»The Real Problem with the Matrix Revolutions«

I am a huge fan of the first 2 movies because they did a couple of things right.

In the beggining of the first 2 they start out with an exciting action scene which draws you into the movie immediately. (both with Trinity)- You often dont see this in most movies.

In Revolutions they start you out with your Hero in a coma and a bunch of boring dialogue. (i know, leaves you on the edge dont it?)

In the first movie it was about how wrong it was that the machines use humans as batteries. In the end Neo won, demolishing the enemy.

In the second it continued to show how powerful Neo was and even though it climaxed at a cliffhanger it still gave you the idea that he was all powerful.
Also in the second movie they showed a serif going toe-to-toe with Neo which makes you desire to see him fight others.

In the final movie the charachter who says "Ive beaten you before" is about to fight agent Smith and then they cutt away and dont show you the fight?
I guess were supposed to assume that he was absorbed like everyone else.
MY god! at least show it!

The first 2 end with the villan losing. The 3rd one doesnt.

This is why most people liked the film. This is why people like movies.

They want the Hero to win.

Still dissagree?

Look at it this way, In the third installment, the hero whom you've been following for 2 movies gets defeated in one punch by a no-name charachter (a dirty BUM no less!) who was called The Trainman. You rarely see this guy since his videogame birth. What follows is rather tramatic, Your hero proceeds to go blind and the love of his life (trinity) dies. (whom youve also grown attached to in the first 2 movies.)
Neo makes it to the machine city to side with the machines in order to defeat agent smith. We then witness a ho-hum battle between the 2 super humans where we dont see anything new. In fact, the previous battles in the earlier movies were better corographed. And most people are going to expect the climactic battle between ultamite evil and ultimate good to be the best fight scene in the trilogy. Obviously it wasnt.

To make matters worse, the blind, beaten, hero who lost his true love (who your still rooting for manages to get his butt beat in through the whole fight.
Leaving himself defeated, and eventually dies (at least you think)

I understand the argument. But look at it with this point of view.

Being a sports fan, relate it to this, your favorite football team (whom you are devoted to following them throughout the years) loses 72 to nothing. Wow what a great game, my team just got killed.
Some of you still say, what a great movie, my hero just got destroyed.
Ive read alot of movie mags quoting the Wachowski brothers saying that the 3rd installment was a "movie about death."

No one, aside from the creators knows whether or not Neo is dead.
everyone has said there arguments from both sides.
When a movie ends and there are so many questions that arise that forums like this one are created and people argue about what the heck is really going on means there is something wrong in the whole idea.

And dont hand me that crap "oh it wasnt supposed to answer anything."
All the answers are out there (in real life) they just refused to put it in. Look hard enough and youll find all the answers to the questions the matrix proposed.
(im not gonna type them this is too long as it is.)

The first movie was great because it hinted that neo was going to free the humans from slavery and how wrong it was for the machines to control us.

Ok now in the 3rd one were supposed to accept the fact that the machines need to live too so its ok that were slaves?

WTF? somethings wrong with that?

As i see it the machines really won.
Remember, at the end the humans were croweded into a little mouselike hole with a limited supply of those crappy electrical guns. (which appeared to take forever to kill a single squid) and the squids were about to slaughter them. remember this "he did it! he saved us!"
Being saved implies the person was in trouble and needed saving.
Any idot can figure out that the machines beat the living hell out of zion, and it was Neo that was needed to stop them from being wiped out.
Heres why. From the first film what has changed for the better?

Whats that? cant think of anything?
Well for starters instead of sneaking around freeing people, the people of Zion now have permission to free humans (the ones that want to be free)
Also the 2 main heros are dead, both humans and machines have died in conflict.
And for what?
Now maybe they are going to broadcast the fact that everyone is a slave?
(anyone know about the 80-20 rule?)
Im just saying that 80% of the people trapped in the matrix will want to be freed. There is no way and i mean NO way that the machines (based of the animatrix, and the matrix movies) that they will let this happen. (they need humans as batteries remember? if 80% leave that means lots of dead machines.
The whole trilogy can be boiled down to choice vs enevitablity. Are we products of our enviornment? The movie suggests that no matter what the humans do, they will forever be slaves, (batteries) for the machines. We have NO choice in the matter. CHOICE is an illusion. What a sad depressing piece of hogwash.
Were supposed to swallow the fact that its ok to be a battery because the machines need to survive to do it.
One last thing is the american movie goer wants the HERO to win and when it doesnt happen its a dissapointment.

There is nothing that anyone can say that will change the fact that the machines won.

I too loved the first two movies. The last movie ended the way a coward would like....they would rather live in a prison in "peace", than live in a world that is full of conflict, but has freedom.

The machines won. Those few humans that were left at the end can still be beaten by the machines. As soon as those few humans realize that the only time they will be safe and feel safe is when they won't have to live in fear of "when will the machines realize that they don't have enough "batteries?"

The Machines won because they still have the "All powerful Machine Leader" and the humans don't have theirs.

The thing I agree with most is the point about how my hero gets his butt beat in almost every fight and who wants to say "It was a great game, we lost 72 to nothing....yea!" How can loosing 72 to nothing be a great game/movie?

Machines are still in charge....they still have some of us enslaved as batteries, that is nothing but defeat!

"Everything that has a beginning has an end!" Neo had a beginning, so he also has/had an end!

Machines and Programs don't "live", they exist! They don't have a life force that some call a spirit.

I guess some people love it when Superman gets a fatal dose of Kryptonite and dies! They say...."Wow what a terrific ending!" NOT!

Just look at the facts....the box office on this one is terrible! The movie goers have spoken!

Go ahead and say..."Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!" Those few of you who liked the movie probably are like shalow Hal, you see beauty when the rest of the world sees UGLY!

Wake up! Neo and Trinity getting beat is not good for those of us who want to see Good triumph over evil.

I guess some of you like the bully on the block to win!

The main problem, for me, is not humans ultimately losing the battle for earth but the fact that they failed miserably at almost everything they did...they constantly run away or get beat up, i mean how pathetic is that...its the same problem that every star trek show has, whenever someone appears humans get beaten up like little wussies and thats a little hard to accept considering that we have been fighting almost every day of our exsistance...the battle of zion for instance, i think that 3rd graders could have fought better, humans lacked any sane tactic or any sane plan and all mixed with some of the worst military technology ever captured on film...weak

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the battle of zion for instance, i think that 3rd graders could have fought better, humans lacked any sane tactic or any sane plan and all mixed with some of the worst military technology ever captured on film...weak

That is because of the Wachowski Bros being pacifists. They are against war and feel that we have no choice, we do what we must. They are like the Merovignian in their philosophy. What a shame. That is the very reason they don't get it.

We do have choice! This old idea that the "Devil made me do it" is childish and stupid.

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There is nothing wrong w being a pacifist...im for peace myself and any war should be avoided if anyway possible but when u gotta fight u gotta fight...above anything else humanity values freedom and peace cannot exist when the entire earth is covered w machines who feed on their human slaves...and i think that wachowskis have a totally wrong view of mankind, i mean look at the animatrix...no sane goverment would ever kill ambasadors, even nazis wouldnt do it...

wrong wachowski assumptions>
1. humans are bloodthirsty monsters
2. machines are invincible
3. humans are weak

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possible but when u gotta fight u gotta fight

Pacifists believe you should never fight!

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Pacifists believe you should never fight!

that pisses me off... damn hippies...

I have no choice but to agree... *laughs* ...seriously, given the choice to accept or reject the movie, I reject it.

In my eyes it flopped in so many ways (many I have already posted around the forum in some form or another), but I don't want to get into a heated debate about why I believe it flopped. People will just have to accept that there are many people out there who believe it has and I'm one of them.

It's a real shame though, I really wanted something that would have blown me away, not just visually (I am extrememly plot driven person and if there's a movie with just visual effects strung together with no plot, I'll hate it), but also plot wise. I was really looking forward to something that would have raised the bar of what Reloaded did, but alas, I didn't get it.

Anyways, that's just my opinion and I agree whole heartedly with what has been posted above. I have listened to other viewpoints, I have rewatched M3 with these viewpoints in mind and still I am disappointed with the Movie. I don't think anything anyone can say to justify it's existance as an ending will ever change my perception of this movie. I could be wrong though, but I doubt it.

As I said before, this post is not open for heated debates, it's just my viewpoint as a fan, not a fanatic.

Please delete this post. I clicked quote instead of edit. Thanks.

[Edit] Unless someone can point out how I can delete my own posts? [/edit]

I don't think there is anything to debate Mark. The Wachowski Bros dropped the ball on what could have been the greatest film making touchdown run of all time.

people need to accept the fact that neo ws not the all powerful human savior he was led to believe he was

it is because of the fact that the prophecy was simply a means to control him that proves he was never destined to save mankind

if this dissapoints people then fine

personally i thought that the film was a breath of fresh air in a movie industry thar sees itself as the guardian and raiser of america's morale post septemeber 11th

fact of life...THE GOOD GUYS DONT ALWAYS WIN

im just glad a film finally reflected this

the anomaly wrote:

fact of life...THE GOOD GUYS DONT ALWAYS WIN

Quite true anomaly. In fact, the good guys get the short end of the stick more often than not. Which, I think, is why people like to see the good guys win on film.

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In fact, the good guys get the short end of the stick more often than not. Which, I think, is why people like to see the good guys win on film.

EXACTLY.
i dont need to be reminded on "why or HOW life SUCKS!"

its like watching a movie where its about ME and its doing NOTHING but keep telling me that im "A BIG LOSER!"
people are going to day WHOAH what a different movie!

originality doesn not automatically make for a "great movie"

people go and watch movies to "escape reality" not to be "reminded of it"

ENTERTAINMENT as a "WHOLE" is for "escapism"

how is telling me that "I SUCK" anything that is "good"
its not.

in REAL LIFE the good guys dont "always win"
but in the END? GOD will win.
so all of these battles are nothing but BATTLES that will end in the VICTORY for the "good side"

so if you want to get "technical" and "religious" LIKE THE W-brothers did, then you have to consider the fact that in the END the "good guys win"

but in this movies END they dont.
and THATS why it "blows a big one."

I'm sorry, people, but I have to agree with the anomaly on this one....the movie was good....but it could have been a wee bit better....

Sure, people watch movies to escape reality, but wouldnt a series, a sequel, a trilogy, a quadrilogy, what ever, get really old if the good guy won again, and again, and again?

HELL YEAH, IT WOULD!

You see, as much as you want to escape reality for a good movie, you can't! Once the movie is over, all you can do is watch it again! But you know what is going to happen....But I'm betting that if everyone in Zion died except for the crew of the Nebekednezzer, you would be happy, right?

Well, too bad, so sad, go suck the d*** of your dad....

If Neo and Pals won every battle, it would be just like those lame ass "Spy Kids" movies....I sware, I'll give the man who made Spy Kids such a flogging!....either the Spy Kids win, or it ends in a tie, more often then not, it ends in a fricken tie....

So don't complain, and if you have problems, bring out a fresh whip, and flog the hell out of the Wachowskis....Otherwise....

But if I could say one word to make the Mx3 better, it would be quoted from Neo...."Upgrades."....Don't flog them too much!

I think the real real problem with "Revolutions" is that it had to finish a trilogy story that had already gone bad in “Reloaded”.

It’s as though the Brothers W added each individual scene and idea without any concept of how it would all flow together as a story, or tie together in the end. What was a tight cyber-punk story in “The Matrix” became a clumsy philosophical contraption in “Reloaded”.
The biggest casualty from all this: the humans became less human than the programs. By the time “Reloaded” was over, I didn’t care if the “good guys” won or lost.

So I went to see “Revolutions”, hoping that the Brothers W might somehow redeem themselves.
Hoping they were brilliant enough to sort out the plot mess that “Reloaded” created.
Hoping they would reinvigorate to the now cold characters.
Hoping they would combine all the movie elements like a great symphony, as they did in “The Matrix”.

Unfortunately all those hopes were just wishful thinking.
We get too-large-to-be-life empty digital spectacles with undeveloped Zionite characters, who spew cliché lines that are cheesier than dialogue in an old b-rate war movie.
The story line payoff: Neo becomes Super/Dare-devil(blind)/digital/real world/Christ/Man! He sacrifices himself to oust the rogue Smith program, so that those undeveloped Zionite characters and the machines can live together, hand-in-tentacle (they’ll work what that pesky little “copper top” issue later). Eee-gads! Three movies to get to that?

I wish I were in a dream world. I could take the red pill, wake up, go back in the theater, and see “Reloaded and “Revolutions” meet or exceed my (justifiably) high expectations.

Neo loses - true, in a way.
The machines win, um harldy!

The machines now have to let anyone out of the matrix who wants to leave. That's gotta be pretty bad for the machines hasn't it?

The humans lost - not at all!

The war is over! The people of Zion no longer have to fear attacks from Sentinels. Zion wasn't destroyed by the machines - for the first time ever! Sounds like a victory to me - and Neo died for that! (To avoid debate - Neo, at very least, lost his body for that)

Neo produced more than simply a compromise, he shows complete sacrificial love for even his enemies! That is one hell of a dude!



I'll give you the reason why Matrix Revolutions wasn't up to scratch. The AWFUL AWFUL SCRIPT! How may more times must I point out that we had some of the worst lines imaginable in this movie? In Reloaded we had the cool "This is a war and we are soldiers" speech, the cool cool Architect (a bit poncy, but stylish nonetheless) conversation and the silky smooth "cawz and iffect" lecture from Merv. In Revolutions we have a pretty cool death scene from trinity, but what else?:
"I never finished the training program" *bleuuuurrgh!*
"Man that woman can drive" *huerrrgh!*
"I made the sunset for Neo" *oh please!
and the medical officer in the Hammer who sounds like she just got turned down for a part in Star Trek "Enterprise".

To be fair there were a few bad lines in Reloaded, but not this many! And there were some very cool, stylish scenes in Revolutions, but did they really make up for this? The problem with Revolutions is that instead of making up for bad lines with kung fu action, it makes up for bad lines with CG effects. For some of us, CG effects really just do not cut it

Now, I know some of you (maybe all of you) will agree with this statement....

The Wachowski brothers are pacifists, which are christians who don't believe in violence...

Perhaps, they were shunned by a pacifist priest or something when they made the first Matrix movie. Still planning on making a trilogy, perhaps they had lost a bit of self-esteem....

Still tons of violence though, so that might disprove that theory....

If that's not the case, then I agree with Fatpie42....

Pacifists aren't all Christians. Pacifism has nothing to do with religion. Quakers are traditionally pacifists, but apart from that I think all religions accept that war is sometimes necessary.

Does Neo lose? Do the humans?
Do the machines?
I believe it's the Movie goer / DVD buyer that loses!
People shouldn't have to jump through hoops trying to put meat on such a limp ending.

The machines make a promise they know they can't keep because it's suicidal. The Brothers W create a contradiction about machines keeping their word because they're "not human." The machines seem to have more human qualities than the actual humans. Deception and manipulation is their mode of operation. It was their only means of survival. Hell, the Matrix itself epitomizes that!

So the pact amounts to little.

The machines hold all the cards; Smith isn't a threat, the Zionites are in the squiddie's cross-hairs, and the Zionites are dumb enough to drop what little guard they have left.
So why would the head-honcho machines stop the squiddies at all? BECAUSE THE ENDING IS STUPID!

Let's not forget the fact that "entire crops were lost" when the earliest version of the Matrix wasn't realistic enough. So how could the machines present the “coppertops” with a choice about being plugged in? A public service announcement?--
"Hello, you are all living in a digital dream world, your bodies were grown like grapes and thrown in gelatin filled pods. At this moment, parasitic machines are feeding on you. Check your mail for coupons specials on red pills and blue pills. Double rebates for those who choose the blue pill! Have a nice day.”
What do think would happen? Apparently the Brothers W didn’t ask that question, otherwise they wouldn’t have come up with such a STUPID ENDING!

So why did the ending wind up so stupid? Because the Brothers W painted themselves into a corner with all the convoluted clumsy plot turns in “Reloaded”. Here’s how I feel the trilogy storyline progressed (regressed), in general terms:

The MATRIX
Cutting edge, Interesting characters, lays out a cool cyber-punk premise.
RELOADED
Piles on a so many new premises that it muddles any single storyline, and sacrifices the “human” element.
REVOLUTIONS
The final conflict = sorting out the “pile” created in RELOADED.

The ending was amazing, original and spectacular. I had no problem with the ending. If people would stop whinging about the ending please? Maybe some more people could complain about the corny lines of which there were many, instead?

How did you reach the conclusion that the ending was "amazing, original and spectacular?" I'm honestly curious! These exclamations without explanation don’t tell anybody anything.

How was the ending amazing? Visually? Emotionally? I listed some of the (many) reasons why I thought it was amazingly bad. How was it amazingly good?

How did it's originality overcome the flaws I described? I agree it's different, but some Ideas have never been seen before because they don't work.

How was the ending spectacular? I’ll guess visually spectacular. I’ll concede there was a lot of digi-fabulous stuff on the screen, but if it culminates in an ending with the flaws I described, what’s the point? In my mind, without a well planned storyline or empathetic characters, the bigger the spectacle, the more hollow its effect. Like a big video game with no controls.

Yes, there were a lot of corny lines, but they are just small symptoms of the virus that infected and ruined the Matrix Trilogy. The source code of the Virus: I’ll say it again, PILED ON, CLUMSY, POORLY PLANNED, BAD TURNS IN THE PLOT, starting with Reloaded.

Pointing a frustrated finger at the specific flaws is not whining. You wonder why the ending is a hot target? It’s at that point the last flicker of hope that something great will rise out of the fiasco, is snuffed out.

Raksasha69 wrote:

I And dont hand me that crap "oh it wasnt supposed to answer anything." All the answers are out there (in real life) they just refused to put it in. Look hard enough and youll find all the answers to the questions the matrix proposed. (im not gonna type them this is too long as it is.) .

but we're not talking about real life here. we're talking about films, works of art. and if the answer is not in the film, for all intents and purposes it might as well not be anywhere. so, i'm going to hand you crap about how m3 wasn't supposed to answer anything. the w. bros. assumed that the audience was intellectually mature, and that it wouldn't have to be spoon-fed answers. they also know that real life is a lot more complicated than a sports game, and your sports analogy fails to consider the fact that these films are about evolution and cooperation and tolerance. sports are about beating other people. real life is about trying to come together and avoiding mutual destruction. and when real life becomes a sports game, we get wars, which are among the most horrible atrocities the human race can commit. the matrix films are about the difficulties and complexities of trying to step away from the competitive nature of existence, and they are about embracing love and tolerance in an attempt to turn life into something other than a contest. the films are therefore grown-up and sophisticated, and this apparently is a bit too much for some viewers to digest.

d

D,

I think your protests will be falling on deaf ears. If you look at the post you are replying to you will see that it was written in February. Raksasha hasn't been on this forum in ages.

I got the impression from another post that you didn't like M3. What actually are your feelings about the movie in the layman's terms of "good" or "bad"....?

Fatpie42 wrote:

D, I think your protests will be falling on deaf ears. If you look at the post you are replying to you will see that it was written in February. Raksasha hasn't been on this forum in ages. I got the impression from another post that you didn't like M3. What actually are your feelings about the movie in the layman's terms of "good" or "bad"....?

whoops! i forgot to check the dates.

i actually love m3 and think it is a very good film, but i didn't like it at first because i was too hung up on trying to explain neo's real world powers. once i just gave up on searching the film for a surface level explanation, and accepted the fact that neo's real world powers are a result of his metaphorical movement towards becoming a program / machine (which mirrors smith's movement towards becoming human) everything seemed to fall into place. in other words, i stopped trying to fight the film's fusion of subtext and surface-level narrative; it's what's going on beneath the surface that dictates the plot. this was a bit tough for me to swallow initially, but now i wonder why i was having such a hard time with it.

i think the film is gutsy and fresh, in terms of its willingness to embrace postmodern fusion of surface and subtext, and in terms of its refusal to end with the humans trouncing the machines and doing victory dances on their corpses. the ending is very grown-up, and the shaky truce is just so damned spot-on that i couldn't imagine the film ending any other way.

but, as is the case with most great films, the majority of the audience just got mauled by m3. even peter travers from rolling stone, who is usually pretty good despite his affiliation with a big fat multigazillion dollar sellout magazine, tore apart m3 in his review. i think in about 10 years, when people are able to wrap their heads around it, m3 will begin to get the respect it deserves.

i'm curious: which one of my posts made you think i didn't like the film?

love the strongbad avatar, by the way. my wife and i recently nabbed trogdor shirts at reduced price!

take it easy,

d

Oops! Silly me!

The title of your post was "Re: Even people who like it agree that the matrix 3 sucks"

I missed the "Re:" lol!