"Hobbyist Delight"


The Matrix Revolutions
written and directed by Andy & Larry Wachowski              

            Event movies are something that can hardly be ignored.  Movies, good or bad, can come and go, seen or unseen, with little influence on the world.  Event movies, good or bad, need to be seen.  They are experiences as much as they are entertainment.  Those who don’t experience them are left out of discussions or jokes or fulfillment of being alive in a society obsessed with pop culture.  Because The Matrix Revolutions has to be seen separates it from any low flying bad movie that could come out all year.  The disappointment of the picture makes it quite possibly the worst movie of the year, a super long superhero sci-fi epic that takes itself way too seriously considering the fun found in the mediocre movies it rips-off.
            Without going into the connected dots of the final part of this down-slope trilogy, The Matrix Revolutions primarily concerns two sequences.  One is a battle in the gates of Zion with humans battling the mechanic sentinel creatures that have broken through.  Most of the resistance is fought by soldiers sitting inside giant robotic vehicles featuring machine gun turrets for arms.  A tired staple of Japanese animation, these low-rent “mechas” make little sense in context and design, but they look cool and real, so that is all that matters.  While this is all going on, Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) pilots a ship toward Zion to save the day in her best impersonation of Lando Calrissian.  In order to do so, a gate must be opened in time by “the kid” (Clayton Watson).  The whole thing reeks of Return of the Jedi without the Ewoks, which for some people is a good thing.
            The second sequence involves a showdown between Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Mr. Smith (Hugo Weaving), they both now exposed as two sides of a coin with equal powers and indestructibility, evoking Superman’s fight with Lord Zod from Superman II.  Yet that classic superhero sequel didn’t overdo fight scenes that would obviously end in a draw and in the end, when the villains are defeated, they’re done so creatively that the buildup and conclusion are satisfactory.  Here, it is more on par with the Mina/Doran Gray battle of this year’s League of Extraordinary Men.  Sure the duel looks alright but inevitably its waste of time, action for action’s sake.
             The rest of the film, in all its expository dialogue cheesiness, is the very worst of a Star Trek television show or Star Wars prequel.  Underneath the surfaces, for those who dig deep like the machines burrowing into Zion, are all kinds of themes of religion and philosophy, but finding them is such a  laborious thought task of which independent thinking can prove much more satisfying.  Not to say that thinking about films after the lights go up is bad, in fact a great picture does just that, but there is a difference between art which expands your mind and entertainment puzzles that result in things already known or already wished-for.  The Matrix Revolutions is like a bad fortune cookie that flatters more than opens new ideas, as if to say “good job, you pay attention well!” 
          It isn’t enough to say that this movie is bad.  It really doesn’t matter if it is or isn’t.  It will make money, evolve into more merchandising with novels and video games and whatnot.  There will be those who fill a hobbyist void with all kinds of background and foreground and sideground information akin to those festive fans of other pastimes whether they be based in sci-fi/fantasy/comic books or sports or autos or bird watching or whatever.  Film critics undoubtedly have their own hobbyist obsession with their professions and so lack the time and energy to spend so much time on one series alone.

Between Reloaded and Revolutions, Neo has been stuck in limbo, while Morpheus has eaten the entire food supply of his ship.