Everything that has a beginning has an end.

I'm tempted to go straight into discussing spoilers. But first, I suppose a mini-review.

Honestly, I wasn't as wowed by this movie as I was by the first two. In was good -- very good, in fact -- but not overwhelmingly great. Neither a bang nor a whimper. To reference a quote from Joel Silver (I think it was him), if Reloaded is The Matrix squared, Revolutions, in my opinion, is not the Matrix cubed, but might be equal to The Matrix squared plus or minus the square root of pi.

The effects were there. The Zion battle was sweet. But in terms of "woah" factor, there was nothing to equal or exceed the dizzying freeway chase of Reloaded, the great hall fight, or the burly brawl. A couple of glaring continuity errors bugged me too, which I'll go into in a bit.

In terms of story, the ending was fitting, at least in a poetic sense. It didn't go out with the frenzied energy-packed punch of the previous two. (To confirm this, in a break from tradition, there was no Rage Against the Machine during the end credits. The mood didn't warrant it this time.) No, this one ends on a more reflective note.

Many echos and reverberations of the previous two could be felt throughout.

On that note of reflection, I'm going to conclude the comments for this entry. But there shall be a sequel. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Ok, so that little plan didn't pan out. I'll just finish this entry now. SPOILERS below.

Continuity glitch #1: When we first see Neo in a coma (end of Reloaded, beginning of Revolutions), his body is on an operating table across from Bane. After he gets rescued from the train station, and they exit The Matrix, he is shown being unplugged from one of the chairs that is normally used to enter the Matrix. Ignoring for a moment the logical oddity of there being a place "between" the Matrix and reality, at what point did Neo's body get moved, and how? I even heard somebody in the row behind me in the theater whispering, "I guess somebody else lifted him up into the chair and plugged him in." I guess so.

Now, as far as the ending goes, as I once speculated, peace between the machines and the humans is really the only ending that allows both to survive, because they depend on one another. Also, since most people who grew up in the Matrix are hopelessly dependent on it by the time they reach adulthood, it only makes sense that it would continue.

That said, the way it ends leaves some question marks. The machines have agreed to free people who want to be freed. But as long as they are in the Matrix, how will most of them ever know that such a choice exists? Based on what the Architect said in Reloaded, perhaps such a choice has already been made by each individual, even if only at an unconscious level.

Smith and Neo. Neither can exist without the other. With Trinity out of the picture, Neo realized that Smith was right, that there was ultimately no meaning to life. But knowing that Smith could not exist without Neo any more than Neo without Smith, he saw that the solution was indeed to give up. With himself gone, Smith would cease to exist, and life could continue.

Very eastern, yet also very western. (This seems to be one movie that every major religion can at least claim some piece of.)

Oh well. I suppose I have babbled incoherently long enough. At least I can say this: It left me thinking.