Tim Stephens

*******There will be spoilers in this review This entire movie felt like a fanfic. The story is a garbled mess of incoherent, unconnected scenes. The story feels like it was written the night before it was due. It's like a pastry that looks appealing but when you take a bite, you find the pastry had a bubble on the inside that took up 85% of the volume. I appreciated the call backs to the old movies but then they used so many of them it showed a lack of confidence in the story they were trying to tell. The process to free Neo didn't have any purpose or sense of importance, nobody really cared and this movie on its own doesn't make the viewer care at all. Niobe was in complete contrast to her character in the previous 2 films, with no explanation why. She even half quoted herself from before saying she never believed in "The One" but she originally finished that statement with her saying she did believe in Neo. Having to age her for the plot opened a door for being able to have Niobe look younger in the Matrix to signify she still has fight left in her, that the powerful woman was still there at heart. Missed opportunity. Zion is mentioned briefly and then it's forgotten, the new city has impressive new tech and defenses but it's all skimmed over without any fanfare at all. It looks way more populated but you don't get to see the population to make you care about them The cinematography is completely different, making it feel like a different universe from the previous films, which is jarring with the constant callback shots that feature the iconic green color grading. The Agents are shells of their previous forms, the "swarm" command just made it feel like a very poorly executed zombie film at several points in the film. Smith was one of the worst aspects of the entire movie. From him only calling Neo "Tom" instead of "Mr. Anderson" to the terrible dialouge. The actor didn't hit the speech cadence of the original at all, which was a big enough part of the character that in 2&3 that when he took Bane's body that actor adopted his speech cadence to sell the possession better. His personality was drastically different without any explanation. In regard to giving Trinity the powers of "The One", that makes sense actually because Neo implanted his code directly into her heart when he had to revive her after she died, you can see that in the original movies; That should have been shown again in this movie for a reminder and explanation since they used so many callback shots already. There are good points to the movie but they are all overshadowed by bad, lazy and uninspired writing.