It’s a real shame for a franchise to, at that time, end in a thud. The Matrix was a lightning caught in a bottle, nobody had ever seen action like that before. And it even included bits of philosophy and introduced a world that seemed liked ours, but was being run by the machines. The sequel expanded more, but the philosophical aspect was amped to 11, but at the detriment to keeping the stakes high. Then the third one happened. Here’s what I think.
1. Everything
Where do I even start with this turkey of a film? So let me break it down to where it all went wrong. I feel that the whole story could’ve been tweaked. Since it literally picked up after Reloaded left off. With Smith taking over a human’s body. Except the character in the prior movie didn’t really do much and audiences didn’t really get to know him. And the twist not eliciting the “Oh Shit!” from the audience.
So with a chunk of time Neo is stuck in a subway station which is appropriately called Mobil Ave. If you were to rearrange the letters, I mean you probably know what it means. I’ll talk about the two battles later but I feel that the story is where the movie mostly fails.
I feel that the Wachowskis had no idea where to take the story. It made sense to split the movie, but I feel that there should’ve been more to elaborate on Agent Smith. Here he just devolves into the standard bad guy. Complete with evil laughter when he takes over the Oracle. Like, a sequel should be the one where the whole team loses and the resistance has to regroup. It didn’t happen with Reloaded, which makes everything that happened with this movie feels anti climatic. Which I’ll get into.
Other than the philosophical overload moments, the imagery involving Neo is just too on the nose. I understand that the movie tries to make him into a Christ like character. One who inspires a newfound hope against a threat. It’s very heavy handed, especially near the end with what happens to Neo.
If there’s one thing where I will say that the movie did easily, it’s to make me not care about the whole thing. As great a concept as the Matrix and having the humans vs robots storyline, the filmmakers really dropped the ball big time. None of the characters that were interesting in the first movie made me like them. Especially one where just breathing the last breath, I just wanted that character to get it over with.
One last thing is that it just feels dated. As I mentioned when I talked about Reloaded, every action film took notes from The Matrix and applied how it did action into their own films. The gun fights and the wire-fu fights just doesn't carry the same sense of awe. Even the rave where Morpheus, Trinity, and Seraph goes to feels like it's a relic of the 90s. And I get that it created this world, but at the same token feels just dated.
2. Confusing Battles
So two battles occur during the film, the resistance fighting against the machines. And Neo and Agent Smith’s final fight within the Matrix. They’re bad, anti-climactic even but, I’ll elaborate more on just how much of an egg that this movie laid. First let’s talk about the resistance in Zion attempting to stop the machines from killing and destroying the city. It should’ve been like an exciting and engaging sequence. With Morpheus and Trinity helping and piloting a mech suit. While Neo is plugged in fighting Smith for one last time.
Obviously, it doesn’t happen like that and I feel that it could’ve been paced to make it more exciting. It’s just loud and there’s not one character where I’m worried about of getting killed or just making it out alive. Meanwhile, Trinity and Neo are going to where the machines are. We see that the Machines are intelligent enough and manage to help Neo stop Smith. The last fight evokes a memory when I used to watch Dragon Ball Z. But, it could’ve been better. And I think it’s ironic that when the video game spin off had the directors in a cameo, they said that a giant version of Smith was better than what was presented in the movie. Either it’s them being sarcastic or just trolling the player, it would’ve been interesting seeing Neo fight Smith in an even more over the top way.
And it’s such a shame that it was the end of the franchise. Again, it was anti-climactic where Neo had to sacrifice himself instead of winning triumphantly. It just represents the entire franchise. The possibilities were endless with what the story was going to lead. Although the one thing that killed it was the lack of character development and just caring with what was happening. That’s why the first one will always be the best one, while the other ones will be over shadowed with just how much it leaned with the philosophy that it bogs down the movie.
3. Overall
One would think that the trilogy was just a relic of the 2000s, but no. There’s another one. Did this film warrant a follow up? Nope.
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