The Matrix Revolutions
dir. Larry & Andy Wachowski
Warner Bros.

Watching and contemplating The Matrix Revolutions brought to mind a curious incident in the philosophy world from a few years ago. Some noted philosophers were asked to provide constructive criticism of a work called "Coming to Understanding" that was authored under the pseudonym A.M. Monius. This kind of peer review is common, and a pittance is usually dispensed for these reviews, but the Monius paper was different — both because of the pseudonymity and because philosophers were offered an unheard of $12,000 for their insights. Intrigued, writer James Ryerson did some detective work and revealed that Monius was actually Marc Sanders, an armchair philosopher with money to spare. His metaphysical treatise was, to judge from Ryerson's article, respected by the reviewers, but not exactly embraced:

Many reviewers point out in addition that "Coming to Understanding" bears the telltale marks of an amateur's effort. Though many of the philosophers were genuinely impressed with features of A.M. Monius's argument, they are not under the illusion that it is a great work of philosophy — or even, most reviewers felt, one that meets professional standards.

"It's what you would expect from an intelligent amateur," says [one reviewer], "someone who does not have any training in speculative metaphysics but who is very smart." The argument, he adds, includes "a common pattern of non sequiturs that you get beaten out of you as a graduate student."

This is all, in some ways, to the Wachowskis' credit. Too many films are too much alike, too emptily professional. More flatteringly put, many of the best movies, particularly in this genre, are convention busters, and so it's conceivable that being dismissive of the Matrix trilogy in 2003 will prove to be like being dismissive of 2001 in 1968. "Amateur" could be a coded way to say "passionate and uncorrupted by the depredations of slick professionalism." But I can't honestly evaluate The Matrix Revolutions and consider its amateurism something other than "smart people who aren't accomplishing the task at hand." And maybe it's excessively square to think so, but that task is storytelling.

The Matrix was a self-constrained geek-as-savior story about Neo, a hacker who came to realize that the world was a virtual-reality illusion engineered by a world-conquering artificial intelligence that uses comatose humans as batteries. (That Neo worked a desk job in the matrix clearly set up a parallel between the use of people as batteries and their use as the "engine of the economy," one of the many aspects of The Matrix that resonated with audiences.) Approached by freedom fighters who believe he's their promised deliverer, Neo left that VR world — the matrix — to join a growing human resistance in the real world. It ended with Neo's interesting threat to the machines:

I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid — afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell how it's going to begin. I'm going to … show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules or controls, borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.

On its face, this is standard let-my-people-go fare. But look again: "Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you." The sequels are about this potential for compromise. This summer's The Matrix Reloaded and now Revolutions were expected by most to be the story of how the liberated humans rallied, overthrew the machines and freed their sleeping brethren. But that is not at all how the movies have unfolded. Reloaded didn't follow the standard sequel path of turning the original up to 11; instead, it debunked the prophesizing that gave Neo his messianic yoke, essentially torching the straightforward hero's tale that most people loved about the original. Where audiences wanted rousing revolution, the Wachowski brothers offered chilly cynicism. That wasn't clear by the end of Reloaded — a monologue-heavy film that laid out a lot of philosophizing and mythos, but didn't do much to reconstruct the savior narrative it deconstructed — but that's definitely where Revolutions leaves us.

Revolutions is a war movie. Zion, the underground city where the freed humans live, is about to be attacked by the machines in what, Reloaded suggests, is a regular expunging — the humans who are liberated from the matrix have become too cognizant of its basic falsity to be able to live there peaceably, and so the machines permit the dropout population to grow to a certain size in order to keep their illusory world stable (and, therefore, keep their batteries charged). But the machines also intend on destroying the resistance when it swells to a certain size — and they've done it before. The critical mass of the resistance also tends to coincide with the arrival of a human who's particularly gifted in manipulating the matrix — the One, embodied here as the anagrammatic Neo. To the machines, the One embodies the aspect of unknowable free will that "unbalances the equation" governing the matrix, and, of the apparently five previous iterations of the One, all have accepted the machines' apocalyptic compromise — let the matrix mainframe reassimilate you in order to make the next reboot of the matrix better able to accommodate human choice, thereby reducing the need for rebellion, and we'll also let you pick a handful of Zion citizens to be spared so they can rebuild the resistance after the machines raze it. Neo turns down this offer — in part because the alternative would be to let the love of his life die — and so Revolutions begins in the moments after that decision, with the machines burrowing through the earth toward Zion.

And here's how Revolutions ends: Following the apparent death of Neo — which saves not only the half-destroyed Zion from the marauding machines but also the machine world itself from the ravages of the viral Agent Smith, who grew to have immeasurable, destructive power in wake of Neo rejecting the compromise — the matrix reboots. We see three "programs" — that is, godlike matrix-world avatars from the machine world who live in the matrix and, in theory, keep it running smoothly — meet in a park at sunrise. One chastises another for endorsing Neo's risky behavior, but notes the terms of the deal Neo struck with the machines if he was successful in vanquishing Smith: Zion will be allowed to flourish, and humans that reject the matrix will be allowed to leave, presumably without interference from the machines. Furthermore, the extreme nature of Neo's free will, as demonstrated by his sometimes reckless decisions, has apparently been incorporated into the matrix, presumably making it more adaptive to human will than ever before.

In other words: Humans are still less than slaves, their corporal bodies living and dying in a small capsule of goo so their bioelectric warmth can be harvested, and the pre-existing machine/program power structure continues unimpeded. But, for humanity, it's a little more bearable — the last shot is that sunrise, which may be the first time we've seen the sun in the matrix. There you go, say the Wachowskis: There's your revolution.

No question this is smart — like A.M. Monius was smart. A saga that promises savior-led rebellion against oppressors and ends with a marginally more agreeable symbiosis is daring. But in the same way that serious philosophers are right to distinguish between being genuinely impressed with the features of something and considering it a great work, or even professional, the Matrix sequels don't live up to the Wachowskis' intentions. it's not even the philosophy that's hard to take — it's the rote moviemaking.

Revolutions is stuffed to the gills with clichés. Instead of Reloaded's logy but idiosyncratic monologues, which forced you to reconsider what had gone before, almost every lead-balloon syllable dropped in Revolutions is pure vapidity. (Exception: Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith, whose line readings make him one of the best screen villains ever — but, again, he gets mostly monologues.) And the story choices! A ship has to navigate down a too-small tunnel to avoid being detected by the machines and make it back to Zion. One character says it's impossible; another says she's done it before; a third is dubious, saying that was a long time ago, etc. And when they get there, will the besieged city be able to open the gate to let them in? It'll have to happen at the last second …. Then there's the relationship between the grizzled military leader in Zion and the too-young recruit who wants to serve under him but has no training. Will the leader, dying from combat injuries, encourage the youngster by saying that he, too, had no training? It's all so unspeakably hoary. It's not that audiences are too cynical for a race/chase scene or veteran/newbie relationship to be effective; it's that the Wachowskis give us their most rudimentary executions. Wrapped in nice special effects? Sure, but that's never been an excuse.

The Wachowskis are so smart, in fact, that it seems like they have to be consciously aiming low, but it's to no discernable end — why would they want us to diminish the humans we want to see saved? Why are they not giving their characters anything to do? Trilogy stars Morpheus and Niobe, for instance, spend almost all of their screen time piloting the ship. No decisions are made, no free will expressed, nothing moved forward. They spend the movie driving. What does Mifune, the leader of the army, ever decide but to keep shooting? They spend all their scenes doing the same thing — an hour of action for five minutes of story. Contrast this with the battle at the climax of The Two Towers, where the characters we care about are constantly making decisions. If the Wachowskis are trying to make another point about human will, it's — no surprise here — too ambiguous to be grasped.

Worse is the seeming disjunction between Reloaded and Revolutions. They were written back-to-back, so you'd think they would be highly integrated; instead, it's like they were written by different people. Reloaded was about introducing characters and asking questions; Revolutions is about ignoring both. Even the cliffhanger between the films is unimaginatively executed — the 20 minutes Revolutions spends resolving this don't advance the story's themes at all, giving instead a punchline. The worst thing a viewer can bring into Revolutions is a hunger to have Reloaded's oddities explored and explained. Architect? Merovingian? Earlier Ones? Forget it. Most of the intriguing characters from the previous film put in the most perfunctory appearance. Others don't appear at all, but of course new ones are introduced, mostly to be quickly forgotten. Amateur hour.

The assumption behind that criticism is that the movies should tell a whole story — even if the post-story future is ambiguous, at least the questions are answered. Maybe this is where the Wachowskis truly part ways with the traditional film establishment that's frustrated by their movies: The brothers have also authorized and co-written comic books, animated shorts, video games and even a forthcoming MMORPG like Everquest that they consider "canonical." Maybe the idea that the movies should bring closure is pish-toshed by the filmmakers; maybe they're more interested in precisely placing all the dots than they are connecting them.

And if that makes you roll your eyes, well, let's just say you might not want to go see Revolutions. The Neo/Smith storyline is a fitting expansion of and finale to their adversarial relationship of the first film, and their dazzling climactic fight works because you feel real emotion behind their blows. The invasion of Zion is technically accomplished, if not particularly gripping. Weaving is delicious to watch, as is Weaving impersonator Ian Bliss, and Jada Pinkett Smith demonstrates some entertaining tough-talking chops as Niobe. But the scope of the Wachowskis' vision, their dark opinion of the messy reality of revolution, their probing look at demagoguery and free will … it's about as interesting as it is frustratingly ambiguous. If it's the basic human desire to see a narrative fulfilled that has propelled you to the sequels — the belief that, as the tagline promises, "Everything that has a beginning has an end" — then Revolutions will leave you with an uneasy peace. Not because the narrative is fulfilled, but because the coming of this self-proclaimed "end" relieves you of your obligation.

— Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)