Not recommended. Not much to say here. Although I do have an article coming out soon on the philosophy/theology of The Matrix trilogy. But anyway, this movie had even less scenes of the actual Matrix in it and more of Zion battles, and almost no philosophy compared to the second one. After watching this one, I actually was thinking how much better Reloaded was, which is a surprise cause I didn’t like Reloaded that much. Oh well, I find it interesting that a trilogy that espouses freedom of man as superior to slavery actually makes the slavery side more interesting. I found myself, as in Reloaded, wishing they would get back into the Matrix because those were cooler scenes and more interesting stories. And Zion, which is supposed to be the last city of freedom for man, was the most boring aspect of the whole series. Who knows? Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe, the postmodern Wachowski brothers actually do prefer fantasy to reality, or delusion to truth, after all, like Baudrillard, they do believe that man creates his own reality through language because the signs of the real are substituted for the real.

It was pretty much just a battle movie with the machines battling to destroy Zion and a couple of “in the Matrix” fight scenes. Nothing really unique here except a different take on the original scene in The Matrix where they shoot up the marble pillars. This time, the guards fight back and they too are Matrix players who can flip up to the ceiling. Also, the ultimate battle between Neo and Agent Smith is a boring Superman fight that I suppose was necessary to the buildup of power that both were getting. But it was still boring. There is also a finale scene where Neo gives his life for the freedom of the Matrix and those who choose to be free. The big godlike face of the Source says, “IT is done,” an obvious reference to Christ’s “It is finished.” I find it amusing how those who would detest Christianity seem so reliant upon it’s atonement concept to give their stories depth. I write about this in my article that the Wachowskis are Nietzschean nihilists who fancy themselves “revaluators” of the myths of our culture, using religion as metaphors for their ubermensch who overcomes man by overcoming traditional thought forms and saves himself by “creating his reality.”

It is an excerpt of my upcoming article in CRI Journal to whet your appetite:
“Everyone knows that The Matrix trilogy contains a religious philosophical worldview. But just which one is a matter of debate. Some have written essays proclaiming it Christian; some, Platonic (after Plato the philosopher); others, Gnostic (a Christian heresy); and still others, Buddhist. My own view is that this series uses a combination of all of the above, and then some, as subversive metaphors for a postmodern worldview that deconstructs universal mythology into a Nietzschean “overman” philosophy of creating one’s own truth in a universe without God. In Nietzsche’s anti-philosophy philosophy, our perceptions of reality are illusory (The Matrix) because they are part of the mechanistic determinism of nature (The Matrix Reloaded) and we must therefore create our own truth through our human choices (The Matrix Revolutions).

Mythologist Joseph Campbell, the literary hero with a thousand faces, sought to bring to light what he considered the “monomyth,” the universal heroic journey common to all religions residing in a Jungian collective unconscious of humanity. Religions have so many ideas and images in common because they are ultimately diverse symbolic projections of the same physical and mental processes within all of us. In his interview with Bill Moyers in The Power of Myth, Campbell states that, “All the gods, all the heavens, all the worlds, are within us. They are magnified dreams, and dreams are manifestations in image form of the energies of the body in conflict with each other.” In this sense, Campbell was a demythologizer. He deconstructed religious traditions and transcendent beliefs into their so-called respective origins in natural causes. Similar to Campbell’s eclecticism, the nature of Postmodern religion is a hodge podge synthesis of diverse sources without regard for logical or organic consistency. There are just enough parallels between religions to ignore the disparities. To force square similarities into round differences. And I suggest this is what the Wachowski brothers, creators of The Matrix, are doing with their cinematic trilogy. “