I Watch Films: The Matrix Revolutions
So here we are, twenty years after The Matrix and I’ve reached the second sequel. How does this film look using as a starting point the Oracle’s comment that Neo is not too bright (from the first film)?
Neo is actually fairly reactive in this film, which has the enormous battle of Zion sequence in the middle that resolves nothing. (None of the fights resolve anything in the trilogy, and we’re finally getting wise to that, and although it’s a good fight it’s too long and it’s not the brilliant state-of-the-art kung fu we’ve had previously.)
So to begin with he finds himself trapped in the underground station and has some things explained to him by the family of programs. Trinity busts him out. He talks to the Oracle who admits he’s grown up. He wakes up in the real world and has to spend some time figuring out his plan, or rather coming to terms with it. Understanding the choice as the film might say. Then he travels to machine city, speaks to the machine intelligence, goes back into the Matrix and fights Smith, loses and then wins the same way he did in the first film.
Not too bright overstates it, but he's intuitive, powerful and chosen rather than clever.
The film also has the problem that the only people left for the coda are the Oracle (weird, super-intelligent, ambiguous) the Architect (boo) and Sati (a little girl). And they don’t have anything very new to say, the film has presented its questions and theses (in this one mostly reiterating previous ideas, occasionally in new contexts), and has answered the ones it thinks it has answers to.
The One is a sacrifice who goes willingly, dying to save his people. It’s not a new idea but it’s a lesson that needs to be learned again and again it seems. It’s not enough to beat the bad guys, we know the hero succeeds. The question is, how much will it cost?
Watch This: For an ending to the Matrix Trilogy
Don’t Watch This: It’s not bad, but it doesn’t have the power of the first or the action sequences of the second so if you aren’t drawn in by the cliffhanger then you’re not missing that much.
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