I thought it was a big disappointment.
I thought the pacing was all off between Matrix 2 and 3.
Action scenes:
There was no one I cared about in the Digger/Sentinel action sequence, and the fighting there was so unrealistic and unrelatable to anything else that I couldn't get into it. If Morphus was part of that battle it might have been different for me. Plus a lot of the visuals there were just incomprehendable to me ("What am I looking at?!!?) End result: I didn't see much "action" in this sequence.
Smith/Neo fight. Again, the action here was too unreal for me to get into. Too much super powers going around. The whole "flying through the air while fighting" just didn't cut it. I would have liked to see them both fight in the Train Station where their super powers did not apply ... End result: I didn't feel like either one was getting hurt or that they had any motivation to actually dodge each other's punches.
The ending:
I think the pacing was all messed up. For neo to fight Smith, all he needed to do was jack into the Matix. So he didn't need to go to the Machine headquarters to do that. The only reason he went there was to have a 2 sentence conversation with the Machines. And they believed him. This bothered me becuase Neo talks about Smith being super powerful, but we never actually see him be super powerful anywhere except for inside the Matrix. The one time he got out of the Matrix, Neo killed him no problem. He never took over a machine outside of the Matrix, that we saw. So how did 2 sentences of Neo's convince them he's powerful? We should have seen smith come into more power in 2 and take over some sentinels or something so we'd see firsthand that Smith is growing too strong.
The Mer -- er, Meryl, er, The french guy:
The coolest character in the sequels and we don't get to see him die? We don't see him get revenge? We don't see him ruin anyone's day? We don't get to see his reaction? What happened to him? I'm sure he's pissed after the mexican standoff.
The religious/Jesus overtones:
I know all 3 movies were riddled with biblical references but the ending of 3 just beat us over the head with it, and frankly I didn't need that. Not that I minded the parellels, just that I felt like the directors were trying to make it plain-as-day rather than playing it down like they did in 1 and 2.
Summary:
I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad I got to find out what happened to everything/everyone. But for me it was by far the weakest of the 3. I think parts 2 and 3 could have been one (very long) movie. I felt like the directors bit off more than they could chew and made Matrix 2 a much more complete movie at the sacrifice of the Matrix 3.
Just my opinion.
~Hanford
