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the matrix revolutions script (abridged)Suddenly it was clear to me that the best way to express how I see the movie was through something like this, that would let me have some fun with it. So I sat down and just wrote the thing, in the spirit of the abridged script for Reloaded. Disclaimer: I am not a Matrix-basher. If you have any doubts, read here, or here, or here, or here, or here. Update (7/11): to address questions on what I really thought about the movie in more detail, as well as my interpretation of what happens in it, I've posted an actual review here. Warning: This contains major spoilers, essentially the whole plot of the movie. If you don't want to know what happens, don't read it until you've seen it. Ready? Read on... The Matrix Revolutions script (abridged) by Diego Doval
They exhange SERIOUS GLANCES. The Medical officer leaves. Laurence Fishburne SHOWS UP.
They go see THE ORACLE.
The Oracle looks DIFFERENT. It's ANOTHER actress.
Keanu Reeves WAKES UP. There's a LITTLE GIRL standing NEXT TO HIM
The little girl's FATHER shows up. Her MOTHER too.
They DO get through them. The upside down FIGHT looks COOL. They reach the MEROVINGIAN.
Something HAPPENS. Carrie-Anne Moss gets the UPPER HAND. Apparently. She points a gun at the Merovingian but has 20 guns POINTED AT HER.
Carrie-Anne RESCUES Keanu from the train station. They are about to LEAVE, and go back to the REAL WORLD.
Keanu LEAVES.
Keanu WAKES UP in the ship, PLUGGED IN, even though HE WASN'T before, when he showed up at the TRAIN STATION.
Hugo Weaving arrives at the Oracle's apartment. He also surrounds the Seraph and the little girl with more copies of himself, in some other apartment of the same building.
Hugo Weaving doubts for a moment. This seems too easy. But he copies himself into the New New Oracle anyway, and keeps laughing. This PROBABLY has some MEANING.
Keanu retires to think. Bane wakes up.
Bane KILLS the medical officer. Meanwhile, Jada Pinkett Smith and her ship, the Logos, show up.
Keanu emerges from meditation.
The OTHER CAPTAIN looks at the WACHOWSKI BROTHERS, who SHAKE THEIR HEADS.
A huge battle follows. The Sentinels fly around THE DOCK without going further. They MOVE in SWARMS. It looks COOL.
Jada Pinkett Smith is PILOTING. She is an AWESOME pilot. The OTHERS in the ship note this loudly and often in SURPRISE, even though they've KNOWN her for YEARS.
They KEEP the Sentinels at BAY with the guns they never had before. They approach Zion. They do LOSE the RADIO, so they won't be able to tell Zion that it's THEM arriving. Massive suspense builds. EVERYTHING looks VERY COOL.
The SUSPENSE goes NOWHERE. The door mechanism is broken however. The Kid shows up and SAVES THE DAY, releases the mechanism of the door by shooting it up. Link's wife shows up ALSO to HELP HIM.
The gates open. As soon as the Hammer enters the dock, they blow the EMP. All the Sentinels DIE.
More Sentinels ARRIVE. The Humans descend to the LOWEST LEVEL of Zion, but the Sentinels ARE STILL DIGGING. The end approaches.
Keanu is BLIND, his eyes covered with CLOTH.
He STOPS THEM. The bombs explode in MID AIR. It looks COOL. A few Sentinels LATCH onto the BACK of the SHIP as well..
The Hovercraft SHOOTS UP past the cloud cover, and we see THE BEAUTIFUL SKY. Then, like Wile E. Coyote, they REALIZE they can't fly, the ship starts to fall. They have, however, FLOWN PAST the city's defenses, which apparently are only pointed to the outside and can't turn around. The ship FALLS, accelerating rapidly.
They CRASH. Carrie-Anne Moss is IMPALED with some sort of metallic pole which somehow showed up in the COCKPIT.
He KISSES her. She DIES. We are reminded of the Merovingian's Theory of everything being CAUSE and EFFECT.
Keanu Walks off the ship, seeing everything through his Matrix-sense. We see a lot of COOL-LOOKING spidery machines. A bigger machine SHOWS UP floating at the EDGE of a CLIFF and turns a SWARM of smaller machines into a HUMAN FACE. Suddenly the face can TALK, too, even though it obviously has no vocal chords and there's no reason for it to have SPEAKERS.
Keanu GOES INTO THE MATRIX. There are millions of Hugo Weavings. It's RAINING and it looks COOL. In Zion, the Sentinels immediately STAND DOWN, even though Keanu hasn't held up to his part of the bargain yet. Laurence Fishburne APPROACHES one of the Sentinels, who is now CUTELY squirming on the GROUND.
They fight. It looks COOL. They fly. It looks COOL. They fight. It looks COOL. They open up CRATERS on the ground with their IMPACTS and they still survive. It looks REALLY COOL. Keanu looks beaten.
Hugo Weaving COPIES HIMSELF into Keanu. He smiles. Keanu displays NO EMOTION, as usual.
We see Deus Ex Machina doing something with Keanu's BODY, and this might or might not have MEANING. It was a TRAP. Keanu let Hugo Weaving get into him so that he could destroy all the Hugo Weavings through their other-wordly connection to each other. Keanu can do this though he's ALREADY dead.
All the Hugo Weavings EXPLODE. The GOOD guys WIN.
They embrace lovingly, even though Jada Pinkett Smith's boyfriend, shown a second before, is standing two feet behind them, off camera.
We see the Matrix apparently being rebuilt, but we can't be sure. The Deja-Vu effect with the black cat we saw in the FIRST MOVIE shows up AGAIN, though this time it looks COOLER.
The SERAPH and the LITTLE GIRL also appear.
The sun raises.
The little girl SMILES. They are all HAPPY. The sun SHINES.
Posted by diego on November 5 2003 at 9:53 PM Comments (please see the comments & trackback policy).
Nicely, nicely done. This sums up my disappointment better than anything I could conjure up. Posted by: Chris Winters at November 5, 2003 10:54 PMThanks Chris, :) glad I'm not the only one who saw it this way. Posted by: Diego at November 5, 2003 11:19 PMHeh, very nice, I just couldn't stop laughing when I read Lock's "you fool" explanation :). I think that I'll stop wearing my "I took the red pill" ThinkGeek t-shirt and I'll buy one that says "Although I took the red pill, I would be better off if I had taken the blue one." I can only hope that Diego is wrong, not very likely, and that this is the end of the travesty. Posted by: Patroklos Argyroudis at November 6, 2003 2:18 AMSuperb work Diego! I'm just back from seeing the film, and I think I would have preferred to see your version, to be honest. Was it just me, or did those sentinel scenes appear to go on and on and on? Posted by: Martin Little at November 6, 2003 2:29 AMGreat work on the script. You mention almost all the plot-holes that bothered me, and a couple I didn't think about! About my opinion of the movie, I'm still a bit confused. Standing alone, I believe it's good (decent?) movie. But as a conclusion of the saga, it's like an insult!. No answers, no surprises, no explanation of the misteries set in Reloaded, and a story that doesn't make much sense (even for those who will try explain it trough religion, dogma and filosophy, and you know they will). This dissapointment just confirms what I thought when reading the numerous (and very interesting) discussions about the previous chapters, regarding the matrix-within-the-matrix, the Father-Mother duality, the "Neo is human, no he's not": we gave too much credit the W brothers. The trilogy is not a completely coherent system. There're no books of rules and regulations like in Star Wars. There's no years of tradition like there is with the Lord of the Rings. The authors of The Matrix did it in secrecy, and everyone (including me, I admit it) was convinced that they knew what they were doing, and that the explanation would be amazing. Now we can see that they just weren't so complex. There's no spoon, just 3 simple movies, writen using the proveen blockbuster formula. And about the horrendous plot-holes, or the stupid dialogs (like the Oracle's explanation about her "lifting"), I guess that the few people that read the script were just to afraid to point it to the W brothers. Who might say something to them? Posted by: Ricardo M. Reyes at November 6, 2003 3:04 AMHola, Diego. Most excellent summary of the movie. I just saw it myself this afternoon and I thoroughly agree with your sentiment. One other hole that bugged me.. what does it mean to have 'peace' when one of the two sides still 'grows' the other as a power source? Ahh, you say... but now the humans have CHOICE whether they want to be used as a power source. Right. Posted by: Dylan at November 6, 2003 4:27 AMBravo. Excellent script! Posted by: SilverStr at November 6, 2003 7:50 AMThe only scenario under which I would have considered watching Matrix: Revolutions as anything but a waste of my time is if I had just waited 5 years and watched this bullshit on TV, on a Saturday afternoon while cleaning my appartment and cooking myself some lunch. At least I had a good laugh reading your version of the script. Posted by: Chris Vosnidis at November 6, 2003 3:45 PMAwsome Diego! Posted by: Arcterex at November 6, 2003 8:06 PMOk, the plot was a mess, but a few points: But you're right about the rest. This script put a smile on my face after that huge disappointment. What the fuck were they thinking? The Wachowski's should be shackled and impaled, and Joe Silver should produce Diego's version of the script. I hate the whole series now. Posted by: David Reid at November 6, 2003 10:28 PMLol, that's awesome. So true of the storyline too. Posted by: Ben Milleare at November 7, 2003 12:58 AMI think the movie had its ups and downs, but it was still pretty frickin awesome. I think its just something you have to watch a bunch of times to understand. You cant watch it once and understand everything about it. I didn't like reloaded the first time I saw it, but after seeing it more, I liked it more. Its the same with all the others. Its easy to make fun of something you don't understand. You did a damn fine job of that. Posted by: Daniel McKinney at November 7, 2003 3:52 AMAs many here I like your plot version much more than the actual movie [which was a disappointment as I was caught by the hype of theories], nevertheless it's a pity that you can't describe the CG scenes better (they are as far the best in this film). You have to think something to do that ;) M: Revolutions mainly relied on visuals (we all knew it), the story has more holes than a colander, we are lost with the inexplicable questions unanswered...again. I did agree with the possible Matrix-within-Matrix theory, which sounded reasonable considering the hints threw to the audience in Reloaded. I think the Wachowski brothers were too much influenced by Asian films that they even *conceived* into the trilogy the same plot emptiness of the martial arts films (FYI, I love m.arts films but honestly they don't have any plot). Some comments and questions: * With the overall lack of explanations, why did they go into so much questioning about the Oracle's new physical appearance, what did it cause her to "change" in /after Reloaded that she never finished explaining? (apart from the sudden dead of Gloria Foster in 2001 from diabetes). * Sati, the little girl, was supposed to stay with the Oracle, at least that was what her father said in the train station. With the Oracle she would be safe, because the Matrix doesn't know where the Oracle is (although for Agent Smith, it didn't seemed that difficult to find her). It's interesting how programs relate to programs only (Oracle with Seraph, Merovingian with Persephone, the keymaster and all the freakiest programs from the Matrix). * About that, why programs die? If they are part of the Matrix (which means they don't have a human link outside) they are not supposed to die, they could be rebooted and run again. Why then all the Merovingian's pals are beaten up and dominated by the humans who really die if their minds believe so...? * Keanu is conveniently blinded, which is great since the cloth covering his eyes saved us from seen (at least for a short time) how inexpressive he could get. Imagine the scene when Trinity is dying... with that glimpse of half of his face we don't believe his suffering, what we could expect from his eyes, which usually are the more expressive tools actors use? * Although I still don't get why Keanu can see Bane and the machines like if they were IN the Matrix when they are actually OUTSIDE the Matrix (i.e.: in the Machine City). * And if he can actually use his Matrix sense, why he couldn't save Trinity this time (one bullet, couple of poles >similar holes)? He doesn't need to be INSIDE the Matrix for that magic with his superpowers...he was destroying the bombs with one hand. * About Adam Langley's comment: "Neo and Smith were opposite (remember all the crap about balance in the matrix?) that's why Smith absorbing Neo didn't work too well." * Why the rainy fight if all that Neo had to do was to get absorbed by Smith? It was a simple trap, why Neo went into such beating? And isn't it curious that it was actually the Oracle/Smith the one fighting against Neo? I guess there is a meaning because we saw Smith hesitant about the Oracle laid back attitude about being taken. And the new Smith/Oracle smiling evilish like if there was something we should expect from this. * "Keanu let Hugo Weaving get into him so that he could destroy all the Hugo Weavings through their other-wordly connection to each other. Keanu can do this though he's ALREADY dead." * About this, did anyone sees a resemblance on the way Neo is taken into the machine's glowing lights on his floating platform to the story in Excalibur ( or "Le Morte D'Arthur"), where near-to-death King Arthur goes to Avalon (where he was taken to be healed of his fatal battle wounds, waiting to be called upon to rescue his country in its hour of need)??. * You're right about the ending, they would make more profits out of it, the new Oracle even left Neo with a chance for returning when the so-called peace will be broken by a new league of human saviors, claiming not to be exploited by the machines (even claiming for the ones who CHOICED to be used as energy supply). Never underestimate the power of movies... Posted by: Valkiria at November 7, 2003 12:24 PMThis movie, like the second and the first for that matter, was simply a ripped off idea taken from some unknown poor writer who may never get a shot at showing the world just how talentless people with the means of production actually are. The Wachowski brothers are frauds and this movie proves that. It's a shame that we may never get to see the actual ideas behind this mess. Posted by: Junga at November 7, 2003 12:55 PMThanks all for the comments! If there are questions about a more "serious" take on the movie (for comment's like Daniel's for example), I have posted an actual review here http://www.dynamicobjects.com/d2r/archives/002415.html Also, as usual, please note the comments & trackback policy of my weblog before, posting, particularly about anonymous posts. Posted by: Diego at November 7, 2003 1:28 PM"The one guy who liked it" AWESOME script!!!!!!!!!! This is one of the funniest things I've ever read. My favorite part: the name of the machine-face - "Deus ex machina"... priceless!!!!! Posted by: Derek at November 7, 2003 4:18 PMYou're in my head. Its going to be hard convincing people I thought all the same things, they're going to think I read them here :) -Curt Posted by: Curt at November 7, 2003 6:16 PMIt's funny that the "plot holes" described here seem to have more holes than the actual movie. Many of the problems pointed out were actually explained. Did any of you actually watch the movie or were you too busy taking notes about how the story didn't go the direction you wanted it to? I can certainly see why people might not have liked it, but the comments here really make me question how many people were actually paying attention... Posted by: Norman Richards at November 7, 2003 8:23 PMIt's a funny script, but a lot of the time your expectations for things making sense are just way too high, and the other half you're picking holes that aren't really there. I mean, wouldn't it be _really_ bad form to keep attacking Zion while Neo's busy putting his ass on the line? Especially since there's a possibility he could sense from his connection to the machine world whether the attack was still going on or not. To top it all, you could make just as scathing a script about the first movie, and keep most of the jokes. The first Matrix movie was a big, implausible plot surrounded by faux philosophy, and Stuff That Looked Cool. Why do we have this expectation that the universe of the Matrix is going to be plausible? Was there _anything_ about the first movie that was plausible? The machines having no way to power themselves except for using humans as batteries? Did the world supply of Uranium just vanish overnight or something? Shouldn't the machines be busy building solar panels in orbit and microwave-beaming the energy back to the planet? How are they getting enough energy out of the humans to power those huge towers they're being kept in, let alone a whole machine civilisation? Why not lobotomize the humans instead of going to the effort of making a big program to keep their minds in? You basically only need them to respire, after all. Any electric energy used up in the brain as thought is wasted energy, after all. Why not just use SHEEP? Sheep bodies could generate power too, a sheep-matrix would be so much easier to program, and you wouldn't have to worry about sheep wanting to escape into the real world and start rebellions. Unless, perhaps, they were all rescued by Cows With Guns. Posted by: Charles Miller at November 8, 2003 5:30 AMHUGO WEAVING: Why do you keep fighting? Well, yes. Or at least it explained a hell of a lot to me. When he absorbed the Oracle, Smith gained the Oracle's power of prophecy. Smith saw himself defeating and absorbing Neo. But, as she said in two movies, the Oracle's power does not extend to seeing beyond those choices we do not yet understand. In the final battle with Smith, Neo has chosen to keep fighting for Zion. But why? Up to now, he was acting out of his love for Trinity, but she's dead. Then Smith makes his speech about how love is an illusion, and a human failing. But Neo knows that the machines are just as capable of this "failing" as humans are, and in this there is the chance for redemption. So he finally makes his "choice" fully understanding what is at stake, and what is possible. He knows that he can not defeat Smith in a fight. But as he and Smith are opposites, they will cancel each other out by merging. Neo finally knows, and understands his fate. And this, of course, is when Smith begins to doubt. When Neo understands his choice, the future suddenly extends beyond Smith's absorbing Neo, and while Smith can sense something is wrong, he does not understand. And without understanding, he can't choose to do anything different. Posted by: Charles Miller at November 8, 2003 6:14 AMThis discussion has been closed due to spamming. Thanks to all who participated. Posted by: System at November 10, 2003 10:20 AMCopyright © Diego Doval 2002-2007.
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