drilled into us especially with some of the conversations that they had in this movie.

There's less a lot less talk and more action in this movie though. It's like an all out war that's similar to some sort of dystopian future Lord of the Rings epic battle. We have tons of humans and even more machines. They're just battling it out like the humans are Ewoks fighting the Empire forces. A lot of it is overly dramatic like you would see in Avatar and I'm guilty for enjoying it. Hey if you're going to go all out do it. This movie went absolutely all out.

The special effects surprisingly kept up after 18 years. The visuals for these battles was pretty great stuff. I think people watching it today would still be impressed with what they did with this movie.

Overall, what's most important is if I had fun watching this movie. Yes I did have fun with it. I don't think that they fleshed out enough of the characters that went into battle. It felt like they were more of an afterthought. Still it is a pretty entertaining conclusion to the trilogy. That's why I have to give this movie a 7 out of 10. You'll have to slog through the other two movies to probably fully enjoy this movie though.