Finally saw the 3rd Matrix flick

[annathepiper]

Went with solarbird to go look at this as a matinee this afternoon, just to go ahead and get it out of the way and since we were both willing to pay matinee price to see it. Picoreview: Enh. It's official. This story really did end for me at the end of the first film.

Things I liked:

1) The crazy guy that got possessed by Smith did a really good job of channeling Hugo Weaving's inflections and delivery. That was almost creepy.

2) Most of the battle between Smith and Neo at the end was pretty cool. With caveats; see below. But I did like how the fight went aerial--as seemed right and proper in the Matrix.

3) They did at least try to work in the change of actress for the part of the Oracle into the story. And the new Oracle actress did a decent enough job.

4) The little Indian girl/program was very cute.

5) Neo unable to get out of the train station, and the fact that they made the "go out one end of the tunnel and come back in through the other end" joke exactly once and then moved on. That way it remained funny. ;)

6) The "everything is made of light" effects that they did for what Neo saw once he'd been blinded were pretty cool... though as with item #2, with caveats. See below.

7) Smith realizing that he/the Oracle had seen the apparent 'end' of Neo coming and being exultant... and then getting really worried as he starts realizing he didn't really understand what the Oracle had seen at all.

8) The butch chick that Zee was paired up with during the battle sequences. She reminded me of Vasquez from Aliens.

9) Neo ending the war by cutting a deal with the machines ("You stop the war, I'll take out this rogue program for you"). That made absolute logical sense and was a much better way of handling it than a big preachy moralistic thing would have been.

10) That last remark of the Architect's to the Oracle, when she asks him if she has his word that those that want to leave the Matrix will be freed. That was a good reminder that the programs don't think like humans do. ;)

11) The brief shot of the sky above the layer of roiling electricity and clouds... and Trinity's reaction to seeing clear blue sky. That was good.

Things I didn't like:

1) GOD FUCKING DAMMIT, THEY KILLED OFF TRINITY!

2) And to make #1 even worse, her death scene was extremely lame. And too damned long. I actually thought "SO DIE ALREADY!" in the middle of it, and this is a crying shame given that she was my favorite character from the first film. The death just... didn't move me, and I didn't get enough of a sense that her death meant all that much to Neo either.

3) The shot of the lightning bolt behind Smith during the sky part of the battle: cheesy cheesy cheesy cheesy. With an extra side order of cheese.

4) Everybody spent way too damned much time being incredibly portentous and solemn.

5) What is WITH all the unraveling sweaters everybody wears in Zion? Can't any of these people KNIT?

6) They killed off the butch chick. Grump.

7) GOD FUCKING DAMMIT, THEY KILLED OFF TRINITY!

8) Now wait a minute... the Indian couple, who were programs, wanted their daughter program to... live in the Matrix? As opposed to where? In a word, "huh?"

9) While Neo getting see everything being made of light around him, it was all also pretty inexplicable, too. I suppose you can handwave this off as being part of the SuperNeo power package, but it would have been nice to have some vague clue of why he got to see all the machines that way.

10) GOD FUCKING DAMMIT, THEY KILLED OFF TRINITY!

Killing off Trinity is a major downer for me. She was the character I cared about the most, and the movie didn't make me care enough about the rest of the characters who survived to make me feel like her death was a worthy sacrifice for them.

Siiiiiiigh.

On the whole... yeah, this plotline ended for me with the first movie. I still want to own a copy of the first one on DVD, but I will be skipping buying the others.

Comments

[avram]

I also really liked how the actor playing Bane delivered his lines like Mr Smith. Considering that Bane had only a few seconds onscreen before being possessed, they probably hired the actor primarily for his ability to do a Mr Smith impression.

The Indian couple were programs with functions, living (presumably) in the Machine City, or maybe the Machine Suburbs. Their child has no function, being just a product of their love, and therefore isn’t allowed to live in the Machine World. Presumably they’ve been hiding her someplace, but as she’s grown older and more complex she’s outgrown her hiding place. Anyway, they’ve cut a deal with the Oracle and the Merovingian to let her live in the Matrix. This was one of my favorite bits about the movie.

I also really liked the brief moment above the cloud layer, though it makes me wonder why the machines don’t just build themselves some solar panels on tall towers. That’s gotta be less work than that whole stupid using-humans-as-generators scheme (which wouldn’t work anyway without some other kind of power source — the sun is the ultimate power source for human metabolism).

The source and nature of Neo’s powers is one of the unexplained mysteries of the movie. Here’s my theory: Neo, due to a programming bug in the Matrix (as explained in that awful Architect sequence in #2), has the ability to tweak the Matrix. As he’s gotten used to this ability, his subconscious has gone further, and started applying it to the real world. (Why he should be able to do this, I dunno. Maybe everyone can do this to some extent, but we mostly don’t know it. Maybe that’s the real reason the machines keep humanity around — reality would unravel without us. Maybe the Oracle knows this, and that’s why she trains kids to tweak Matrix reality, as we saw way back in the first movie.) He’s just starting out, so he can only tweak and sense the kinds of systems he’s learned to recognize from his time in the Matrix.

This is implied by that brief shot we get in the opening sequence of an orange fractal pattern underlying the green Matrix pattern.

That comment of the Architect’s also tells us why Neo figured he could trust the machines to hold to their half of the bargain after he took care of Smith.

[annathepiper]

Dara cleared up the reasons for shipping the young program into the Matrix for me, yeah--I think the part that I didn't get at the time was why the Matrix would be any safer for her than anywhere else the machines controlled would be. Dara opines that this is because she'd be easier to hide amongst all the human consciousnesses in there, given that the machines are hardly scanning them for 'useful purpose'.

*giggle* I find myself thinking of a comment in one of the reviews that the theater had tacked up on a bulletin board in the lobby. The reviewer in question wasn't particularly impressed with Revolutions, and made a somewhat snarky comment to the effect of "people will be forever discussing 'what does it all MEAN?!'" ;) The answer that pops into my brain is "Fuck if I know!"

[kent.livejournal.com]

I think the Washowski Bros. were too enamoured of their own personal logic for the Matrix movies to share it with everyone else. I was still a lot confused about the ending of Reloaded, and the nature of Neo's powers (or not). And Revolutions didn't really clear things up for me. The ending really disappointed me; while I know that there's no way they'd show all the humans emerging from their underground city, partying with the machines, I think I needed some kind of exposition.

I know that they have no plans to make more films, but future video games/online community RPG games will determine the future storyline. But I didn't feel like I got any closure. I mean, is Neo dead or not? What's the significance of the blindness? Does that make him a seer or something?

It looked pretty, though.

[avram]

Neo’s probably not dead. As we see him taken off, we see that video effect used to represent his special vision, which implies that he’s still seeing, and therefore still alive.

The blindness was to get him using his new sight, which he didn’t have till after he lost his normal sight.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, I'm pretty much with you, when it comes to "what the hell were the Wachowski brothers thinking?" Same answer as in my comment just above comes to mind here. ;P

That same review I read noted as one of the annoyances in the 2nd and 3rd films of the trilogy that too many of the characters are going around saying cryptic things to one another and doing cryptic things, until it makes it all have some sort of "Alice in Wonderland" feel to it. I agree with this assessment. In the first film, while we certainly had things flavored by the overall philosophy of what was going on--the philosophy didn't come out and dominate things so much as it did in the 2nd and 3rd. Bah.

That exchange at the end between the little girl program and the Oracle suggested fairly clearly to me that Neo is probably not irretrievably gone. His physical body may have died, though I lay you ten to one odds he'll be around in some way or another. But aside from that... nah, I don't really feel like I got any closure either, and it was a very unsatisfying ending overall.

I don't think I needed too much in the way of the humans of Zion all going "HOLY FUCK! The war's OVER?" But the way the young kid was relaying the news just... sat weird with me, he seemed almost desperate and upset in his delivery rather than overjoyed. I'd have maybe liked to see some others clue in besides him at the same time.