The Matrix Revolutions
Director: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
Writer: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
Sequel to: The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Harry Lennix, Harold Perrineau, Jada Pinkett Smith, Gina Torres, Mary Alice, Nathaniel Lees, Helmut Bakaitis, Lambert Wilson, Monica Bellucci, Collin Chou, Essie Davis, Nona Gaye, Cornel West, Bruce Spence
Seen on: 1.11.2021

Content Note: ableism

Plot:
Zion is still under threat, and their time is running out. Meanwhile Neo (Keanu Reeves) is unconscious, and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) suspect that he is still in the Matrix, although his body isn’t plugged in. They start a desperate search for him. Meanwhile Neo learns more about The Matrix and his connection to it – knowledge that will hopefully lead to an end of the war between humans and machines. But whether he can achieve his goal before Zion is destroyed completely is still questionable.

Where The Matrix Reloaded was a step-down from The Matrix, The Matrix Revolutions is a plunge down for several stories. It’s a boring film that gives us an unsatisfying ending of the trilogy. I really hope that the new film will make up for it a little.

Embarking on the triple feature of the Matrix movies, I was actually quite sure that I hadn’t ever seen The Matrix Revolutions. Watching it now made it clear to me that I had seen it before, but obviously my brain decided that it would rather forget about the experience. And I can understand it very well.

I think the thing that bothered me most about it, is that it is just boring. A lot of it just seems to be the epic CGI battle where things get shot for what feels like hours. And I’m just not interested in that, to be honest. If a long shoot-out that hits all the usual moments of heroic deaths and rescues at last seconds and so on is your thing, you’ll enjoy that part at least. But I’m not so sure about the rest of the film, either.

Because the other thing I really struggled with is that we kind of go from “we have to save humanity from the machines” to “we have to save Zion from this one attack” in the span of the film. Yes, by the end it appears that the machines will be going about things differently from now on, by freeing people who say that they want to be freed from the Matrix, but honestly, if people don’t know that they’re in a simulation, how can they asked to be released from it? This concession doesn’t actually change anything.

But Neo gets his final Jesus moment, he gets to sacrifice himself. That it comes after a very ableist trope (he is blinded in a fight, but then gets magic vision pretty much instantly, so we and he don’t really have to deal with any implications of his disability) makes things taste even more sour here.

In any case, I hope that I will remember from now an that I actually saw this film, and that I will never have to put myself through it again.

Summarizing: ugh.