The Matrix Revolutions

by JD Wiker

[Webmaster's Note: Parts of JD's review to contain spoilers.]

Despite my personal policy of not viewing new movies on opening day (or even opening weekend)-my own small reminder to Hollywood that opening weekend returns don't mean squat if word-of-mouth causes the box office to plummet immediately afterward—I saw The Matrix: Revolutions the first night it showed here in Seattle. Hey, a friend was buying tickets, so I figured that if I wanted to see it with my friends, opening night was the time. It had nothing to do with me wanting to see the movie so badly that I couldn't wait, because that wasn't the case. If I'd had a game session scheduled for that night, I'd have gamed, instead.

So when I say that The Matrix Revolutions exceeded my expectations, it's probably only because my expectations were already pretty low. Despite how much I disliked The Matrix Reloaded, I found myself liking Revolutions. Why? In short, because Revolutions delivered the kind of visually stunning action sequences that I liked about the original Matrix—and almost none of the talky, pound-the-point-home philosophy of Reloaded.

Don't get me wrong: I like philosophy in movies. I like movies that make me think. If you step away from your computer after reading this and say "JD doesn't like movies that make him think," you'll be wrong. What I don't like is having thousand-year-old philosophical debates regurgitated at me as though they're something no one had ever thought of before—and then repeated, over and over again, so that the slow-on-the-uptake members of the audience can catch on, too.

So, there's my mental state going into The Matrix Revolutions. I was braced for ham-handed philosophy, and when I got, instead, the resolution of Smith-as-Bane, the final showdown between Neo and Smith, and the gloriously-rendered invasion of Zion, I was pleasantly surprised.

Of course, in retrospect, I found myself vaguely annoyed that Revolutions hadn't answered so many of the questions that Reloaded had raised. But I found myself greatly annoyed that Revolutions took Neo off the path of the hero to instead walk a slightly different path: that of "cleaner of his own messes."

Not answering the questions from Reloaded is forgivable. By the time Morpheus and Trinity (this time with Seraph) had their third meeting with the Merovingian, I honestly no longer cared who he was. Speculation on his origin had run rampant after Reloaded that maybe he was an earlier "One," and the Persephone was his Trinity. (I can understand that theory; it's a lot easier to grasp than the concept of rogue programs that manifest enough power to break free of the Matrix master computer to become party-hopping dilettantes.)

Similarly, I really didn't care any more how Smith was able to download his consciousness into a living being and persist outside the Matrix, though I was gratified beyond words that Revolutions didn't try to tell us that the "real world" wasn't just another layer of the Matrix, and I was tickled to death at how well actor Ian Bliss imitated the tone and inflection of Hugo Weaving's Agent Smith.

I even let it slide when the Oracle explained Neo's ability to manifest his powers outside the Matrix in one short phrase: "You're close to the source now." (Though I'll grant that there may have been more to the explanation that I might be forgetting.)

No, what really bugged me was that The Matrix put Neo on the path of the heroic journey (the path all heroes ultimately take, from obscurity to triumph, as described by Joseph Campbell), Reloaded took Neo into the inmost cave and saw him fail (because he chose to rescue Trinity instead of fulfilling his destiny)—which is still part of the heroic journey—but then, Revolutions took him back to the inmost cave (a different one, this time) for the final showdown that would fulfill his destiny, and he ends up, ultimately, accomplishing a zero sum. Sure, Neo defeats the Smith "virus," but that's not particularly heroic, because Neo is responsible for its creation. If he hadn't set Smith free from the Matrix in the original movie, there wouldn't have been a horde of Smith clones to deal with in the next two movies.

But even that can be overlooked if, in the end, his bargain with the machines allows him to set humanity free once and for all-to forever end the war between man and the machines. Instead, all he accomplishes is a cease-fire that, to Neo's credit, saves the current incarnation of Zion ("current incarnation of Zion" being another unanswered question), and the Matrix gets reset. No more Agent Smith-though there are still, presumably, Agents. The Oracle is still around. The Merovingian survived (according to the information about the forthcoming Matrix massively-multiplayer online roleplaying game). In fact, considering that the Matrix's own Colonel Sanders knock-off, the Architect, shows up and says, effectively, "Another round?" it seems likely that everyone and everything in the Matrix is pretty much back to status quo.

Status quo? Heroes undertake epic quests into the very heart of the enemy's stronghold to preserve the status quo? They sacrifice their lives so that the bulk of mankind is still enslaved? Does this mean that these three movies, effectively, never happened? Or are we now in a video-rental loop, in which we can watch all three movies, see the final sunrise over the Matrix, then pop out the DVD and pop in The Matrix, and tell ourselves that this Neo is the latest incarnation, out to rescue humanity once again? And do we do that, over and over, until we, too, realize that we have free will—and watch something better?

On the Plus Side

Now that I've got my bitching out of the way, what was it about the movie that makes me say that I liked it? That's easy: the action sequences. And not just any action sequences: the Battle of Zion.

Why did I like that scene so much? Certainly, it was visually very stunning, with "schools" of Sentinels swarming around the Zion docks, platoons of exo-skeletoned Zion troops (led by Captain Mifune, who, let's face it, has more leadership charisma than Morpheus; his "give 'em hell" speech beats Morpheus's "let's dance" speech all hollow), and the sheer courage of all of those missile-launcher teams-not to mention the ordnance crews. In fact, those people made Neo look bad; while he was contemplating how much free will he had, they were scurrying through access tunnels to take million-to-one shots at the machine drills, or breaking from cover to run into the heart of the fighting to reload the front-line troops.

That's the kind of stuff I like to see in big-budget action movies: ordinary people being heroes.

For a little further perspective on why they seem so heroic, consider this: Morpheus, Zion's near-legendary warrior of the first and second movie, has one fight scene in the third movie-not counting the scene where he, Trinity, and Seraph chase the Trainman—and spends the rest of Revolutions pushing buttons aboard the Hammer. Even when he reaches Zion, he never fires a shot. Trinity, the scariest lady alive, tops Morpheus by one fight-against Bane aboard the Logos. She actually ties with Neo, who spends a lot of his time "thinking about things."

Meanwhile, we get to see Zee and her missile-launcher teammate make a solemn bargain—"You keep loading, and I'll keep shooting"—and then fight more courageously and resourcefully than the movie's top-billed heroes. We get to see Kid waiting, terrified, behind a blast door mere feet from the Squiddy-overrun dock, for the order to push an ungainly trolley full of ammunition out to Captain Mifune—the last human combatant standing out on the dock itself. And then we get to see Kid take over when Mifune dies, risking his life just to open a door and let the Hammer come to Zion's rescue.

I love that kind of stuff in my movies!

And I love it even more when I can inject that sort of heroism into my games.

Reload!

As I watched the dock battle in The Matrix Reloaded, part of my multitasking brain was analyzing the action, the dialogue, the special effects, and so on, and evaluating how to capture some of that excitement and apply it to roleplaying. What I came up with was the impact of Captain Mifune's periodic cry of "Reload!" from the cockpit of his exo-skeleton. (I hesitate to call it an APU, as the film does, because that stands for "Armored Personnel Unit" and, let's face it, if the pilot is as exposed as these pilots are, it's not all that armored.)

Why do I like "Reload!" so much? I like it because it illustrates that the true hero isn't always the one with the highest body count, but the poor bastard who has to endure, essentially, the same conditions as the hero in order for the hero to continue functioning. This second character may be the loader on a gun crew, the driver of an APC, a shield-bearer, or even just a valet.

Now, how to simulate this in your roleplaying games? Well, as I mentioned in my review of The Matrix Reloaded, there are inevitably some heroes in any group who are, shall we say, less combat-oriented. Every group has the player who got "stuck" with the medic or technician, because the group needed one, and that character often has little to do except wait for someone to get hurt, or something to get broken. But what if that character could help by keeping a weapon's ammo feed clear? Or by running equipment or messages back and forth across the battlefield?

Certainly, on the surface, it sounds like "busy work." But take that first example, the example of the crew-served weapon. The character on the trigger may have a high enough Base Attack Bonus and all the right feats to be able to make multiple attacks every round, but if she has to feed ammo belts into the weapon herself, the GM could very easily rule that she loses a move action every round, effectively cutting her attacks down to one per round. And all it would take to rectify the situation is someone willing to spend a move action each round feeding ammo into the weapon.

The Matrix Revolutions' dock battle sequence presents two more complications to the process. Not only are the exo-skeletons' ammo bays located in the back of the unit—meaning the pilot would have to shut down the unit and climb out to reload his own guns—but the exo-skeletons are mobile, meaning they're liable to move out of easy reach of the person doing the reloading. Hence, the dock battle includes tense scenes of support personnel wheeling automated loading units out to beleaguered exo-skeletons, all the while looking out for the Squiddies that can't resist such easy targets out in the open.

Then there's the missile crews, where the facility of a loader is a little less obvious. The launchers are small enough that one crewperson can load both rounds fairly quickly, and since they rarely take more than one shot from the same location anyway, speed of reloading only comes into play every so often. On the other hand, encumbrance is a factor. The launcher is light enough that one person can still run while carrying it. But add in the weight of a half-dozen high-explosive guided missiles, and the primary benefit of these shoulder-mounted weapons, mobility, falls by the wayside.

The trick to such scenarios is that it's incumbent upon the GM to set up situations where control of the crew-served weapon is vital to the heroes' success, or where encumbrance actually makes a difference. And I'll be the first to admit that it's sometimes very easy to forget to complicate the combats just a bit (or, more likely, to forget to apply the penalties brought on by the complications), but when you do it subtly enough, you can force the characters into some heroic actions—even when it's against their better judgment!

Do or Die

On a somewhat more esoteric level, something I liked about The Matrix Revolutions was that some of the characters we met in The Matrix Reloaded finally gave us a reason to care what happened to them: They chose to sacrifice their lives to buy time for Zion's noncombatants to entrench themselves (even though there was every indication that doing so was just delaying the inevitable). In other words, characters like Zee and Kid, who were little better than cardboard characters the first time around, were faced with the choice of risking their lives or letting someone else take care of the problem, and they made the tougher choice.

Whenever I see that sort of thing in a movie, it always chokes me up a little. The original Star Wars is a great example: Luke Skywalker realizes that he and Wedge are the only two pilots still able to make the attack run down the Death Star trench, and you can see on his face as the realization sets in that he's no longer on the sidelines. All the more experienced pilots tried and died, and now it's his turn...and the odds are that he'll die, too. But you also see resolution set in, because Luke realizes that thousands of lives depend on him not only trying, but succeeding. For me, that's a stirring moment in the film.

Getting this sort of thing into roleplaying games can be a little difficult, though. Even when the GM spells out that the consequences of failure mean that lots of innocent lives will be lost, some players prefer to take the "Not my problem" stance. It's bad enough when one player says: "So what if Zion gets destroyed and the rest of humanity wiped out? I'm going to take my chances in the deep tunnels. If I'm really lucky, there'll be a female survivor or two, and we can repopulate the species." But when the entire group decides to "go fishing," the GM may have to face the possibility that he hasn't given the players enough of an emotional investment in doing the heroic thing.

Gamemasters can instill emotional investment by giving the players reasons to care about the people who are affected by the consequences of the heroes' actions. In The Matrix Revolutions, those people are the inhabitants of Zion, and as I mentioned in my review of The Matrix Reloaded, we initially had very little reason to care what happened to them. They gave us more reasons in Revolutions, but a lot of it happened "off-screen," in as far as the primary characters (Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, Link, Niobe, Ghost, and the rest of the crews) were concerned.

A trick that some GMs employ to get players to care about NPCs is to have the NPCs do the heroes a favor. Unfortunately, this can backfire in the clinch, because some players are just as happy not owing favors to any NPCs-and letting those NPCs die is a cruel but effective way of canceling the debt. Other GMs use narrative passages to illustrate that these people have lives, and how awful it would be for their innocence to be so callously violated by death and suffering. Unfortunately, it usually takes a lot of skill at writing such narratives passages before people feel emotional about them.

The best way I've found to get players to care about what happens to NPCs is to have the players help the NPCs in some small, inconsequential way-a rescue, for example. Then, when the NPC's life is threatened by some external force later, the player naturally thinks: "I saved him from that burning car—and now I'm just going to stand here while the bad guys execute him? I don't think so." This works because most people hate making wasted efforts, and rescuing someone who only gets killed later is an extremely visceral example of wasted effort. In an odd way, the player begins to feel responsible for the life of the NPC, and can be counted on to intervene, so long as it's within her power to do so.

Of course, you can't overdo it: One rescue from a burning car is worth one rescue from bad guys, but then, the player's emotional investment is back at zero again. The player might step in when the NPC is threatened again in the future, but she's just as likely to decide that a character who keeps bumbling into life-threatening situations is more of a hassle than he's worth. Keep tabs on how the player feels about the NPC, and when the emotional investment starts becoming an irritating obligation, write the NPC out of the story—permanently, if necessary.

Your Turn

What did you think of The Matrix Revolutions and JD's observations? Let us know in the Opinions section of our discussion boards.