At the preview for The Matrix Revolutions, the third and supposedly final in the series, a colleague joked that perhaps the title should have an s instead of a v. But if you were thinking the third Matrix movie would offer resolutions of all the loose threads left hanging in the second movie, The Matrix Reloaded, you will be disappointed. This one leaves almost as much dangling as did its immediate predecessor.
We are clear about the fact that Neo (Keanu Reeves) is a messiah type who discovered, in the first movie, that what humans see as reality is in fact a vast virtual-reality computer network, run by machines feeding off the dreaming humans they keep in tanks. Neo thus went in to bat for real reality, discovering some superpowers (within the Matrix, at least) on the way.
In part two, Zion, the last enclave of humans not jacked in to the system, was being attacked by the murderous machines. Neo was also up against Agent Smith, a Matrix computer program that had managed to accrue to itself extraordinary powers of self-reproduction, like one of those viruses. Neo managed to keep Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) at bay. But the machines were getting ever closer to Zion.
Now, in part three, the battle continues. That’s about as clear as one can be, because the Warchawshi brothers, the geniuses behind the Matrix concept, have put in so much mumbojumbo that it’s hard to work out what anything signifies. They have fallen prey to the George Lucas syndrome, who, in his recent Star Wars movies, seems to think he is writing holy scripture. Instead of using interesting ideas (such as Jean Baudrillard’s theory of ”simulacra”) to drive and texture the narrative, the story has got lost in all this quasi-religious rubbish. It’s as if the Warchawshis’ concept has been invaded by an Agent Smith virus and has proliferated out of control.
In the proper usage of a much-abused word, this is pretentious. The movies (particularly numbers two and three) are pretending to mean much more than they do. They are magnificently visualised, and we gawp, then succumb to the confusion generated by the next cryptic, portentous exchange. This leaves the viewer unsatisfied; trying to discern the sound of one hand clapping would be child’s play by comparison.
Oh, and except for some entirely unintentional comic moments, The Matrix Revolutions is entirely humourless. Yes, I know the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, but that’s no reason not to crack a joke.