Matrix 3: System Overload

I originally encountered The Matrix in my first flush of movie mania. I was living in Paris at the time and American films habitually took three or more months to leisurely cross the Atlantic. Early that summer, cryptic e-mails filled with praise for the film began to arrive from friends at home and such steady word-of-mouth drugged me into wondering, "What is this Matrix?" Months passed before I learned the answer, but the Wachowski brothers delivered it with shocking brilliance. Here was a film that redefined the nature of reality by playing upon our deepest fears about the powers that be. Before we even know what the Matrix is, we sense it has something to do with tight-laced bureaucrats, rigidly defined schedules, and the oh-so-linear office space that smother the soul of Thomas Anderson, a.k.a. Neo (Keanu Reeves), our alienated everyman.

In its very being, The Matrix evinces a deep revulsion toward authority figures that we post-Watergate Americans intuitively share. From its cool subversion of Warner Brothers' corporate logo to Hugo Weaving's wicked skewering of everything Agent Smith represents, the film heralded something revolutionary and new. Its opening sequence with Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity resuscitated the female action hero after the Alien franchise's untimely demise. Its large cast of black, Hispanic, and Asian actors signaled a change from the blockbusters of yesteryear in which everyone except the sidekick and druglord was white. More importantly, it forcefully argued against those bloodless monstrosities of macho porn that directors like Tony Scott and Michael Bay were feeding to our sugar-weaned generation. Crafted with passion and intelligence, festooned with visuals reminiscent of the confidence and elegance of comic book storyboards, The Matrix represented an altogether superior approach to the typical Joel Silver production.

Four years later, The Matrix Revolutions arrives on the heels of The Matrix Reloaded, the summer warhorse that ravished nearly $300 million from American filmgoers alone. Reloaded started strong with flashes of action and sex, then quickly fell flat as the production grew bloated with special effects sequences of mind-numbing length. In the end, Reloaded pitifully followed the generic formula of teenage gratification--no buildup, all payoff--that has been painstakingly applied to scores of soul-deadening box office champs. Perhaps by becoming the most successful film Warner Brothers ever released, The Matrix unwittingly poisoned its own sequels. After all, how can a franchise continue to relish the lock of black hair that falls into frame as Trinity confesses her love to Neo or the patronizing manner in which Agent Smith unravels a dossier if its key demographic craves action, not detail?

Watching Revolutions is like being pulverized for two hours by overproduced CGI mayhem. Entire reels of film are devoted to big men with big guns shooting big machines as the last human city of Zion falls under attack. In a token nod to the trilogy's earlier egalitarianism, women join the battle, shooting and screaming with punishing brio. Never has Stanley Kauffmann's dismissal of The Matrix trilogy as "adolescent fodder" and "aggrandized juvenilia" seemed more apt than today.

Revolutions begins with false promise. Neo's mind awakens to find itself trapped in an antiseptic subway station run by the Trainman (Bruce Spence). He engages in small talk with humanoid computer programs while waiting for the train: "Love is a human emotion." "No, it's just a word. What matters is what the word implies," etc. He is soon rescued from the station and we later discover that this introduction of new characters and locations was only an exercise in narrative accumulation. We never hear of them again.

The machines attack Zion while Agent Smith, now a program in exile, attacks the Matrix by endlessly reduplicating himself. Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) engage in Zion's defense. Neo, meanwhile, commandeers a ship to transport him to Machine City because that is his destiny. Trinity follows out of love and, I suppose, fate. People scream, bullets fly; some kiss, others die: all ponderous backdrop to Neo's metamorphosis into 'Christ.' Coincidence quickly builds into contrivance as the screenplay juggles its half-baked ideas about freedom and causality.

In their final CGI fistfight, Agent Smith asks Neo, "Why do you persist?" "Because I choose to," Neo bracingly replies. For all its sound and fury, all its prophesizing and philosophizing, the grand ambition of The Matrix trilogy eventually rests upon this simple exchange between two men brawling in mud.

Instead of wasting your time on this glorified video game, invite over a friend to watch Alex Proyas' Dark City--a genuinely great film about the themes The Matrix Revolutions so absurdly mishandles.