...
home
| art & architecture | books & cds | dance
| destinations | film | opera | television | theater | archives
|
||
|
||
|
The first Matrix movie may not have been all that original,
but the way it synthesized its many inspirations – Hong Kong action, Japanese anime,
the Terminator films, and William Gibson – felt new. The second film, Matrix Reloaded, got lost in
all of its convoluted exposition. The final installment of the trilogy, The Matrix
Revolutions just goes through the motions of genre cliche. The writing-directing team
of brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski (Bound)
have substituted the engaging fantasy world of the first film with numbing spectacle and
eye-rolling dialogue. Even worse, the whole thing has a “we’re making it up as
we go along” quality.
The
The rest of the film is devoted to the machine invasion of the last
human city, Zion, and Neo’s attempt to conquer the renegade program Agent Smith (Hugo
Weaving, Lord of the Rings: The
Fellowship of the Rings). A supervillain in a suit and tie, Smith has become a
self-replicating virus threatening to take over the machine world. The Zion segment
includes the kind of ridiculous drill sergeant bit that Stripes
made fun of over 20 years ago, and there are also lots of uninspiring speeches trying to
rally the troops by Captain Mifune (Nathaniel Lees) on the field and Commander Lock (Harry
Lennix) in the war room. The APU battle bots the Zions use look like they were taken
straight from the dock movers in Aliens
with all the clunky vulnerabilities that implies.
The only character who shows any signs of life is Niobi (Jada Pinkett
Smith, The Nutty Professor)
who is determined to pilot the heavyweight hovercraft, The Hammer, through the
“impossible” route of a “mechanical line.” When the battle finally
comes, it’s a literal video game of CGI. Sure, the insect-like swarms of invading
machine sentinels look cool (reminiscent of Starship
Troopers), but without any established characters to root for in Zion, it’s
an empty exercise in spectacle. In the meantime, Neo and Trinity have to battle Bane (Ian
Bliss), who’s body has been taken over by Agent Smith, and deal with the defenses of
the machine city. These take the form of another anime homage, the giant insect ohmu
creatures from Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, except in
machine form here. The climax arrives in Neo’s showdown with Agent Smith. The fight
resembles the centerpiece battle in Superman
II set to an overwrought choral chant by composer Don Davis.
The whole movie is encumbered with pseudo-philosophical gobbledygook.
The Architect (Helmut Bakaitis) of the machines balances equations while the Oracle
unbalances them. Smith espouses nihilism, and Neo rebuts with existential choice.
Somewhere in all this is a not-so subversive message of minorities battling The Man. The
Architect and the Agents are all white men with conformist names like Smith, Brown, Jones,
Johnson, and Thompson while the vast majority of the human and machine revolutionaries are
black (Morpheus, Lock, the Oracle), Asian (Ghost, Seraph, and even Keanu is one quarter
Chinese), or women (Trinity, Niobi, Zee). Even a family of programs – father
Rama-Kandra (Bernard White), wife Kamala (Tharini Mudaliar), and daughter Sati (Tanveer
Atwal) – trying to escape deletion are Indian.
What the Wachowskis never get around to dealing with is answering all
the questions they’ve raised. How does Neo manipulate machines outside the Matrix? How did Smith become so powerful? Why did the
Oracle’s appearance change (aside from the fact that original star Gloria Foster died
during shooting)? Why didn’t the citizens of Zion shoot their fashion designer, and
who left the padlock off the Nebuchadnezzar’s refrigerator leaving Morpheus to go the
route of Marlon Brando? Most importantly, when did the Wachowskis run out of ideas, that
they could end on a note so mawkish, it’d make George Lucas blush?
- George Wu
