I think they missed a great opportunity for a great set piece in Revolutions. For your core audience, Revolutions took way too long to get to the point. There are millions of references, such as the young girl Sati, throughout the films for people who study religion and philosophy. Only in proper perspective do we gain insight and power. The core belief behind everything in the Matrix is that power comes from questioning the existance of everything we believe in. I think the spoon line was just a reminder and didn't need more explanation. His mind was torn between two worlds for a while. Neo left through an exit of his own invention in Reloaded and didn't properly jack out.
If you play the video game, it explains how Neo can affect the Sentinels in the real world, though the movie perhaps didn't explain it clear enough. Therefore Revolutions could function only as an acition-flick, where Reloaded had depth, mystery and philosophical conundrums. Doesn't make it a bad film per se - as EnderWiggin says, the battle for Zion is incredible, as is the Hammer's flight back there, but plotwise the whole thing is a confusing mess that refuses to unveil its secrets.
Only Revolutions refused to give answers, and that is rather disappointing. I speculated like Hell over them, after I saw Reloaded, and I went to see Revolutions to see if I had guessed right. What does that scene try to tell us?Īll of this was very interesting, and there are answers to them. This leads to a scene, where the councilmember concludes that "we need machines, the machines need us". Why?Ĭouncilmember Hamann (sp?) comes to Neo and they talk. The elders of Zion show a lot of faith in Neo and Morpheus over the objections of Commander Locke and let them make decisions that seem strategically unsound, if Zion is to be saved from the burrowing machines. And the truth is "there is no spoon!" What's the significance of that scene in Revolutions? This is an obvious reference back to the first film, where a boy (the same boy?) tells Neo that he just needs to realize the truth in order to bend the spoon, because then he will realize that it is not the spoon that bends, but rather himself. Neo accepts that, and yet how that all adds up is never dealt with Revolutions.Īs Neo leaves Zion in Reloaded, a boy has left him a horribly bent spoon with the comment that he knows what it means. The Architect reveals that Neo is not the first incarnation of "the One" and that Zion has been destroyed several times before. She does indeed die, just not in Reloaded as we might have thought. The Architect tells him that Trinity will die, and that he can't stop it. There are several clues scattered over Reloaded, that are more siginificant that it might seem. That doesn't preclude an explanation, but while I can accept his reasons for not telling his friends, the movie suffers because it is not revealed to us. So Neo would have power than reaches from the Matrix to the machine world, yet he uses it in the real world? How can he do that? And why did usage of that power bring him to the train station? There is a lot of mystery going on, and he never explains any of it to his friends.
Now note that "this world" would seem to be mean the Matrix, since that is where she exists. For instance, how can Neo disable the sentinels in the real world? The oracle gives a very cryptic answer - because his power stretches all the way back from "this world" to the machine world. My problem with Revolutions was that it spent most of its time denying or ignoring the aspects that were revealed at the end of Reloaded. It would fit in with the whole Christ-Neo thing, and the whole trilogy being a reflection of Gnostic Christianity. You may note at the very end she is wearing Neo's glasses. There are some who suggest that Neo isn't dead, and that the resurrected Oracle is in fact Neo. The fight for Zion is really incredible, but the requisite martying of Neo just brings the film right back down. It was very poorly editted, and the first hour drags horribly. I think Revolutions had the greatest potential, and fell flat. So they went to the desert in Australia and build a stretch of freeway just to film that. They should no one could pull off such a sequence.
The freeway sequence in Reloaded still stands as the greatest damned chase sequence in film history.Ĭarrie Anne Moss broke her leg doing that sequence, and the city of LA refused to let them film, insisting atleast one person would die. Because of the franchise tag, we had really high expectations and judged them a bit more harshly than we should. They had really great moments sandwiched inbetween some really less than great moments. I see the two Matrix sequels in almost the same light as the first two Star Wars prequels.