YMMV / The Matrix Revolutions

• Alternative Character Interpretation: In Captain Mifune's final moments, he charges the Kid with using his APU to open the gates of Zion. When the Kid mentions not having finished the training program, Mifune says the same goes for him with his dying breaths. Is this proof that Mifune is an Uncertified Expert in piloting an APU, or a Motivational Lie to get the Kid to save the day?
• Badass Decay:
  • Trinity becomes this in the third act. She gets overpowered and used as a hostage by Bane, then Killed Off for Real before the main battle.
  • Seraph was shown to be an enigmatic badass, able to fight Neo on equal footing and is implied to have beaten Smith in combat previously. He gets assimilated offscreen.
• Contested Sequel: Alongside its predecessor Reloaded, though Reloaded is often viewed more positively than this film.
• Continuity Lock-Out: Niobe mentioning seeing the Oracle only makes sense if you played Enter the Matrix. Likewise, her crewmates Ghost and Sparks, major characters in said game, have minor speaking parts.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The film ends on a happy note with Neo achieving a truce between Zion and the Machines, and the Architect promising the Oracle that humans who want out of the Matrix will be freed. However, as the Headscratchers page and this Cracked article detail, there's still a lot of problems. For one thing, the real world is still a Crapsack World and there's no hope of rebuilding civilization because the sky is still blacked out so the biosphere cannot recover; and for another thing, any humans freed from the Matrix will go through physical and psychological trauma (as shown by Neo in the first film) in exchange for their freedom to live in Zion, which is an underground cave where humans live like impoverished refugees and it's implied resources are already stretched tight. Further, there's no guarantee that the Machines will uphold the truce for very long and they still have the full capacity to crush Zion whenever they want, ​the Matrix is going to keep running because they need it to sustain their quality of life, and there will certainly be tensions and suspicions between Zion and the Machines for years to come and the Machines are probably not going to be very forthcoming helping Zion with its problems. All in all, anyone who is freed from the Matrix will likely end up regretting their decision, Zion is still going to live in fear of the Machines exterminating them at any time, and it's rather unlikely that life will improve for anyone, human, program, or machine. Resurrections actually addresses this by revealing that, while the peace predictably didn't last forever and Zion was eventually destroyed, humans formed an alliance with some of the machines and are actually working toward making the world a better place, with IO, the successor to Zion, having a much higher standard of living as a result.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: The Oracle explains to Neo that his new powers, like his disabling the Sentinels outside the Matrix, come from connection to the Source. A lot of fans ignore this explanation because not only does it ruin the popular "The real world is another level of the Matrix" idea, but it makes the Source a little too powerful to be believable (like giving Neo psychic premonitions outside of the Matrix).
• He Really Can Act: Bane is played by Ian Bliss, who does an amazing job of copying Hugo Weaving's performance as Smith, emulating his physicality and vocal inflections perfectly. When Bane speaks, it's very easy to hear Weaving's voice instead of Bliss's.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: At the end of the film, the Matrix is reset at thanks to Neo's sacrifice. Sati asks the Oracle if they'll ever see Neo again, to which she replies, "I'm sure we will someday." This line is now oddly prophetic as it retroactively foreshadows Neo being resurrected in the The Matrix Resurrections.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Smith's laugh after duplicating from the Oracle.
  • Also, this exchange:
    Smith: Why do you persist!?
    Neo: ...Because I choose to.
• Moral Event Horizon: Smith was always an antagonist force but the pleasure he takes in assimilating Sati solidifies him as an irredeemable bastard:
  • "I'm not so bad once you get to know me..."
  • "Cookies need love like everything does" was even more pants-shittingly evil.
• Narm:
  • When Smith!Bane is taunting Neo with his real identity once he's in the real world and Neo's figuring out who he is, Smith!Bane has this really weird and unintentionally funny, rambling monologue instructing Neo to "look past the flesh... and see your enemy." Even funnier is Smith!Bane's delivery of "dull cow eyes".
  • Ian Bliss' imitation of Hugo Weaving might otherwise be really good, but he looks silly while overdoing Smith's pouting face and saying "... a suffocating cloud you can't escapppppppppp... >:( ...pe".
• Narm Charm:
  • Smith stating that "Cookies need love like everything does". Out of context, having him deliver this line sounds silly and kind of hilarious. In context, though, it's an Ironic Echo to indicate that he just crossed the Moral Event Horizon by assimilating a child, thus making it genuinely creepy.
  • Smith Laughing Mad after assimilating the Oracle should come off as ridiculous as it looks. But because you really don't expect it of this character, plus the fact that even the other Smiths look concerned like they Didn't Think This Through, it's effectively chilling.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The way Smith reveals that he assimilated Sati: "Cookies need love like everything else."
  • Giant flying baby face made of bugs. Egads. "WE DON'T NEED YOU! WE NEED NOTHING!!!"
  • What Smith does to Bane. You're not safe from this guy's assimilation ability even if you're a redpill, and if you're taken over, you become the bastard's gateway into the Real World, meaning no one in the Real World is safe from him.
• Nightmare Retardant: Zigzagged with Smith's Evil Laugh after the aforementioned Moral Event Horizon-crossing. It's goofy. One the other hand as stated in Narm Charm it's also so unlike him that it can qualify as unexpected Nightmare Fuel.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Rama-Khandra, and Persephone who in this movie only has one line.
  • Deus Ex Machina can be counted, probably due to Kevin Michael Richardson voicing it.
• Padding: The battle of Zion, while cool looking, does not matter at all since Neo is the only one who can stop the fighting and he's on his way to the machine city. While it's necessary to show at least some of the battle to demonstrate that humanity cannot possibly prevail, and their resistance bought time for him to get to the machine city to negotiate, the full siege takes half an hour, plus several scenes beforehand showing Zion preparing for the siege; surely some of that could have been cut.
• Signature Scene:
  • Neo attacking the Trainman.
  • Neo's meeting with the Deus ex Machina.
  • The final battle between Neo and Smith.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Some consider the climactic battle to be a far superior adaptation of Dragon Ball Z than the horrendous live action movie.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Simplifying the Architect's dialogue made literate fans of the scene from Reloaded agitated.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The Merovingian and Persephone were built up as important players in the last film. They have one scene in this film (hell, Persephone only gets one line).
  • It's clear that Morpheus' arc was concluded in the previous film, as he has little to do here except assist Niobe.
  • Trinity getting Killed Off for Real instead of assisting Neo in the final battle, plus being used as a hostage by Bane.
  • Those who played Enter the Matrix will be disappointed that, Niobe aside, the Logos crew are barely in the film.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The assault on Zion is ten kinds of epic. Too bad all the characters we actually care about are barely involved.
  • The film doesn't follow up on any of the foreshadowing Reloaded had about the Merovingian; He only serves as a minor antagonist who is quickly dealt with, and Persephone is effectively Demoted to Extra.
  • The implication that Smith has assimilated all the programs charged with overseeing the functions of the Matrix carries with it the implication that he can freely reprogram the Matrix. This also lines up with the description of the One from the first film, where Morpheus describes the first One as being able to "remake the Matrix as he saw fit." Thus the story perfectly places Neo and Smith for a battle between Reality Warpers, the two bending the Matrix to their will to combat each other. Instead, it's just another one-on-one fist fight, except now the two of them can fly.
  • The Twist Ending of the previous movie reveals that the Oracle was actually on the Machines' side all along, and that she knew the truth about the prophecy of the One but refused to tell the heroes. The heroes' disillusionment with their mentor could have made for some truly compelling drama if the writers had actually explored the question of whose side she was really on. But for some reason, this never comes up, and she is revealed to have been Good All Along, putting in motion an innovative plan to finally end the war.
  • Many have pointed out that both sequels completely waste the philosophical elements and themes on ideas like determinism and free will, and that Revolutions is especially egregious for this. Wisecrack points out in his video that not only does the movie refuse to answer the questions the movie raises on human nature, determinism and the relationship between reality and simulation, it almost seems too afraid to.
• Vindicated by History: Much like Reloaded, The New '10s and the Wachowskis coming out as trans saw a majority of the vitriol against the film die down. Having been reappraised in the intervening years toward the release of Resurrections, opinions have warmed to Revolutions as being thematically deeper and consistent with the previous Matrix films than initially appraised, as pointed out by this video from Just Write.

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