Matrix: Revolutions

Hollywood did it again. It has turned a perfectly wonderful story into a total disaster.

Matrix was at its best, barely acceptable.

Matrix: Reloaded was full of pseudo-intellectual statments that made little sense.

Matrix: Revolutions was a patchwork of half-hearted attempts at being philosophical and glaringly obvious stereotypes.

Matrix was doomed to failure from the beginning, having to develop a plot similar to its prodigious precedents: Dark City and The Truman Show. It is true that the Matrix has wonderful graphics on its side, but it does little to cover its inflated, hollowed out core. The presentation of it was hardly palatable, let alone gripping. If it meant to question the nature of reality, phenomenologically or socially, then it failed to tastefully address the most basic of the issues. If it meant to query the nature of human identity or the relationship between the self and the world, then it again failed again to ask the critical questions. With respects to the depth of the movie, it did not even come close to Dark City and The Truman Show.

Matrix: Reloaded has the best graphics of the three but the worse plot presentation and development. The curse of stereotyping was never more apparent than with the appearance of The Architect (aka. Colonel Sanders). It was a sudden end to the what was fast paced action; and also the end of the audience's patience. Momentum stopped short and never went again.

Matrix: Revolutions turned out to be a more entertaining movie experience for my mates and I. We could not helped but laugh at the failed attempt for the show to be serious. More stereotyping followed. The point of asking Indians to talk about Karma (the law of cause and effect) was to get foreigners to introduce foreign concepts to the viewers. It was to create a sense of wonder and play on their obsession with asian exoticism.

The same thing, in plain, simple English is called causality (which is a technical term, philosophically). But to call it so, would allow everyone to understand it, would it not? And then movie would seemed really, really shallow...

There is really no good need for using an Indian, after all if Schopenhauer translated Indian philosophical works over a century ago, an Englishman or French can play the part and still look natural. The only problem is that it would have made the white audience felt really stupid.

In a strict sense, causality has been shown to be problematic by Hume since over a century ago, something which Buddhism did, only thousands of years earlier. Thus, Buddhism does not truly advocate cause and effect, contrary to popular beliefs. For further reference, please refer to Verses From The Centre by Stephen Bachelor.

All the flaws, topped with a record long Trinity death scene was enough to have most of my mates asking for mercy.

I suppose what I really wanted to see was really difficult. I was hoping to see Neo and Smith tumbling around, slugging it out on the grass plains, with the warm morning sun rising and Bambi and Thumper skipping about happily. After all, there really is no need to waste all that water on making the rain....

Stereotypes, cliches and non-original plot marked the trilogy as a failure.