I agree on both points. I quite liked Reloaded, and I thought Revolutions was about as good a conclusion as I could have hoped for, but they obviously had their flaws, one of which was the Neo/Smith characters, as you say. I suppose there's only so much development Neo can do once he's got a handle on his Superman abilities. As for Smith...in the first film, he was one of the near-identical, impassive Agents, but with just a touch of suppressed humanity. Smith hated humanity and all its trappings, but he hated it in a very human way. He was a cold, mechanical enemy, but with just a hint of instability, a touch of barely-controlled mania, and that's what made him interesting.Ur-Vile wrote:I loved the development of Neo - he was ordinary and became something special. In the sequels he is too 'super-hero'. There is no development.
Smith also lost it for me in the sequels. Having him become a renegade took away the appeal of him representing the machines. For me, Smith was their face and voice. He represented authority in such a powerful way. Then in 2 and 3 he becomes just another power-hungry villain. He became too human. in the first film, he was odd and alien - a program that was trying to be human.
In any case, we're talking mainly about revolutions here... I found that film to be much darker than the others. Not since the first panorama of the fields of humans has this series so chilled me. A lot of the scenes, seemed to be stripped of the glossy, stylised aspects of the first two, particularly Reloaded. It was almost a Wounded Land moment, IMO. We had our minds blown by the first Matrix; the second one exposed us further to this artificial world, then the third took the things we had learned and threw them away, or twisted them into unpleasant shapes. IMHO, of course. I found Revolutions very bleak, and after the gleaming Reloaded I welcomed that.
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