Jonathan V. Last, online editor

THE INITIAL IMPULSE is to declare that "The Matrix: Revolutions" does for "The Matrix" what "Return of the Jedi" did for "Star Wars." That isn't, however, entirely fair. It would be more accurate to compare "Revolutions" with "Attack of the Clones." After all, while "Jedi" might have cast aspersions on the worth of the original "Star Wars," it was "Attack of the Clones" which finally bulldozed the original trilogy's legacy.

"Revolutions" eats all of the goodwill built up by "The Matrix," and then some. It isn't just bad moviemaking--it's a bizarrely self-destructive film.

"REVOLUTIONS" picks up exactly where Reloaded left off last May, with Neo and Bane (the humanized Agent Smith) in comas and an army of machines hours away from breaching the walls of the last human city, Zion. Only Neo, it turns out, isn't actually in a coma. He's locked up in a nether region of the matrix through some sort of wi-fi connection.

It falls to Trinity and Morpheus to rescue him, which they do by way of visiting the Merovingian, the rogue French program who runs the matrix underworld. After a brief encounter, the Merovingian--easily the most interesting and entertaining character in the series--exits, stage left, never to be seen again. This disappearance is the first in a series of abandoned subplots, themes, and physical laws which the first two movies went to great pains to lay out.

Neo and Trinity resolve to take one ship and go to the machine city while Morpheus and his compatriots take the other ship and head back to Zion to join the fight. While this decision is being made, the now-conscious Bane, whom all parties suspect of being a dangerous traitor, has been left alone, unshackled, in a room full of scalpels, with the ship's doctor. It was at this juncture that I began quietly rooting for the machines.

There's no need to spoil the drudgery, so: There follows a 25-minute battle sequence which will surely delight fans of MechWarrior; a final showdown between Neo and Agent Smith; and an ending which doesn't so much avoid answering the big questions posed by the first two films, as pretend that said questions never existed.

THE PROBLEMS with "Revolutions" are manifold. On the most basic level, the film contains nothing new visually; indeed, on this score it's a step backward from "Reloaded." Another, structural, problem is that "Revolutions" has very little of the matrix.

From the beginning, these movies have tended to lose altitude during scenes set in "the real world." It isn't just that the action inside the matrix is more captivating than action in the real world--everything is better. The wardrobe, the color palette, the dialogue, the line delivery. Inside the matrix, people talk in interesting ways and say unexpected things. In the real world they spout movie banalities like, "Damn, she's a great pilot!" "Revolutions" dips into the matrix only a few times, and grudgingly at that.

But these are quibbles. What makes "Revolutions" destructive instead of merely stupid is the way it repeatedly violates the series' internal logic. For instance: