On The Matrix: Revolutions (INCLUDES SPOILERS!)

Well, to begin with, let's all make spazzo noises and gestures at Neo. There's this great scene late in the first season of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman when this guy from the future turns up. Now, it turns out said guy comes from a future where Superman is a big historical figure and his legacy is well known. So this guy goes to Lois Lane and says "The question all the historians want to know the answer to is, HOW DUMB ARE YOU? How did you not realise Clark Kent was Superman?" There's a similar thing early on in Revolutions.

Yes, despite the fact that the audience got it much earlier from the way Bane was speaking, and anyone with brain cells into double figures would've realised from the first time Neo got called "Mr Anderson", Neo just does not get it that Bane is Smith. Even Keanu Reeves coulda worked that out. And, erm, blinding Neo. Ew, not very nice.

So that was my first gripe about the film - Neo's sudden lack of intellectual capacity. I only had two gripes, by the way.

The second gripe was Trinity's death. Her death seemed meaningless. While she played a key part in Films 1 and 2, in 3 she's pretty much just cannon-fodder. The only justification for her death that I can see is once she dies Neo has nothing left to lose. Which, avoiding the need to go all Kris Kristopherson on you, leaves him free to do what he has to do.

Persephone looked quite yummy in the bondage club, didn't you think?

Sati was obviously very significant, but her significance wasn't explained. Exsqueeze me?

A few people have commented to me on how much the APUs were reminiscent of the load-lifter in Aliens. Now, I have to admit that when the commander blokie got into his I was very very tempted to shout out "Get away from her you BITCH!", but I don't see how anyone can say they were stolen from Aliens. Jeez.

And while on the subject of APUs, "I have got to get me one of these!" Didn't they rock? I loved the whole battle for the dock. It reminded me a lot of a video game, like maybe missile command. To begin with, it's relatively simple to keep the enemy at bay, until one or two get through. Each enemy that slips through the net chips away at your defences, until in the end there's a crazy flood. And the sentinels looked really nasty when they swarmed. Coupled with the hi-octane action of Niobe using the not-Logos (I can't remember it's actual name) as a stock car, the battle for the dock really had me caught up. I took a few nice long deep relaxing breaths once the EMP went off.

That leaves two things. First, the machine city, and the journey to it. When those huge fuckoff ships rose out of the ground to repel the Logos it would've been nice to get a good look at them instead of them just seeming like huge blobs. As soon as they started heading upwards I knew we were gonna get a quick view of above the clouds and I thought that was nicely done rather than being twee. Others may disagree. That's fair enough, as long as said others understand that they are wrong ;-) The city itself looked cool, loved how it had grown in a fractal layout. I liked the floaty mosaicy face too, but it would've been nice if its voice had been a little bit clearer.

And so, the fight. Smith vs Neo. In a lot of places it was quite hard to follow, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. All the water impact special effects looked cool, in a straight-out-of-Akira kinda way, but they just seemed to be pointless embellishments, since it was not entirely straightforward to work out exactly what you were seeing. The best bit of the fight had to be in the building when Neo beckoned to Smith, you could see it coming a mile off and that made it even better, I was bouncing in my seat and nudging Alison excitedly. The worst bit of the fight was that Neo didn't once say "My name is Neo" in the face of Smith's torrent of "Mr Anderson"s.

As for analysing what was going on, I think I'll wait until the second time I see it to do that. The one bit that did seem obvious to me was why Smith was destroyed by his defeating Neo. Some people (Alison included) have speculated that when Smith assimilated Neo, he gave the Machines direct access to his program. That may well be true, but I'm looking at it on a more abstract level. The Oracle said Smith and Neo were opposite sides of the same equation, so once one had gone, the other would go too. I'm guessing Neo realised this from the start, even though he missed certain other more obvious facts. In the end I found myself reminded of the Death of Superman storyline, when Superman and Doomsday fought each other to a complete standstill and took each other out simultaneously. Bit of a lame parallel, perhaps, but hey.

In the end, I enjoyed the film. That's what mattered. It wasn't quite as intellectually demanding as the previous two, and it wasn't groundbreaking by any means, but what does that matter? People who are always comparing a film to other films and using the comparisons as reasons to put the film down piss me off. Judge a film by its own merits. You either enjoy it or you don't.

Right then, I'm off to test drive an APU.