Call me Nostradamus, 'cause I can predict the future! (with up to a 62.345% accuracy, at any rate....)

[WARNING: This rant contains spoilers for The Matrix and its two sequels--The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. If you haven't seen them yet, and you're worried that the movies might be spoiled for you if you learn anything about them, you might want to turn back, like the chicken you are. You have been warned.]

Since this newfangled Matrix thing seems to be all the rage these days, I'll put in my own two cents. I'll play devil's advocate. Want to know how the machines could stop the rebel humans? Simply shut off their means of saving "freed minds." In the first Matrix, when Neo is freed, the system figures there's something wrong with him, and dumps him into the trash can. Morpheus' ship is waiting there to pick him up and--voila--he's now The One. If the machines had been smart, they'd put guards down there to kill any humans that are disposed of. That way, the rebels would have no reason to try to free more minds, as it would be a pyrrhic victory. In the second movie, Morpheus says they've freed more minds in the last 6 months than the whole time before that combined. For a race with a supposedly superior intellegence, the machines don't really seem to be learning, now do they?

Now, I know what you're saying: "Give it a break, man. It's just a movie." That may be true, but it doesn't excuse inconsistencies and plot holes the size of the US government's deficit. For a movie as pretentious as The Matrix is (and before you say anything: yes, The Matrix is extremely pretentious), I expect them to cover all the bases a little bit better. It's like in Star Wars, where Obi Wan Kenobi tells Luke that his father was already a great pilot when they met, but then George Lucas got the brillient idea of making Darth Vader a little kid with no piloting experience in Episdoe I. It's these types of plot holes that can ruin movies.

Since Revolutions isn't going to be coming out for a few more months, I hope Warner Bros. will take the time to fix its problems, because right now it's pretty bad. For example, the fight scene between Agent Smith and Neo at the end is extremely long--over 15 minutes--and, frankly, boring. Yay, it looks exactly like every other Smith/Neo fight they've made, except--brace yourself--this time it's raining! You can cut the suspense with an inanimate carbon rod, which would've been a better choice to play Neo than Keanu Reeves.

Secondly, they should have killed off Trinity sooner. She dies at the end of Revolutions, but not before having a long, boring, drawn-out death speech. It goes something like this:

Neo: "You can't die now! Not now that we're so close to destroying the Matrix!"
Trinity: "I'm so scared Neo! I love you too much to let go now!"
Neo: "Don't leave me! I can't live without you!"
Trinity: "I'll always be...with...you...."
Neo: "NOOOOOoooOOOoOOOOOOOOOooOOoOOOO!!!!11!!1!!!"

If they'd have just killed her off sooner, like in the first five minutes of the first movie, viewers wouldn't have to be subjected to this melodramatic crap.

Lastly, the ending to Revolutions is really, really cheesy. It goes like this: the Matrix world takes place in the "past," right before humans invented Artificial Intelligence. Once AI is created, history repeats itself and the machines enslave the humans inside the Matrix, and create their own Matrix inside the original Matrix. Again, the humans in the second Matrix invent AI, the machines rise up, enslave the humans, and create a third Matrix, inside the other two. This is an infinite loop and, if left unchecked for a certain amount of time, would create so many Matricies inside of Matricies that it would crash even the most powerful computer--namely the original computer running all of these Matricies.

Well, it turns out that Neo and the Gang are inside one of the many different Matricies. That's why, at the end of Reloaded, Neo is able to use his "powers" to stop the Sentinels. I don't know about you, but I saw this coming a mile away, and I really wish that they hadn't gone for such a cheesy, cliched ending. Oh yeah. I will say this, though: it's pretty cool when Neo realizes what's going on, and goes on a rampage, destroying Matricies and "real world's" left and right. We finally get to see the full extent of his powers, and the special effects are pretty good.

So in the end, the Matrix movies are good for what they are: action films. However, when they try to be more than just simple action movies, they fail miserably. Oh well, I'm probably asking for too much anyway. But I still can't shake the feeling that movies by the Wachowski brothers will get worse before they get better, as evidenced by the trailer at the end of Revolutions for their next movie, a remake of the terrible 1981 film Enter the Ninja.

So in conclusion, I give the Matrix Trilogy two and a half gnomes out of a possible four.