The Matrix Revolutions
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| The Matrix Revolutions | |
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| Directed by | The Wachowski brothers |
| Produced by | Joel Silver, The Wachowski brothers |
| Written by | The Wachowski brothers |
| Starring | Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros, Village Roadshow Pictures |
| Release date(s) | November 5, 2003 |
| Running time | 129 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $150,000,000 (estimated) |
| Preceded by | The Matrix Reloaded |
The Matrix Revolutions is the third and last film in the Matrix trilogy. The film, a combination of philosophy and action like its predecessors, sought to conclude the questions raised in the previous film, The Matrix Reloaded.
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[edit] Background
The film was written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. It was released simultaneously in sixty countries on November 5, 2003. This was the first time a Hollywood film opened in India at the same time as the rest of the world. [1] It was also the first live-action film to be released simultaneously in regular and IMAX theaters.
The Wachowski brothers were present in Tokyo at the opening of the movie, as were stars Keanu Reeves and Jada Pinkett Smith. In Moscow, the film's premiere was accompanied by a demonstration organized by the youth wing of the Russian Communist Party who welcomed the film as an allegory for Communism. [2]
The Matrix Revolutions ultimately grossed $140 million at the US box office altogether and $456 million worldwide, roughly only half of The Matrix Reloaded box-office total. Revolutions did extremely well in DVD and VHS rentals and sales when it was released in April of 2004.
[edit] Cast
- Keanu Reeves as Neo
- Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus
- Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity
- Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith
- Mary Alice as The Oracle
- Helmut Bakaitis as The Architect
- Lambert Wilson as The Merovingian
- Sing Ngai as Seraph (as Collin Chou)
- Roy Jones Jr. as Captain Ballard
- Harry J. Lennix as Commander Lock
- Matt McColm as Agent Thompson
- Harold Perrineau Jr. as Link
- Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe
- Gina Torres as Cas
- Cornel West as Councillor West
- Bernard White as Rama-Kandra
- Anthony Wong as Ghost
- Anthony Zerbe as Councillor Hamann
- Nathaniel Lees as Captain Mifune
[edit] Plot
The film's events immediately follow those of The Matrix Reloaded and assume familiarity with the story of the last two films.
Bane and Neo are both comatose. Morpheus is now depressed and dispirited after the destruction of the Nebuchadnezzar and after discovering the true nature of the Prophecy at the end of the last film. He starts a search for Neo, who he believes could be present in the Matrix while not being "jacked in." Neo is in fact trapped in limbo: a subway station named "Mobil Avenue" that is a transition zone between the Matrix and the Source. At the station, Neo meets a 'family' of programs, who tell him that Mobil Avenue is controlled by the Trainman, a program who is in turn loyal only to the Merovingian.
Seraph contacts Morpheus on behalf of the Oracle, now resident in a different "shell" (in reality, actress Gloria Foster, who played the Oracle in the first two films, died before the completion of the third and was replaced by actress Mary Alice). The Oracle informs Morpheus and Trinity of Neo's captivity. Seraph, Morpheus and Trinity pursue the Trainman, but he evades them. The trio enters Club Hel to confront the Merovingian in an effort to secure Neo's release. After the Merovingian demands "the eyes of the Oracle" in exchange for Neo's release, Trinity provokes a Mexican standoff, forcing the Merovingian to release Neo.
Troubled by new visions of the Machine City, Neo decides to visit the Oracle before returning to the real world. As he enters, the Oracle expresses that she had hoped that the batch of cookies that she was baking had been finished before Neo arrived, perhaps a hint that with her metamorphosis she can no longer predict the future as easily. She informs him that as the One, his abilities are actually rooted in a connection with the Source, and because the Matrix is derived from the Source, he has power outside the Matrix too. This is how Neo was able to stop the machines attacking his ship in Matrix Reloaded. She characterizes Agent Smith, also growing in power, as his exact opposite, his negative and elaborates on the relationship between herself and the Architect (Tellingly, each of them ejects an exasperated "Please!" when Neo asks them about the other). She also tells Neo cryptically that "everything that has a beginning has an end", and warns that Smith's power threatens not only the Matrix but also the Source and eventually the Machine City. The Oracle states that the war is about to end "one way or the other".
After Neo takes leave of the Oracle, an army of Smiths arrive, who successfully assimilates the unresisting Oracle, giving Smith her powers of precognition.
In the real world, meanwhile, the remaining crew of the Nebuchadnezzar and the Mjolnir (referred to by the characters as "the Hammer") encounter Niobe's ship, the Logos, and its crew. They successfully reactivate the deactivated ship and begin to interrogate the now awakened Bane, who claims he has no memory of the events of the earlier battle.
After contemplating his visions, Neo announces that he needs a ship to travel to the Machine City, although he cannot explain why at the moment. Roland, the Mjolnir's captain, refuses him, but Niobe who was told by the Oracle that she'd have to make a choice helping Neo or not, lets him take the Logos. Trinity decides to accompany Neo.
The two remaining crews plan to return to Zion and avoid the Sentinel army by piloting the Mjolnir through a series of service tunnels through which it is nearly impossible to navigate. Shortly after departing, the Mjolnir's crew discover that Bane has murdered a crewmember and has hidden aboard the Logos, but they are unable to return to warn Trinity and Neo.
Before Neo and Trinity can depart, Bane ambushes Trinity and takes her hostage. Neo fights with Bane, who reveals himself as a manifestation of Agent Smith. During the struggle, Bane/Smith blinds Neo by cauterizing his eyes with high voltage electrical wires. As Bane/Smith appears to have the upper hand he closes in on Neo - only to have his attack thwarted and reversed. In spite of his injury, Neo can see Smith - his connection with the Source manifesting in his recognition of Smith's program inside of Bane. Neo then kills Bane/Smith and releases Trinity, who pilots them towards the Machine City (presumably 01 described in The Second Renaissance).
In Zion, the defenders deploy infantry armed with rocket launchers and Armored Personnel Units in order to protect the dock from assault. The dock is invaded by a massive horde of Sentinels, igniting The Battle of Zion as well as two giant drilling machines. APU's fail and the humans are pushed back into the temple. Captain Mifune fails to get the gate open, with his last breath he tells Kid to open the gate for the Hammer. Meanwhile, as the Hammer speeds toward Zion it is pursued by a large number of sentinels. Just as the remaining humans are about to be overwhelmed, the Hammer arrives at Zion and breaks through the gates, setting off an EMP and disabling all electronic equipment in the area. While this finishes off the Sentinels, it also disables the remainder of Zion's defenses. The humans are forced to fall back to the temple entrance and wait for the next swarm that will almost certainly kill them all.
Nearing the Machine City, Neo and Trinity are attacked by the city's defense system, hurling massive numbers of mobile bombs and Sentinels at the Logos. Neo uses his powers to destroy the incoming bombs, but the Sentinels are too numerous. To evade them, Trinity flies the ship above the permanent electrical storm/cloud cover, disabling the Sentinels but also the Logos' engines. After a brief glimpse of sunlight, the ship plunges into a spire of the Machine City. The impact of the collision fatally wounds Trinity, and she dies.
Neo emerges into the Machine City to strike a bargain with the machines, personified by the Deus Ex Machina. Neo warns the machines that Smith (who has by now assimilated almost all of The Matrix) is beyond the machines' control, and will soon assault the Source to which the Matrix is connected. He offers to stop Smith in exchange for a ceasefire on Zion. The second wave of Sentinels attacking Zion instantly responds by standing down while the Machines provide a connection for Neo to jack into the Matrix and confront Smith.
The city's population of Smiths stands by and watches while Neo and Smith square off. Smith explains that, possessing the Oracle's foresight, he already knows the outcome of the battle and is certain of Neo's defeat. After an extended fight scene, a defeated Neo allows Smith to assimilate him, but not before repeating Smith's favorite refrain to him: "It was inevitable." (stated by Smith in The Matrix Reloaded) By assimilating Neo who was jacked into the Mainframe, Smith became connected to the Mainframe as well. The Mainframe then inserts code into Neo which destroyed all the Smiths in the Matrix.
The Smiths are deleted, all programs that have been possessed by Smith return to normal, including the Oracle. The Sentinels that were about to attack the humans withdraw from Zion; the human resistance cheers in victory, while Niobe and Morpheus share a moment of intimate happiness together. Neo, having sacrificed himself to save both the Machines and humans, is unplugged from the Matrix, and his body is respectfully carried away by the Machines.
The Architect then appears and tells the Oracle that it was dangerous of her to play the system at its own game. The Oracle responds by saying that she has done it for the sake of change, and asks the Architect what will now become of any humans who want to be unplugged from the Matrix. The Architect replies that they shall be freed as such. The Prophecy is finally fulfilled; the human race is finally free as the war between humans and machines is over, and the Matrix is 'destroyed' (its existence for the purpose of enslaving humanity is no more). The closing shot of the film depicts a new dawn on the world of the Matrix, signifying a new beginning (throughout all three films, every shot of a scene inside the Matrix has a bit of green tinting, symbolizing that it is in a computer program; but in this last scene, that green tint is gone).
[edit] Reception
The budget of the movie was an estimated $110USD million, grossing over $139USD million in the United States and approximately $412USD million worldwide[3]. However, the movie was met with generally mixed to negative reviews from critics. Revolutions scored only 36% on movie review aggregation site RottenTomatoes. [4] Metacritic's average critic score was 48/100 with a user score of 5.2/10 based on 256 votes. [5]
The Matrix Revolutions grossed $48.5 million in its first five days of release in the US. It had a weaker opening than its predecessor that some[citation needed] have attributed to a more subdued marketing campaign in comparison to the summer blockbuster event, The Matrix Reloaded.
Praise of the movie generally focused on the strength of the movie's action sequences and special effects [6] [7]. Some considered it "a better movie" than The Matrix Reloaded [8], which some said "raises the bar a notch or two" since the original movie, The Matrix [9].
Common criticisms of the film were that it was anticlimactic [10] [11] and self-indulgent [12]. Nevertheless, critics regard the movie as less philosophically obtuse than its predecessor [13] [14], Reloaded. Many critics had difficulty finding closure pertaining to events from Reloaded, and were generally dissatisfied[15][16]. Its earnings dropped over 70% in its second week, perhaps owing to the non-mainstream nature of the film and subsequent lack of satisfaction from the general moviegoing audience.
As evidenced in the video The Roots of the Matrix, many scholars and philosophers received the films in high praise of its conceptual complexity. Philosopher Ken Wilber stated that the The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions had expanded on the "simple dualism" of the first film - The Matrix - and had thus transformed the trilogy into a piece of "complex literature" with the second two installments of the trilogy. Conversely, many fans and scholars felt that the philosophy descended into a more generic pop philosophy, and they lamented the loss of the dualistic realities of the Matrix and the "real" world. Since the movie takes place almost solely in Zion, the more complex philosophical themes that could have arisen from the Matrix world were largely abandoned.
[edit] Soundtrack
In contrast to the movie's predecessors, very few "source" tracks are used in the movie. Aside from Don Davis' score, again collaborating with Juno Reactor, only one external track (by Pale 3) is used.
Although Davis rarely focuses on strong melodies, familiar leitmotifs from earlier in the series reappear. For example, Neo and Trinity's love theme- which briefly surfaces in the two preceding movies- is finally fully expanded into Trinity Definitely; the theme from the Zion docks in Reloaded returns as Men in Metal, and the energetic drumming from the Reloaded teahouse fight between Neo and Seraph opens Tetsujin, as Seraph, Trinity and Morpheus fight off Club Hel's three doormen.
The climactic battle theme, named Neodämmerung (in reference to Wagner's Götterdämmerung), features a choir singing extracts (shlokas) from the Upanishads. Some viewers consider the occurrence of the Sanskrit prayer in the closing titles of the movie an apt conclusion to the philosophical theme portrayed throughout the trilogy. The chorus can be roughly translated from Sanskrit as follows: "lead us from untruth to truth, lead us from darkness to light, lead us from death to immortality, peace peace peace". The extracts were brought to Davis by the Wachowski brothers when he informed them that it would be wasteful for such a large choir to be singing simple "ooh's" and "aah's" (according to the DVD commentary, Davis felt that the dramatic impact of the piece would be lost if the choir was to sing 'This is the one, see what he can do' in plain English). These extracts return in the denouement of the movie, and in Navras, the track which plays over the closing credits (which may be considered a loose remix of Neodämmerung).
[edit] External links
- Official site for the series
- The Matrix Revolutions at the Internet Movie Database
- The Many Meanings of The Matrix, Larry Wachowski in a dialogue with Ken Wilber.
- The Matrix Revolutions Explained - a comparative-literature-style exegesis of selected parts of Matrix Revolutions.
- Lyrics to Neodammerung, including translation
- The Matrix Revolution October 27, 2000 draft script by Andy & Larry Wachowski
- Essay: Understanding the Matrix Trilogy from a Man-Machine Interface Perspective
- Reviews, info and photos of the Matrix Revolutions
