In which I go to the movies.

As a card-carrying geek, I am required to know all about The Matrix. I own DVDs of the first two movies and The Animatrix, played (part of) the game, own the soundtracks, etc. I have spent many hours discussing various aspects of the world that the Brothers Wachowski have created. So I had no choice but to go to the opening night of The Matrix: Revolutions.

About a week ago my supervisor at work started asking people if they wanted to go see it on opening night. After he got enough affirmative responses, he sent out an official email that included a link to buy the tickets online. I picked them up online. (That was the first time I have done that. Fairly painless, although I don’t see the point unless you think a movie will be sold out.) Since I saw the first Matrix with my coworkers (from CORE Digital), so going with the DataWave folks seemed to bring it full circle.

We decided to meet at a local Mexican restaurant before the movie. Eighteen people ended up showing up! It was an interesting group that included many IT people from different businesses in Wausau. (Who would have thought that going to a movie could also be networking?) After the dinner we headed to the theater. We unexpectedly met Ian, Pat, Sarah, and some of their friends in line.

I love the guy, but Pat is a pompous, arrogant, over-educated, overly-critical author. Luckily this makes him an extremely good person to see a movie with. I usually don’t agree with him on everything, but the discussion after the movie is challenging and entertaining. So we grabbed a cluster of seats and settled in for the movie.

No spoilers here. I am not going to go into detail about anything. So if you haven’t seen the flick yet, you’re safe.

I’ll start at the end. When I walked out of the theater after seeing the original movie, I was pumped. Excited. I wanted to learn Kung Fu and discuss the nature of reality. It was a huge rush every time I saw it. Walking out of Revolutions, I was quiet, thoughtful, and somber. There really was no excitement and not much feeling of resolution.

I think that the first Matrix surpassed the genre to become a truly great movie. The second, while not as good, still had amazing action and made you think. However, the third one was not exceptional. It was a good sci-fi flick (and blew away the new Star Wars movies) but it didn’t meet the expectations that I had after the first two movies.

I thought that the pacing in the third one was better than the second one and they did “Superman” special effects better than any Superman movie ever did. There were some very cool moments. It can be a very enjoyable movie as long as you don’t dig too deeply. But I think that the deeper you dig into this final installment, the less there is.

I have more thoughts, but they would probably lead to spoilers. If you want to chat with me about it, you know how to find me.