I won't go as so far to say that The Matrix Revolutions is a bad movie. It's far from good, and fails to deliver as the mega-trilogy it could have been, but I won't call it bad. Revolutions is simply the final idea that the directors had in their minds, and they wanted to portray it. In portraying this image, it abandons the story and the characters that were built so well in the first movie. The Wachowski Bros. took the deep and meaningful plot from the original, and turned it into a comic book plot. They went back on things they had already said, and changed things to make the action sequences all powerful shows of force.
The dialogue does not match the first film at all, with the exception of scenes with Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). The dialogue in Revolutions is ultimately forgettable, unlike that found in the first movie, which you can still hear geeks quoting. One-liners, unless they're really, really good, won't last forever, and I've already forgotten the ones in Revolutions. The actors seem to have realized that their characters have been abandoned, and act likewise. Keanu Reeves is rigid as ever, and given his somewhat passable performance in the first one, I thought he might have grown better over the series. The same happens for Carrie-Ann Moss. The two leads of the movie are overshadowed by lesser characters. Of course, Hugo Weaving clings to Agent Smith with reckless abandon, as if he refuses to let such a good character go down with a sinking ship. If I could have had my way, he would have slaughtered every single character in the movie just so he wouldn't be trumped by some no-talent hack. There a few other good performances, those coming from Clayton Watson, a kid with great facial expressions, and Nathaniel Lees, who plays a battle-hardened soldier of Zion.
The action sequences are downright amazing. The Battle for Zion is just as intense the third time watching it as it was the first. The battle between Smith and Neo, while makes no sense at all, was probably inevitable. Do you remember in the first movie when Neo tried to jump off the building, but plummetted downwards instead? Morpheous then told him that if you die in the matrix, you would die in real life too. So why can Neo, or Smith for that matter, survive being pounded ten feet into the ground from a huge altitude? It makes no sense at all, but by this time we've started reading a comic book, so all the myths that the directors worked so hard to build up can be thrown right out the window.
As much as it pains me to say this, The Matrix trilogy is a failure. I've seen the ending three times, and I still have no definitive answer as to what happened or why. This should not be the case for any movie, especially one so high-profile as this. The first movie made me think about life, but the last two just have me reaching for the remote.
The Matrix- 10/10
The Matrix Reloaded- 6/10
The Matrix Revolutions- 7/10