So I went and saw the movie again with Cole and Brian last night. And then in reply to a post of Sanjab's at Tonto, I wrote the following analysis. Be warned that this will pretty much spoil the whole movie if you read it.
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On one, fairly shallow level, I enjoyed it. The special effects were excellent, some of the scenes very well done.
On another, deeper level, it's a travesty. Others have analyzed this in far more detail than I, but I'll note a few things.
1. The total abandonment of about half the plot threads from the first two movies, among other things the entire character of Morpheus.
2. Neo's magical powers. Yes, you've been setting him up as the Messiah for two movies now. Yes, there are ways to rationalize at least part of this. No, you didn't explain it at all well, which leads one to believe that either Neo has a wireless network card in his head now that lets him interface with the machines directly (very charitable), or that you gave him magical powers and thus totally sabotaged your movie in the process (not so charitable).
3. Let's hear it again for all those dangling plot threads, shall we?
4. An overlong, at times boring, Zion attack that was done very foolishly by both sides. Consider: How much would some small EMP devices and windshields on the battlemechs help out the Zion defense? How much would not flying around in cool-looking spirals and actually attacking help the machines? And how much would ignoring all those pointless characters we don't care about and getting on with the real plot help the movie?
5. Too, the Smith/Neo fight scene was a bit overlong and a bit too comical for my tastes. No, I'm not quite sure how to fix that in the context of the movie's world.
6. Too, the one fight scene I DID like was the bit where Seraph inexplicably goes with Morpheus/Trinity to the Merovingian's place and they do the whole upside down thing.
I say all of this having seen the movie twice now. We note that with Reloaded, both of the very long fight scenes actually got better on the second viewing because you could sit down and enjoy them. This didn't happen at all with Revolutions - Zion got a BIT better, except for all that stupid comical screaming and face grimacing, but the Smith/Neo fight still dragged and looked stupid.
7. The giant overload of Christian symbolism at the end. Count it, folks. You get Neo crucified on the Cross of Light. You get not one but two more crosses of light when all the Smiths start blowing up (anyone who thinks those streets just so happened to be in a cross like that is deluding themselves), and my favorite, the cross in blood on whasshername's (Zee? Our favorite rocket loader...) arm in the temple scene.
8. A message that essentially comes down to "if you unquestioningly believe in God/Neo/something, everything will work out ok." Yes, they've been setting up Neo as the Messiah for three movies. Yes, this totally abandons Morpheus' crisis of faith, not to mention Neo's little "I am not the One" thing. Yes, it is a total copout. I mean, if I wanted a "power of faith" movie, I could go watch The Green Mile or something. I'm not sure what I wanted out of the movie, but that wasn't it. While they did the whole zero-sum thing quite well, the Messiah bit was horridly, horridly done.
Posted by Dwip at November 15, 2003 6:52 PM