I liked it a lot. It’s the worst of the trilogy, but I still liked it quite a bit. Apparently I’m in the minority (with the “liking it” part, not the “worst of the trilogy” part).
I’ll try to talk about what I liked/didn’t like without spoiling the movie much, though proceed at your own risk.
Revolutions succeeded in what it did do, but failed, in my mind, only in what it didn’t do.
It didn’t answer the right questions, and after Reloaded, there are a LOT of questions to be answered.
It didn’t give us enough Merovingian, though I suspect further Matrix stories (The Matrix Online, perhaps?) will have him as the main “Big Bad”.
It didn’t give us enough philosophy. Sure, there’s a bit about choices, and a EXCELLENT scene at the beginning about words just being words that represent something as best they can.
It did give us some great action, some amazing heroics, and as my buddy Fahrv pointed out, The Matrix Trilogy is a feminist triumph. The women are smart, strong and in some cases more capable than the men. It’s also the least racist movie around, despite the main hero being a Jesus figure white boy. Nearly everyone else is non-white and fully kicks ass at what they do.
The only thing that makes The Matrix Revolutions into a bad movie is when you compare it to the previous two. But I’m trying hard to think of a trilogy where the third movie came out as the best.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Fun, good, but not Raiders quality.
Return of the Jedi? MUPPETS.
Matrix Revolutions? Just wasn’t as smart as I wanted.
But I still liked it a lot.
Possible theory: Maybe Matrix 2 wasn’t smart, but you are, so you added in a bunch of stuff on your own (mentally, not like you added some scenes or something) to make it better, hence all the great deep stuff you derived from the experience. Matrix 3, building on a not smart movie, wasn’t smart either.
It would explain why 3 didn’t answer any of the questions you felt 2 posed. Maybe they never meant to pose those questions. In my opinion they never did.
I saw it on Friday and loved it as well. I can agree with a few of the arguments, but most of the arguments I have seen about the movie are more from overblown expectations than any major flaws. There was a lot of action, which took away a little from the story, but there was lots of messiah-Neo Christian undertones to keep theorists talking about this movie for a long time. I think that Jess may have a point in that you may have dug out meanings that were more involved than they intended, and they couldn’t squeeze them in (they did paint themselves into a corner in trying to top the last two, which was nigh-impossible, but they tried). However, like me, you seemed to have liked the movie, and were satisfied with the closure of it, so its all good!