| The Matrix Revolutions | |
|---|---|
Promotional film poster |
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| Directed by | Andy Wachowski Larry Wachowski |
| Produced by | Joel Silver |
| Written by | Andy Wachowski Larry Wachowski |
| Based on | Characters by Andy Wachowski Larry Wachowski |
| Narrated by | Mary Alice |
| Starring | Keanu Reeves Laurence Fishburne Carrie-Anne Moss Hugo Weaving Nathaniel Lees Jada Pinkett Smith Harry J. Lennix Harold Perrineau |
| Music by | Don Davis |
| Cinematography | Bill Pope |
| Editing by | Zach Staenberg |
| Studio | Village Roadshow Pictures Silver Pictures NPV Entertainment |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
| Release date(s) | October 27, 2003 (Los Angeles, California, premiere) November 5, 2003 (United States) |
| Running time | 129 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $110 million[1] |
| Box office | $427,343,298 |
The Matrix Revolutions is a 2003 American science fiction film and the third installment of The Matrix trilogy. The film was released six months following The Matrix Reloaded. The film was written and directed by the Wachowski brothers and released simultaneously in sixty countries on November 5, 2003. Despite the fact that it is the final film in the series, the Matrix storyline continued in The Matrix Online.
The film was the second live-action film to be released in both regular and IMAX movie theaters at the same time.
Contents |
After the events of The Matrix Reloaded, Bane and Neo are unconscious. Neo's neural patterns suggest he is in the Matrix. Neo finds himself trapped in a subway station, a transition zone between the Matrix and the machine world. Neo meets a "family" of programs, including a girl named Sati, whose father tells Neo the subway is controlled by The Trainman, an exile loyal to the Merovingian. When Neo tries boarding a train with the family, the Trainman refuses to let him aboard.
Seraph contacts Morpheus on behalf of the Oracle. The Oracle informs Morpheus and Trinity of Neo's confinement. Seraph, Morpheus and Trinity enter Club Hel to persuade the Merovingian to release Neo. 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 visions of the Machine City, Neo visits the Oracle. She characterizes Smith as Neo's exact opposite and negative, who threatens to destroy the Matrix and the Machine City. She states that "everything that has a beginning has an end", and that the war is about to end. After Neo leaves, a large group of Smiths assimilate Sati, Seraph and the unresisting Oracle, gaining her powers of precognition.
In the real world, the remaining crew of the Nebuchadnezzar and the Mjolnir ("Hammer") find Niobe's ship, the Logos. They also interrogate the now-awakened Bane, who claims he has no memory of the events of the earlier battle. As the captains plan to return to defend Zion, Neo announces that he needs a ship to travel to the Machine City. The captain of the Hammer refuses, but motivated by her meeting with the Oracle, Niobe offers Neo the Logos.
Niobe pilots the Hammer through service tunnels in order to avoid the Sentinel army. They discover that Bane has murdered a crew member and presumably hidden aboard the Logos, but are unable to warn Trinity and Neo. Bane ambushes Trinity, taking her hostage. Neo fights Bane and realizes he is Smith. Smith blinds Neo by cauterizing his eyes with a power cable. Despite his blindness, Neo sees the glowing form of Smith and kills him. Trinity pilots them to the Machine City.
In Zion, the defenders deploy infantry and Armored Personnel Units against the Sentinels and two drilling machines. The APUs are unable to hold the docks and Captain Mifune is fatally wounded. Mifune tells the Kid (Clayton Watson), who has been rearming his APU, to open the gate for the Hammer. Kid pilots the APU and opens the gate. The Sentinels are on the verge of overwhelming the humans when the Hammer arrives at Zion and discharges its EMP, disabling the Sentinels but also the remaining defenses. The humans are forced to retreat to the temple's entrance and wait for the next attack, which they believe will be their last stand.
Neo and Trinity are attacked by the Machine City's defenses. Neo uses his powers to destroy the incoming weapons, but Sentinels overwhelm the ship. Neo tells Trinity to fly the Logos into an electrical storm cloud, disabling the Sentinels but also the ship's engines. Trinity sees sunlight and blue sky for the first time before the ship free-falls into the Machine City. The ship collides with a tower, the impact causing several pieces of the tower to pierce the ship, killing Trinity.
Neo enters the Machine City to bargain with the Machines and their leader, the Deus Ex Machina. Neo warns that Smith is beyond the Machines' control and will assault the Source. He offers to stop Smith in exchange for a ceasefire with Zion. The Machines agree, causing the Sentinels attacking Zion to stand down. The Machines provide a connection for Neo to enter the Matrix. In the Matrix, now wholly populated by Smith's copies, the clone with the Oracle's powers steps forth, claiming that he has foreseen his victory.
The Smith clones watch while Neo and Smith fight, finally brawling in a flooded crater. Neo is outmatched but refuses to give up. Seeing Neo's determination, a frustrated Smith continues attacking, but when he repeats the Oracle's words, "Everything that has a beginning has an end", Neo realizes the meaning behind the words and baits Smith into assimilating him. With Neo's body serving as a conduit to the Smiths, the Deus Ex Machina sends an energy surge through his body. The Neo-Smith and the clones burst into light that ripples through the Matrix. After the energy burst, the Oracle's body is shown lying in the crater. In the real world, the Sentinels withdraw from Zion. Neo has sacrificed his life to save the Machines and the humans. The Deus Ex Machina says, "It is finished", and Neo's body is carried away by the Machines.
The Matrix "reboots", repairing the damage caused by Neo and Smith's battle. The Architect and the Oracle meet, agreeing to unplug all humans who want to be freed, and that peace will last, "as long as it can". Sati, who has created a colorful dawn sky to honor Neo, asks the Oracle whether they will ever see him again. She replies that she thinks they will. Seraph asks the Oracle if she knew this would happen, and she replies that she did not know, but she believed.
Actress Gloria Foster, who played the Oracle in the first film, died before the completion of her filming for the third. She was replaced by actress Mary Alice. Her changed appearance is addressed in the film's plot, and the directors stated they had coincidentally explored such a change early in the script's development.
The movie was filmed concurrently with its predecessor, The Matrix Reloaded, and live-action sequences for the video game Enter the Matrix. This took place primarily at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia.
Sound editing on The Matrix trilogy was completed by Danetracks in West Hollywood, California.
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 tea house 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. 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 that plays over the closing credits (which may be considered a loose remix of "Neodämmerung").
Navras has became a staple similar to Carmina Burana for setting the mood for dramatic or cataclysmic situations.
The film's budget is an estimated US$110 million,[1] grossing over $139 million in North America and approximately $427 million worldwide,[2] roughly half of The Matrix Reloaded box-office total. The Matrix Revolutions was released on DVD and VHS on April 6, 2004. The film grossed $116 million in DVD sales.
The film received generally negative reviews from film critics. The Matrix Revolutions received a score of 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, a movie review aggregation site (with a score of 27% when filtered to include only Top critics).[3] The film's average critic score on Metacritic is 48/100.[4]
The Matrix Revolutions grossed $83.8 million within its first five days of being released in North America.[5]
The film was criticized for being anticlimactic.[6][7] Additionally, some critics regard the movie as less philosophically ambiguous than its predecessor, The Matrix Reloaded.[8][9] Critics had difficulty finding closure pertaining to events from The Matrix Reloaded, and were generally dissatisfied.[10][11] The film's earnings dropped 66% during the second week after its release to theaters.[5]
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