Carpe Datum

The Third Movie

We saw "Matrix Revolutions" last night at last. I have really kept clear of information, spoilers and reviews of this movie, just so I could see it with a fresh pair of eyes. I couldn't help but hear all the negative vibe about this one, but I thought it was ok. Ebert's review sums up a lot of the positives in the movie. Michelle thought it sucked, of course.

I'll grant that at this point, the philosophy that made the first movie so cool is pretty much shot to hell. It is now just filler between gigantic action sequences, and it no longer adds much to the movie for me. In the first one, both parts (the ideas and the action) were great. Now it is just an action flick, but I thought it was just fine as action flicks go. Unpredictable and over-the-top.

I mean, I had to laugh at the end when the whole movie was gearing up for this final confrontation with Neo and Smith, and then all they do is have another kung-fu fight. I mean, didn't Neo make that stuff pretty much old news at the end of the first movie? Why all the fighting? Just one of you dive in to the other, let your unknowable insides fight it out and give us the answer, whatever it is.

It would've been better in the theater. At home, I guess the acoustics in our living room or the TV itself just doesn't have good sound quality. We have to crank it up very loud to hear all the different dialogue, then crank it back down for the next explosion (always less than three minutes away). I finally just gave up, turned on subtitles and watched the movie at a normal volume. Seems a lot of movies we watch on DVD are like that (Return of the King, to name one we watched recently), so it must be us, not the movies. A nice sound system for the living room is waaayyyyy down on the want list for this house, though. We just need dual headphones with really long cords.