The Scene: The final battle between Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) in the concluding chapter of The Matrix trilogy. After an epic, awesome fistfight in the rain, the fight gets progressively sillier, as Neo and Smith start brawling in mid-air like Dragonball Z characters, and after a lengthy slug-fest, Neo finally manages to defeat Smith with a little trickery. Why It's Unnecessary: Now, nobody can really argue that a Neo-Smith showdown isn't necessary, because it certainly is for the sake of plot resolution, but did the fight really need to be so damn bombastic and over-the-top? The fifteen-minute final fight cost a record-breaking $40 million alone, which is almost two-thirds of the entire budget of the original Matrix movie. What did we get for that money? Some admittedly decent fighting, but mostly just cheesy visual effects that made us feel like we were playing a bad video game rather than watching an awesome movie. The finale definitely needed a lot of money pumped into it, but for $40 million, we expected a lot more than what we got. This is just another reason why the book-ending Matrix chapter was a colossal disappointment: the scene is wild and over-the-top, and placed inside a relatively boring movie that never really finds its footing. It is a total misfire. Which flamboyant movie scenes proved distracting to you in an otherwise terrible film? Let us know in the comments!
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
