The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Jada Pinkett Smith, Nona Gaye, and Bruce Spence
Grade: A

As much as I complain in this review, I still really liked The Matrix Revolutions. It’s kind of the same deal I had with The Matrix Reloaded. It’s great to a point, it just makes some crucial mistakes that majorly effect my concluding thoughts. In general, the Matrix sequels are a lot better than people give them credit for. It’s just hard to compete with that first one.

Summary

Picking up right where The Matrix Reloaded left off, we see a group of soldiers, led by Captain Roland (David Roberts), discuss the whereabouts of Captain Niobe (Smith) and Ghost (Anthony Wong). At the same time, we go to the infirmary to see our hero Neo (Reeves) still in his coma and Trinity (Moss) watching over him. If you remember in the ending of the previous film, Neo passed out after using all of his energy to kill a group of sentinels. Across from Neo, on his own bed in the infirmary, is Bane (Ian Bliss). Though as you remember, Agent Smith (Weaving) actually possessed him and his masquerading as Bane, unbeknownst to the rest of the humans.

Despite Neo being in the infirmary in the real world, Morpheus (Fishburne) asks one of the guys to see if Neo is somehow still in the Matrix. They don’t find anything. Immediately after, they are given the news that the sentinels will be tunneling into Zion in under 20 hours. As everyone springs into action, Seraph (Collin Chou) calls from the Matrix and relays a message from the Oracle (Mary Alice) to come at once. Despite being knocked out in the real world, we see Neo seemingly wake up at a train station, meeting a little girl named Sati. She tells him the train leads to the Matrix and that’s where her and her family are going, but Neo isn’t allowed to come because of the mysterious Trainman (Spence). At the same time, Morpheus, Trinity, and Seraph go to see the Oracle (Mary Alice), who now has the appearance of a completely different person. Obviously, Morpheus and Trinity are confused, but she explains this happened because she helped Neo and whatnot. The subject then changes, and she says that Neo is currently stuck in a purgatory-like place between the Matrix and the machine world, and it’s controlled by the program that is the Trainman. The Trainman uses it to smuggle other programs in and out of the Matrix. It could be trouble if the Trainman finds Neo before they do because he works for the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson).

If you remember from the previous film, they beat up all of the Merovingian’s henchmen and stole the Keymaker from him. Because of this, he’s placed a bounty on the good guys. Since Seraph knows how to find the Trainman, Morpheus and Trinity follow him.

Meanwhile in purgatory, Neo meets Rama Kandra (Bernard White), the father of Sati. He is a program, along with his family, and he’s a systems manager for recycling operations. His wife is an interactive software programmer. He explains that since every program that doesn’t have a purpose is “deleted”, his daughter would be killed off by the machines. Because of this, he went to the Merovingian to help him save his daughter via the Trainman transferring her to the Matrix. Elsewhere, Seraph, Morpheus, and Trinity find the Trainman, but he’s able to elude them. Neo and Rama Kandra and his family wait, with Kandra noting that the Trainman is late for the first time. Sadly, Kandra reveals that the Oracle said she will watch over Sati because the deal he made with the Merovingian only included his daughter and not him or his wife. Following this, the Trainman approaches. However, he stops Neo as he tries to enter, realizing who he is. Neo tries to threaten him but since the Trainman built this in-between world, his power rules all, and he lays out Neo with a single strike. Elsewhere, Morpheus, Trinity, and Seraph break into a club the Merovingian runs, and they ask what it will take for him to let Neo go. He wants the eyes of the Oracle. Being that this is a terribly unreasonable request, the trio fight everyone in the area closest to him. It ends with Trinity holding a gun directly to the Merovingian’s face, Seraph holding one on the Trainman, and Morpheus on some random guy, while everyone holds a gun on them. She gives him a new offer, they all die, or he lets go of Neo.

Well, the answer is pretty simple.

Neo is saved by the trio but before they go back to the real world, Neo insists on going to see the Oracle one last time. After being greeted by Sati, who’s officially settled in at the Oracle’s place, Neo goes and talks with the Oracle. He questions why she didn’t tell him about the Architect (Helmut Bakaitis) and the six other versions of him that went on this same path. She’s states it wasn’t time for him to know, according to his own self. When he asks how he was able to stop those sentinels before passing out and how he’s been able to move between worlds without being plugged in, he is told that it’s the power that comes with being “The One”, among other things. Despite the Architect saying that Zion will be destroyed at midnight if Neo doesn’t return to the source, the Oracle offers hope by dismissing some of the shit the Architect said, saying he doesn’t understand the concept of choice. He sees everything as an equation, and he’s there to balance everything out. However, since she wants the war to end as well, she’s here to “unbalance it”. Though she doesn’t have an answer for him when he asks if Zion can be saved, she says the war will end one way or another, and he is the one that stands in the way. She also says Agent Smith is becoming more and more powerful and will eventually have the power to destroy the world.

As this is said, we see the Smith-possessed Bane wake up in the infirmary in the real world.

Right after, Neo is unplugged and brought back to the real world too. Back in the Matrix, the Oracle tells Seraph to take Sati. As the two leave, they are hunted down by Agent Smith and his clone army. Eventually, they capture and possess them too. Then, the group of Smiths go to the Oracle and officially turn her into a Smith clone as well. As Bane is questioned and everyone notices how something is clearly wrong with him, everyone is alerted that Niobe’s ship has been spotted. Everyone is found, and they are okay. Elsewhere in the real world, Commander Lock (Harry Lennix) tells the council that the machines are twelve hours away. Their only chance of survival is to stop the sentinels when they reach the dock before they reach Zion. If that doesn’t work, fighting from the temple is their last option.

The human race’s last stand is coming up, and they will try their hardest to fight off the powerful sentinels that outnumber them with ease. At the same time, Neo has to figure out a gameplan on how he will face Agent Smith and go directly to the source, Machine City. Regardless, the war ends tonight. We just don’t know who the victor will be.

My Thoughts:

To complete a saga as large as this one, you really have to go all out. The Matrix Revolutions did just that. Though it can only be watched in conjunction with The Matrix Reloaded, this third film in the series is a fitting end to the war against the machines. Honestly, it even made sense of some of the issues I had with Reloaded. If you’ve read my review on Reloaded, you know how much I hated the Architect’s purpose and the huge reveal that this whole arc technically already happened six times. This revelation was too convoluted and almost undid every good thing about the franchise at that point. Here, we sadly doubled down on it, but the film was satisfying enough to make sense of the whole situation. Honestly, it was a solid example of letting things “play out” before I judged too hard. Obviously, I still have my issues and still don’t agree with the Architect’s maddening characterization but with how things turned out with Revolutions, I still had a pleasant viewing experience.

To begin things, I need to air out my grievances. The cliffhanger ending from The Matrix Reloaded, leading to the immediate opening of this film, is very cool for someone watching these movies back-to-back on DVD or if they’re streaming, but I can just imagine how pissed off people were when these films came out in 2003. It’s asking a lot from an audience to remember the ending of Reloaded, everything that came with it up until the very moment it ended, and to be prepared for the third film when it came out six months later. I know it’s not a problem for us anymore, but can you imagine how pissed off you would be if you only had the movie theater? There’s also the fact that Gloria Foster, the original actress that played the Oracle, died in real life before this sequel could be filmed. Because of that, we see actress Mary Alice take over the role. To save face, the characters acknowledge that the Oracle has a new appearance they don’t recognize. This is okay. Obviously, we have to accept that a new actress is playing the role because we can’t change the circumstances of someone dying. However, if you acknowledge the difference in appearance in the movie, you have to explain why it happened (obviously, sitcoms are an exception). I’ve watched this movie several times over the years, and I have to say, I still have no fucking clue as to why her appearance changed in the story. She starts talking about how it was because she helped Neo and the resistance, but then she starts talking about choice and other mumbo jumbo until the subject changes.

Considering how well-thought-out and detailed so much of this series is, I couldn’t believe how they completely walked around this important plot point. What the fuck happened? Why can’t she just spit it out instead of talking like a human puzzle? You can’t take the ambiguous route here! This has to be explained. If you acknowledge the difference in appearance, you can easily come up with an outrageously convoluted reason (in a franchise full of them) as to why this happened. You have to explain to the audience why! This cannot be argued.

Going along with the Oracle’s insistence in making every answer super complicated and philosophic when it doesn’t need to be, Neo asks her directly what the hell is going on with him, what’s the next step, and the whole deal with the Architect, and it takes several watches of the scene to really try and understand the full meaning of what she’s saying. Though it’s not nearly as unnecessary as the Merovingian’s speech in Reloaded, her inability to give Neo a direct answer can be fucking infuriating. How does he have so much patience? They have no time to waste, but Neo is sitting there wasting time, confused in the Oracle’s kitchen trying to decipher what she means when she could JUST SAY IT TO HIM. He figures it out at times, but the fact that he’s being forced to figure it out, even when she admits she’s on the side of the resistance, makes no sense. Why waste time? Is it that hard to just tell him the answers to his questions? Does she not understand how important saving time is in this situation? Even with some questions being answered, there’s still a lot that remain. In regard to the Architect’s purpose, I did appreciate the reasoning for his existence when it was explained by the Oracle. Though I’m still not a fan of this whole scenario happening six different times (I can’t say it enough), according to the Architect in that fateful scene in Reloaded, the explanation of him existing to balance out the equation between the Matrix and the real world is kind of interesting, as is the Oracle’s purpose to unbalance everything. It’s a much more satisfying way of explaining the purpose of their existence.

In this conversation, she also explains how powerful Agent Smith has become. Now when you watch the first Matrix, there’s not a shot in hell you would see Smith becoming what he’s become by the time you watch Revolutions. This man becomes the Darth Vader to Neo’s Luke Skywalker, the yin to his yang (or the yang to his yin?). Just as the Oracle and the Architect exist to balance each other out, Smith being the exact opposite of Neo exists for the same purpose, to balance out the equation. This sets up an electrifying climax and a finale worthy of three films of buildup. In the scene, the rain accents the dark and gloomy Matrix perfectly, giving the sequence one of the most epic, cinematic feelings I’ve ever witnessed. No matter how you feel about this film, there’s no way you don’t get chills when Neo by his lonesome, ready to put it all on the line for Zion, stands across from Agent Smith in a standoff with Smith’s clone army on both sides of them, watching. It’s a duel to the death. It’s a “big fight feel” you only get so often in film, but every time, it feels like you’re watching the event of a lifetime.

You know what I’m talking about. There’s Rocky/Creed in Rocky, Avengers/Thanos in Avengers: Endgame, Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi, and yes, Neo/Agent Smith in The Matrix Revolutions.

Throughout this film, many characters talk about how it all ends here. In this final fight, the stakes couldn’t feel any higher. It’s an event worth the wait. Neo making it all the way to Machine City to make this all possible is edge-of-your-seat exciting too. Neo and Trinity say goodbye to Morpheus and head out, but none of them look confident. It’s a chilling moment. This trio has taken us through hell and back, with three films of constant fighting all for one cause, a cause they are all willing to die for. It’s an emotional goodbye, especially because though they don’t know it, this would be the last time all three of them would share a room together. I still get goosebumps thinking about when Neo and Trinity get into the elevator and share an unsure look of eye contact with Morpheus from across the room, as the door closes. In this very moment, it felt like they knew things may never be the same again. Going to Machine City is something no one has ever survived. It’s a total suicide mission, and Neo isn’t even sure if going there is the right thing to do because the Oracle didn’t even tell him to. He’s going out on a limb to try and pull off the impossible. To see Trinity refuse to leave his side in the heat of the battle, officially made these two one of my favorite power couples in action cinema history. She was a true “ride or die” woman.

Trinity has nowhere near the same amount of power as Neo and considering they’re going to a place that even Neo is unsure of his own survival, the odds were against her. However, she refused to leave. In a way, it shows us how strong she truly is.

We’ve seen a million action movies where the man tells the woman to stay so they won’t get hurt, with the female either refusing, or staying until she decides to change her mind in the middle of the climax. Here, right before Neo leaves, he tries to say something similar, but he knows she’s going to come with. She’s adamant about it, she’s one hell of a fighter, and they’re too in love for her to sit there and watch as Neo potentially dies. To not even argue if she’s going was the right call. It cemented Trinity’s legacy as a character, and the power and confidence they give each other when they’re together. There is power in passion, and this couldn’t be truer when discussing the importance of Trinity to the franchise (if there were any last-minute doubters). I loved it when they talk about the severity of the situation beforehand too. They both admit they’re scared. They don’t try and be macho about the whole thing. This is real, and they can lose. The future is about as uncertain as it gets, and they take us on a rollercoaster ride of emotions throughout the third act. That’s what makes it so exciting. Seeing Neo so unsure but his insistence of trying, is very inspiring. That’s why I loved the scene with him and Niobe, who gifts Neo her ship.

She admits she doesn’t buy that he’s “The One”, but she believes in Neo as a person. I love everything about that.

This idea of believing inspires so many, especially in their time of need. This is true in this movie and in real life. Considering the importance of this final fight, it makes sense why believing has become so vital to our heroes and their survival. All the religious allegories may be a bit cheesy for some, but I enjoyed it. It really fit the overarching story they were going for, even from the beginning. This goes back to many suggesting that Neo is a messiah-like character, something people have been saying since the first film (as I stated in my review for the first Matrix too). Here, believing is more important than knowing and as soon as the other characters start to buy into this, the tide turns, and it’s awesome to see. Even in the end, the Oracle is asked if she knew of the eventual result. She admits she didn’t know, but she believed. I thought this was a beautiful line to end on, considering the circumstances and the atmosphere. It was really well done.

The most underrated part of this whole film was also in the flight through Machine City. This is when we see Trinity fly the hovercraft right above the clouds to escape the sentinels momentarily. This is where, for the first time in the entire series, we see a normal-looking sky with bright colors. This serene image Trinity is able to see is just that little “extra” she needs to get through this impossible task. Seeing her in awe is contagious because when watching this series, you see nothing like it up until this point because of the deliberately dark and murky cinematography throughout. It all leads to this one moment that has you stare at the screen in awe as much as she does. After watching these three films and its bleak stylistic choices, seeing a normal sky looks like Candyland. It’s just for a few seconds but damn it, it means the world to us and someone like Trinity.

It means hope.

I’ll admit that the leader of Machine City threw me off. It’s a large face, reminiscent of the meeting of Oz from The Wizard of Oz, compiled of a million sentinels. It’s disturbing enough to be memorable, but it doesn’t really fit the tone of the series, considering all the creative names and characters they’ve come up with over three films. I’m not sure what I was expecting the leader of Machine City to look like, but it definitely wasn’t this. It did add to the legend of Neo though because him walking in there without fear, daring this monster to kill him while offering it a choice, was one of the ballsiest things a hero could do.

Finally seeing the sentinels in all their glory was also pretty terrifying. They aren’t individually scary per say, but when you see all of them coming down at once, flying towards the humans, it’s hard not to get a little freaked out. They look like a congregation of rats or spiders but when they fly together, they sound like angry bees. Seeing the humans look visibly frightened when the sound is heard, and the swarm being spotted right after is well-executed by everyone involved. We’ve seen small scenes with them in previous installments, but we see them the most in Revolutions. This is mostly because a good chunk of the film is the machines attacking Zion and the human resistance fighting them off to the best of their ability. Along with Niobe flying through the mechanical line with the big EMP and Morpheus as her co-pilot, this major piece of the movie is around thirty minutes. Yes, thirty minutes without seeing Neo seems hard to comprehend since the entire franchise revolves around his path, but since we’ve grown to learn about all of these supporting characters, they are handled well enough to carry this portion of the film. It also raises the stakes of the action even more. They are going to war and have to deal with a lot of shit too. They can’t sit back and wait on Neo to do whatever he believes he needs to do. They have to defend their homeland, and I thought they did a great job in showing to the audience that this is the last stand and things couldn’t be more serious than that very moment.

I enjoyed Captain Mifune’s (Nathaniel Lees) Rambo performance, the Kid (Clayton Watson) getting some screen time, and Zee (Nona Gaye) helping load up some girl carrying a dual rocket launcher in the heat of the battle as well. They were all very nice asides that complimented the final product as a whole.

The only thing I didn’t like was how Morpheus took too much of a backseat to Niobe in this film. I didn’t mind her getting a bigger role, but it shouldn’t have been at Morpheus’s expense. He needed a way bigger role in the midst of the fighting that actually had him save someone or shoot something important. Here, it felt like he stood back and watched. He still did a good job but considering how important he was up until this point, he needed to do something major. If he were the one to open the gate to let Niobe through instead of the Kid, it would’ve made a lot more sense. That might have been the only thing I would’ve changed in the second act of the movie. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s a high-octane thrill ride that is exciting from start to finish. Some have argued over issues of further character development and such, but I don’t think it’s necessary since this was meant to be taken place as soon as The Matrix Reloaded ended. Essentially, it’s all one film. When you think about it like that, it makes sense why Revolutions gets straight into the action. Why waste time? This is what we’ve been waiting for! This ending is five years in the making (and for the characters, it’s one hundred years in the making) and we basically got the idea of the ramifications of everything in under 45 minutes here. After that, it’s game time! I’m glad Revolutions was loaded with as much action as it was. It’s war, and we have to show it in its entirety! Because of this, everything stays at a breakneck pace once the war begins, and it gives you that feeling that our heroes are really running out time.

It adds so much more tension and excitement to Neo’s final stand and makes something like flying into Machine City, something no human has ever done before, one of the best moments of the film.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

After the fight, Neo goes full Jesus and sacrifices himself to save Zion, using every bit of power in his body to defeat Smith and his army, and it works. It’s not an allegory anymore, Neo is the savior of the human race. There is one thing that is a bit frustrating though. Despite everything that was done and everything the viewers have gone through in these three films, Neo and the giant monster basically agree to a ceasefire. The obvious way to end this would be for Neo to destroy all of Machine City via his sacrifice, so the human race is forever set free but here, the machines decide to leave the humans alone. This forever leaves the door open, and it wasn’t necessary. The final conversation between the Oracle and the Architect implies that this whole thing can happen again, with the Oracle noting that peace will last “as long as it can”. They could’ve just ended it here and put everyone’s minds at ease, but they decided to go with an ending that is open-ended and frustrating, just to make sense of these two characters and an idea that got too big for even the hero to stop. Honestly, everything should have ended here, plain and simple. We never should have gotten The Matrix Resurrections. It all should’ve ended here through Neo’s sacrifice, killing all of Machine City. Too many important characters died (including the protagonist) and everything that was talked about from the beginning has finally seen its end. Hell, our hero was even blinded and because of it, he couldn’t even see Trinity one last time before she died. Hasn’t this man been through enough? I know he’s a fictional character, but can we let the man rest?

All they had to do was destroy Machine City because it was the only chance they had, with the only person that could make it all possible, and they chose not to. Why?

There was also the huge “twist” in which Bane is revealed to be Agent Smith. I put the word twist in quotations because I didn’t understand why it was such a big moment in the film when it was shown to us in the previous film that Smith possessed Bane. Also, why is Neo so shocked? Bane had the exact same speech pattern as Smith and even called him “Mr. Anderson” several times when he hasn’t been called that by any other person but Smith since the first Matrix. The whole “reveal” scene made Neo look like a total moron. This wasn’t the “huge” moment it was intended to be at all.

Though this finale isn’t without its faults, it rectifies questions I had with the previous film and though there’s not as much hand-to-hand combat as Reloaded, it’s got plenty of action, emotion, and story to give fans a fitting end to this massive saga. When you watch that last film in an overarching story, you need to feel like this journey was all worth it. You need to feel that relief that the war is over, our heroes have won, and these characters can finally rest. You get this feeling in Return of the Jedi, you get this feeling in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, and honestly, you get that feeling in The Matrix Revolutions.

The story behind The Matrix is a wonderfully creative tale deserving of a trilogy, and with The Matrix Revolutions, it’s finally put to an end in a climactic film worthy of your time.

…but of course, just like Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean, they had to go and make another one.