I haven't seen The Matrix: Revolutions yet, but will be tonight. The early buzz is that of general disdain by the public. My curious nature has led me to seek out a good deal of opinion from those who HAVE seen it, such as on Rotten Tomatoes. The reviews aren’t very positive, and I think it has a lot to do with symmetry.

The first movie was clearly entertaining, and “a good movie” by most accounts. It raised questions, put forth a clear theme (the nature of reality), and answered those questions. It then caused people to think about their own existence in that context. When this concept expanded into a trilogy, moviegoers expected the same from the trio – there should be an over-arching theme, questions raised, those questions crisply answered, and the overall big picture of the three movies together should raise bigger questions about our own existence.

Reloaded delivered some of this. As a stand-alone movie, it had a theme (the nature of choice), though not as clear. A myriad of questions were raised, with the expectation that they would be answered in the third film, and there was certainly the potential that a grand vision could be revealed to us that would be a gigantic “Aha!” moment, not only answering questions but making us question something in ourselves. The early word is that Revolutions fails on all of these accounts. It doesn't answer all of the questions, and the ones it does answer, it does with one-word answers rather than explanations. There doesn't seem to be a theme for the trilogy, or a larger “Aha!”, and consensus is that far too many questions are left unanswered.

Our expectations for the trilogy were set up by “The Matrix”, and in retrospect, it seems that the brothers Wachowski raised too many questions that were too difficult to answer in Reloaded, and lacked a coheive vision for the trilogy. I can't think of another sequel that had so many expectations placed on it. At present, even Scary Movie 3 has better reviews than Revolutions. Is it because it's actually a better movie? Doubtful. It seems that Revolutions has failed to deliver on the expectations that the original set up for the trilogy, and Reloaded perpetuated.

I’ll have my own perspective on the actual movie tomorrow.