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Compiled by: Jack Foley
US CRITICS have largely been unimpressed with the final chapter
in the Matrix trilogy, even though the majority did find Revolutions
to be a better movie than Reloaded.
The Hollywood Reporter, for instance, stated that it was’btter
than Reloaded, but the thrill is gone’, while Entertainment
Weekly observed that ‘there's relatively less of the
clunky alternation of big action and static speechifying that
stalled Reloaded. But there's also less storytelling fervor from
the Wachowskis’.
On a more positive note, Ebert and Roeper opined that
‘there is visual poetry to that rain-soaked duel-but it's
no more impressive than earlier battles between Smith and Neo.
And that's kind of how I felt about much of Revolutions’.
While the New York Times warned that ‘Reloaded was
certainly a lumpy, gaseous treatise of a movie, but viewers of
Revolutions may find themselves looking back on it fondly’.
The Philadelphia Daily News lamented that ‘it's not
only copying itself, like Agent Smith, but it's following the
many other movies that have imitated the Matrix style’.
The Seattle Times wrote that ‘the laws of physics
don't apply within the Matrix, but the law of diminishing returns
does’, while the Miami Herald concluded that it ‘conclusively
proves that the Wachowskis had little substantial to add to the
premise of the 1999 original’.
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And the San Francisco Chronicle stated: "If only
filmmakers Larry and Andy Wachowski could have saved themselves
from their own machines. Their computer-generated imagery goes
from dazzling to deadening."
The Globe and Mail felt that ‘over all, The Matrix
Revolutions, the third and last of the film cycle envisioned by
Andy and Larry Wachowski, mostly feels as hackneyed as the first
film felt fresh’.
There were some good reviews, however, with Reel.com finding
it ‘intriguing, frequently confusing, but mostly entertaining,
Matrix Revolutions wraps up the trilogy's narrative loose ends
in a reasonably satisfying fashion’.
And the Chicago Sun-Times felt that ‘in a basic and
undeniable sense, this is a good movie, and fans who have earned
their credit hours with the first two will want to see this one
and graduate’.
Likewise, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which opined
that ‘it doesn't exactly re-create the magic that made the
original such an instant classic, but it's faster and more involving
than Reloaded and it rounds off the premise and themes of the
trilogy in a surprisingly satisfying way’.
Yet the underlying feeling was one of disappointment, with CNN
stating that ‘the special effects are spectacular, and the
final attacks on Zion are amazing - too long, but amazing. But
the emotional impact of this movie is zilch’.
And the Los Angeles Times rounds up this overview with
the question: "How did something that started out so cool
get so dorky?"
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