Matrix Revolution
... that Neo might have become some sort of programme etc at the end, but I still felt that the film should have helped me out even a little bit! The plot is very heavy going and it lacks the light imagination evident in the first film. This really sucks the fun out of the film and makes it hard work - I have nothing against it being thought provoking and requiring thought, but it all seemed very laboured to me. The opening hour is quite hard work and the whole "train station" thing is never really explained and just seems designed to fill time or something. The action all looks great - the attack on Zion is visually very impressive and is quite exciting. However some fight scenes are so overblown that they failed to inspire. The shootout in the check room of the club is simply a tired retread of the groundbreaking lobby shootout but it is the final fight with Smith that shows what I mean. Neo's showdown with Smith in the first film was great fun and very exciting. Here (and in Reloaded) it is an excess of special effects, horribly overblown - visually impressive but not enjoyable. The film seems to have taken on the mantel of "meaningful epic" where once it was a clever film with no assumptions. Listen to the music - that's where the clue is. Instead of the rock mix from the first film it has taken on big sweeping classical pieces that it scatters around liberally to try and give the film an epic feel that it doesn't deserve. It is still worth seeing as it finishes the trilogy but it is hard work at times. The acting continues the curse of Reloaded in that everyone thinks they are reading Shakespeare and gives their performance as if they were speaking words direct from God. Even Weaving's Smith is a little too full of himself this time. The dialogue is pretty bad as before - full of clichés and over wordy speeches of grandeur, it just gets tiresome before it gets engaging. In the first film we were told no one can be told what the matrix is, we must see it for ourselves. We were then taken on a journey (with Neo), led by Morpheus into this world that was explained as we went. Here we are simply dumped in the middle of an impenetrable plot and basically left to work things out for ourselves with little or no help. Attempts to have characters like the Architect or the Oracle exp...