digitaldiscipline ◾ ◾ Was Orson Welles Not Available?

After the train wreck that "Reloaded" was, it was with a lot of trepidation that we went to see Revolutions last night. Now, a slightly more comprehensive review of Matrix: Revolutions.

High points: Nona Gaye & Monica Bellucci [yum], and whoever the guy who looked like Bil Dwyer channeling Hugo Weaving beautifully.

Low Points: Blatant Christianity overtones, awful dialogue, and, for the love of Optimus Prime, Unicron?!? ("Why would the machines have a pre-built voice interface to talk to a human?")

Indeterminate Value Points: Huge battle scenes, sentinels schooling like mackerel.

Okay, okay, I'm getting ahead of myself here. It was, to traumatize

ladysoleil, a giant fucking sneetch at the end. [aside to M: WotC's use of "sneetches" most of the way through had me thinking of Dr. Seuss, since I'm not up to my nipples in HP/JKR shite].

Um, right. We last saw our plucky band of refugees preparing for the machine assault on Zion, with Neo and some other dude laid out, semi-comatose, for not very well specified reasons. We pick up right there, only Neo is freejacking, or something, and is discovered to be hanging out with a nice, if virtual, Pakistani family in the world's cleanest subway station. Why is it clean and blindingly white, when the guy who lords over it looks like the adult bastard love child of Nick Nolte and the Unabomber? No fucking clue, mate.

Er, right, where was I? Oh, yes, Oracle 2.0 makes an appearance, though, really, it felt gratuitous, strained, and just awkward. Not exactly helpful, or even as engagingly obtuse as she used to be. Rebooting is apparently a bitch.

Really, recapping the plot is pointless. There's some abysmal editing, some wooden dialogue I'd like to build a summer cabin in Maine out of, and, literally, a character called "Deus ex Machina." Frankly, if Unicron had been subtly plastered with a sticker that read "Hamdingers" [bonus points to anyone who gets that], it couldn't have been less dopey.

Dramatic tension? Errr. . . umm. . . a guy held a scalpel to Trinity's neck for a minute, and there was a chase scene.

Really, when the aftermath of a "narrow escape" is peppered with such gems as "I knew we'd make it, because you said we would," that's not exactly compelling drama.

Frankly, the "pilgrimage" looked like nothing so much as a video game with a really tough boss level with a nifty cheat.

Even the climactic fight drags on. . . and on. . . and on. . . I felt bad for Hugo Weaving, because not only was he not given ehough to do, you could tell he was trying to infuse some awful writing with some level of spirit that it just couldn't warrant.

Well, at least it was better than "Reloaded." Yes, that's called damning with faint praise, but, frankly, that's all it warrants.

As I said as the credits rolled [over a must-have techno track, the name of which eludes me, but ain't Neodammerung], "If I =EVER= meet the Wachowski brothers, I am giving them the biggest fucking wedgie."