I saw it at 9:00 AM. Had to get up at 7. To be blunt, I'm very diappointed. In fact, I feel like I've been mugged, raped, pissed on, shitted on, blah blah blah.
Simply put, this makes "Reloaded" look like a masterpiece (and at least "Reloaded" had some good scenes, like the Architect). This film had almost none, the final battle between Smith and Neo perhaps being one of the sole exceptions (I kinda liked the Club Hell scenes too, short as they were. There's a club Hell not far from where I live).
Main problems:
The Merovingian was a great character in the second film, but here he's wasted: A little 5 minute scene, and then he just vanishes for the rest of the film, after the first half-hour. No mention of what happens to him. Even worse, his wife, Peropheresene (sic) does even less: She literally has one line of dialogue! What a waste.
Morpheus really sucked in this film too. Barely did anything at all. That fucking Mifune guy (or whatever his name is) did more. A shame as Morpheus was such a good character in the first film too. Here he just looks bloated and irrevelant, a bystander.
I was hoping for a great conversation between Neo and Deus Ex Machina, something mind-bending that explained what the point of all this was. sadly, the Machine leader, while looking very cool, spoke about 5 lines, most of which consisted of "Speak", "It is Done", "And what if you fail", etc. There was also no explanation for why the sky was blue
The battle at Zion went on for way too long and some parts looked very cheesy, imo. Even worse, the council of elders and that damn annoying Kid returned.
Contrary to most people who complained about "Reloaded" I actually liked the philosopical conversations. This film almost has none, and when it does they're unbelieveably trite. Stuff like "If I'm not me, then who am I?" and stuff like that. The philosophy and religigious allegories/symbolism were much more subtle in the first film. Here they're blatant and excessive. Even worse, the wachowskis' have moved away from the gnostic philosophy of the first one into hackneyed typical Judeo-Christian mythology.
The new character, The Trainman, is crap. And the new oracle just can't compete with the old one. On a plus side, Seraph did more in this one, and he's kinda cool looking.
Trinity dies in a ship crash. How lame is that? Almost nothing heroic about it all. I mean, Neo saved her life at the end of "Reloaded", 24 hours before, only to have her get killed off again in this one. Lame!
And the brief ending was really, really lame. So much so that people in the theater laughed at the end of it.
In retrospect, I shouldn't have watched the first two Matrix films prior to this one. watch for yourself, but you'll probably be disappointed. In its own way the film was shallowingly entertaining (I'll admit I got a little choked up when Morpheus said goodbye to Neo, and the scene where Trinity sees the blue sky is beautiful), but this could have been so much more. Sadly, the critics were right. Too bad, cause the trailer for this film looked great. The dialogue was awful, the acting wooden: Its hard to believe this was the conclusion to that beloved film I saw close to five years ago. Do you know how long the fans waited for this moment? What a let-down.
To add insult to injury, the theater charged $3.50 for a Dasani bottled water.
(as for their being sequels, I doubt it, what with all the bad reviews this one's been getting, to say nothing of the potential fan backlash I'm sure will manifest). |
