Matrix Revolutions
Imagination grows by exercise and contrary to common belief is more powerful in the mature than in the young. - W. Somerset Maugham
There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it. - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky
Statutory Warning: This review contains SPOILERS
Prologue
What would you say about a movie that has the single largest world-wide launch in a week, due to ubiquitous brand image its predecessors created? What would you think about a movie that has so much hype and hoopla going with it that you are pulled into the theatre into watching it?. I can go on questioning.
Well, folks, like the quote for this review, everything that has high-flying instigation, has an atypical finale. As an unwavering matrix fan, it was only archetypal of me to watch it. Putting aside the biased-fan opinion, I felt that I was let down with the final version of the trilogy. There was much of global marketing ploy coming into picture that made this movie a little bit of a marketing tool, wavering off of the original conviction of great movie.
MR is about the thundering apocalyptical crescendo between the man and machines. It is about the fight between the men, who have become the tools of their own tools (HD Thoreau) and the tools themselves. This is what everyone has been looking forward to, the grand-finale. Albeit the fact that it is peppered with too much of marketing ploys, the movie is too good an action flick, although you don’t sit on the edge of your seat. In spite of being an inveterate nail-biter and an ardent fan, I couldn’t possibly control myself from predicting the scenes, except for a few. All in all, this flick is a must for a fan and view-at-your-leisure for casual viewers. Let me delve into the review in detail.
Matrix Explained
There are many versions and many explanations for this and you can find zillion sources for the same.
Matrix is unreal, whereas the city of Zion is. Matrix is nothing but a design providing a mental stimulus wired humans that use machine as a power-source. Like any software program, (Kamala is introduced in the train scene as an interactive programmer, remember), it has many versions due to bugs and it lets the individuals choose. Matrix is nothing but a utopian world. Humans do not accept it and the machines take it over. The Architect thinks of the problem of Matrix as the ability to choose, which he does as per Oracle’s suggestion. The Matrix has problems itself, due to bug, that the programs(agents) that watch humans have issues.
In MRII, you see The Architect talking about anomaly in the Matrix, who also suggests that it is best to destroy the Matrix and the people of Zion and start afresh. Agt. Smith is an anomaly trying to balance itself which is similar to the One. Smith is dangerous and is like a virus and behaves like one. Like system reboots, you always see a weird action from Agt. Smith. The One tries to solve problem but it fails due to bugs. Each version of the One is buggy and it fails. The anomaly to choose caused Neo to choose Trinity over Reset door in MRII. Choosing lets people show different characteristic in Neo that no one showed, (i.e) to fall in love, as he chooses Trinity in MRII.
Revolutions start-off where the fans where left with Reloaded ending. Neo chooses love over the reset option and Smith’s virus-like behavior is something threatening the system. Neo goes nowhere with his choice. Neo is given a lecture about love through Ramakandra, Sati and Kamala.
Oracle lets herself as a Trojan-horse into virus like Agt. Smith to let Trojan-horse behavior to help Neo when the time comes. Hence she says the tagline of the movie, “Everything that has a beginning has an end” to Neo in her meeting.
Finally Neo lets himself be sacrificial goat, into Smith, like Oracle.
The change here is the Oracle knows Neo and the Source are connected and he can control machines outside the Matrix. He becomes Smith and all as all smiths are connected, the system has a dead-lock on Smith to delete him.
MRIII also sends a message of PEACE than destroying things. Neo exhibits this by offering peace in Machine City. Machines just accept it immediately and all’s well.
My Analysis
Apart from explaining the technical marvels of this movie (Remember that this is a trend-setter of sorts), let me delve into other aspects such as acting, direction, story and all.
Acting - 3/5 Stars. Acting by everyone is pretty normal with no out-of-the world performances.
Story - 3.5/5 Stars. The trilogy had a tremendous meaning, yet the part III was not that of a great material.
Direction - 4/5 Stars.
Wachowski brothers have wavered a little bit into covering the marketing aspects into the picture, thus ignoring some key components of film-making as compromising them for inducing some unwanted jerkiness, continuity and flaws, just to win global fans. This being the finale, they wanted to make as much money from this franchise as they could.
Special Effects - 5/5 stars – Virtuoso presentation. No questions asked. This lacked the vigor as things are too easy these days, yet a visual splendor.
Action Sequences - 3/5 stars – This was pretty minimal compared to the kind of movies we see these days. The same type of fights except for the finale between Smith and Neo that was influenced by a Korean film (See my Trivia section).
All in all Revolutions is a global catcher with colossal promotion to catch movie-goer’s pulses, to cover all types of movie goers of all races, ages and opinions; a women’s lib catcher and a teen-spirit catcher. You have to watch closely note finer points. If you see the end-titles, you will see the music of “Asatoma sadgamaya, Tamasoma jyoti gamaya, Mrityoma amritam gamaya” running to impress the largely devoted Indian techie fans too.
One thing people left to surmise is, when machines have a mêlée with humans using machines, why do humans use the octopis and bazookas instead of a virtual war? Is the world still lacking such technologies to fight the tool the man created? LOL :-)
TECHNICALITIES
Actors Neo: Keanu Reeves, Morpheus: Laurence Fishburne, Niobe: Jada Pinkett Smith, Trinity: Carrie-Anne Moss, The Architect: Helmut Bakaitis, Agent Smith: Hugo Weaving, The Oracle: Mary Alice, Persephone: Monica Bellucci, Lock: Harry J. Lennix, Bane Ian Bliss, Mifune: Nathaniel Lees
Original Music - Don Davis, Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt, Ben Watkins
Cinematography - Bill Pope
Film Editing - Zach Staenberg
Casting - Mali Finn
Art Direction - Jules Cook, Mark W. Mansbridge, Catherine Mansill, Charlie Revai
Costumes - Kym Barrett
Written, Co-produced & Directed by Andy & Larry Wachowski
CONCLUSION
Matrix Revolutions as a movie is a “MUST GO FOR FANS”. “WATCH-IT-AT-YOUR-LEISURE for Casual viewers”.
I Hope you liked my diffident review. Please comment, if time acquiesce you.
KALIL
I imagine, therefore I belong and am free. - Lawrence Durrell
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating--people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.- Oscar Wilde