Land of Whimsy

Movies watched in May 2007

Land of Whimsy / Movies / Movies watched in May 2007

Thursday, May 17, 2007

The Matrix Revolutions **½

USA: Andy Wachowski/Larry Wachowski, 2003

Four years late, I've finally seen The Matrix Revolutions. And what a turkey it was.

Lyris and myself were so repulsed by The Matrix Reloaded and how mind-numbingly awful it was that we didn't even both seeing the third instalment in the trilogy when it came out in cinemas and on DVD. I always suspected that I'd end up watching it one of these days, though, and, tonight, we decided to bite the bullet and actually load it up on HD DVD. We had the presence of mind to set the microphone up and record our thoughts as we experienced the film for the first time, and we're currently deciding whether or not our 129 minutes of mindless blethering can be salvaged into an audio commentary that people in their right mind would actually want to listen to. Certainly, it's something of an eye-opener, as our initial surprise at getting something half-watchable rapidly degenerates into complete and utter frustration, following by unbridled hostility as the events on screen become sillier and more incomprehensible by the minute. Seriously, I think the phrase "So what's actually happening?" must be uttered at least every ten minutes, and there is a point in the middle, during the 30-minute explosion reel - sorry, epic battle sequence - where we simply give up even trying to think of anything to say.

Seriously, this film, especially the first 45 minutes, was a definite step up from The Matrix Reloaded, but it quickly degenerated into yet more mindless drivel that was obtuse for the sake of it and didn't make a blind bit of sense, perhaps even in the minds of its directors. Throw in some truly ham-fisted and unnecessary biblical imagery, a whole lot of pointless characters we don't care about, and some truly awful dialogue about "choice" and "destiny", and you have a film that, despite making up for some of the indignities inflicted upon us with the second instalment, only serves to intensify my belief that they should have stopped after the first one.

IMDB reference