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Jacques Maritain (18 November 1882 – 28 April 1973) was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised as a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive St. Thomas Aquinas for modern times and is a prominent drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Pope Paul VI presented his "Message to Men of Thought and of Science" at the close of Vatican II to Maritain, his long-time friend and mentor. Maritain's interest and works spanned many aspects of philosophy, including aesthetics, political theory, the philosophy of science, metaphysics, education, liturgy and ecclesiology.

Life[link]

Maritain was born in Paris, the son of Paul Maritain, who was a lawyer, and his wife Geneviève Favre, the daughter of Jules Favre, and was reared in a liberal Protestant milieu. He was sent to the Lycée Henri-IV. Later, he attended the Sorbonne, studying the natural sciences; chemistry, biology and physics.

At the Sorbonne, he met Raïssa Oumançoff, a Russian Jewish émigré. They married in 1904. A noted poet and mystic, she participated as his intellectual partner in his search for truth. Raissa's sister, Vera Oumançoff, lived with Jacques and Raissa for almost all their married life.

At the Sorbonne, Jacques and Raïssa soon became disenchanted with scientism, which could not, in their view, address the larger existential issues of life. In 1901, in light of this disillusionment, they made a pact to commit suicide together if they could not discover some deeper meaning to life within a year. They were spared from following through on this because, at the urging of Charles Péguy, they attended the lectures of Henri Bergson at the Collège de France. Bergson's critique of scientism dissolved their intellectual despair and instilled in them "the sense of the absolute." Then, through the influence of Léon Bloy, they converted to the Roman Catholic faith in 1906.

In the fall of 1907 the Maritains moved to Heidelberg, where Jacques studied biology under Hans Driesch. Hans Driesch’s theory of neo-vitalism attracted Jacques because of its affinity with Henri Bergson. During this time, Raïssa fell ill, and during her convalescence, their spiritual advisor, a Dominican friar named Fr. Humbert Clérissac, introduced her to the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. She read them with enthusiasm and, in turn, exhorted her husband to examine the saint’s writings. In Thomas, Maritain found a number of insights and ideas that he had believed all along. He wrote:

"Thenceforth, in affirming to myself, without chicanery or diminution, the authentic value of the reality of our human instruments of knowledge, I was already a Thomist without knowing it…When several months later I came to the Summa Theologiae, I would construct no impediment to its luminous flood."

From the Angelic Doctor (the honorary title of St. Aquinas), he was led to "The Philosopher", as St. Thomas called Aristotle. Still later, to further his intellectual development, he read the neo-scholastics.

Beginning in 1912, Maritain taught at the Collège Stanislas. He later moved to the Institut Catholique de Paris. For the 1916–1917 academic year, he taught at the Petit Séminaire de Versailles. In 1933, he gave his first lectures in North America in Toronto at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. He also taught at Columbia University; at the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago; at the University of Notre Dame, and at Princeton University.

From 1945 to 1948, he was the French ambassador to the Vatican.

Afterwards, he returned to Princeton University where he achieved the "Elysian status" (as he put it) of a professor emeritus in 1956. Raissa Maritain died in 1960. After her death, Jacques published her journal under the title "Raissa's Journal." From 1961, Maritain lived with the Little Brothers of Jesus in Toulouse, France. He had had an influence on the order since its foundation in 1933. He became a Little Brother in 1970.

Learning of the death of his friend Maritain, Pope Paul VI cried.^{[citation needed]} Jacques and Raïssa Maritain are buried in the cemetery of Kolbsheim, a little French village where he had spent many summers at the estate of his friends, Antoinette and Alexander Grunelius.

A cause for beatification of him and his wife Raissa is being planned.^[1]

Work[link]

The foundation of Maritain’s thought is Aristotle, St. Thomas and the Thomistic commentators, especially John of St. Thomas. He is eclectic in his use of these sources. Maritain’s philosophy is one based, like his champions, on evidence of being first by the senses and second that which is acquired by an understanding of first principles (metaphysics). Fundamentally, Maritain is a metaphysician who defended philosophy as a science against those who would degrade it. He promoted philosophy as the queen of sciences.

In 1910, Jacques Maritain’s completed his first contribution to modern philosophy, a 28 page article titled, "Reason and Modern Science" published in Revue de Philosophie (June issue). In it, he warned that science was becoming a divinity, its methodology usurping the role of reason and philosophy. Science was supplanting the humanities in importance.

In 1917, a committee of French bishops commissioned Jacques to write a series of textbooks to be used in Catholic colleges and seminaries. He wrote and completed only one of these projects titled Elements de Philosophie (Introduction of Philosophy) in 1920. It has been a standard text ever since in many Catholic seminaries. He wrote in his introduction:

"If the philosophy of Aristotle, as revived and enriched by St. Thomas and his school, may rightly be called the Christian philosophy, both because the church is never weary of putting it forward as the only true philosophy and because it harmonizes perfectly with the truths of faith, nevertheless it is proposed here for the reader's acceptance not because it is Christian, but because it is demonstrably true. This agreement between a philosophic system founded by a pagan and the dogmas of revelation is no doubt an external sign, an extra-philosophic guarantee of its truth; but from its own rational evidence, that it derives its authority as a philosophy".

During World War II, Jacques Maritain protested the policies of the Vichy government while teaching at the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies in Canada. "Moving to New York, Maritain became deeply involved in rescue activities, seeking to bring persecuted and threatened academics, many of them Jews, to America. He was instrumental in founding the École Libre des Hautes Études, a kind of university in exile that was, at the same time, the center of Gaullist resistance in the United States". (1) After the war, he tried unsuccessfully to have the Pope speak on the issue of anti-semitism and the evils of the Holocaust.

Many of his American papers are held by the University of Notre Dame, which established The Jacques Maritain Center in 1957. The Cercle d'Etudes Jacques & Raïssa Maritain is an association founded by the philosopher himself in 1962 in Kolbsheim (near Strasbourg, France), where the couple is also buried. The purpose of these centers is to encourage study and research of Maritain’s thought and expand upon them. It is also absorbed in translating and editing his writings.

Metaphysics and epistemology[link]

Maritain's philosophy is based on the view that metaphysics is prior to epistemology. Being is first apprehended implicitly in sense experience, and is known in two ways. First, being is known reflexively by abstraction from sense experience. One experiences a particular being, e.g. a cup, a dog, etc. and through reflexion ("bending back") on the judgement, e.g. "this is a dog", one recognizes that the object in question is an existent. Second, in light of attaining being reflexively through apprehension of sense experience one may arrive at what Maritain calls "an Intuition of Being". For Maritian this is point of departure for metaphysics, without the intuition of being one cannot be a metaphysician at all. The intuition of being involves rising to the apprehension of ens secundum quod est ens (being insofar as it is a being). In Existence and the Existent he explains:

"It is being, attained or perceived at the summit of an abstractive intellection, of an eidetic or intensive visualization which owes its purity and power of illumination only to the fact that the intellect, one day, was stirred to its depths and trans-illuminated by the impact of the act of existing apprehended in things, and because it was quickened to the point of receiving this act, or hearkening to it, within itself, in the intelligible and super-intelligible integrity of the tone particular to it." (p. 20)

In view of this priority given to metaphysics, Maritain advocates an epistemology he calls "Critical Realism". Maritain's epistemology is not "critical" in Kant's sense, which held that one could only know anything after undertaking a thorough critique of one's cognitive abilities. Rather, it is critical in the sense that it is not a naive or non-philosophical realism, but one that is defended by way of reason. Against Kant's critical project Maritain argues that epistemology is reflexive; you can only defend a theory of knowledge in light of knowledge you have already attained. Consequently, the critical question is not the question of modern philosophy – how do we pass from what is perceived to what is. Rather, "Since the mind, from the very start, reveals itself as warranted in its certitude by things and measured by an esse independent of itself, how are we to judge if, how, on what conditions, and to what extent it is so both in principle and in the various moments of knowledge?"

In contrast idealism inevitably ends up in contradiction, since it does not recognize the universal scope of the first principles of identity, contradiction, and finality. These become merely laws of thought or language, but not of being, which opens the way to contradictions being instantiated in reality.

Maritain's metaphysics ascends from this account of being to a critique of the philosophical aspects of modern science, through analogy to an account of the existence and nature of God as it is known philosophically and through mystical experience.

Ethics[link]

Maritain was a strong defender of a natural law ethics. He viewed ethical norms as being rooted in human nature. For Maritain the natural law is known primarily, not through philosophical argument and demonstration, but rather through "Connaturality". Connatural knowledge is a kind of knowledge by acquaintance. We know the natural law through our direct acquaintance with it in our human experience. Of central importance, is Maritain's argument that natural rights are rooted in the natural law. This was key to his involvement in the drafting of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Political theory[link]

Maritain advocated what he called "Integral Humanism." He argued that secular forms of humanism were inevitably anti-human in that they refused to recognize the whole person. Once the spiritual dimension of human nature is rejected, we no longer have an integral, but merely partial, humanism, one which rejects a fundamental aspect of the human person. Accordingly in Integral Humanism he explores the prospects for a new Christendom, rooted in his philosophical pluralism, in order to find ways Christianity could inform political discourse and policy in a pluralistic age. In this account he develops a theory of cooperation, to show how people of different intellectual positions can nevertheless cooperate to achieve common practical aims. Maritain's political theory was extremely influential, and was a primary source behind the Christian Democratic movement.

Maritain also corresponded with the revolutionary community organizer Saul Alinsky^[2] and French Prime Minister Robert Schuman.^[3]

Criticism[link]

In 1959 the Thomist philosopher Étienne Gilson reported Fr. Carlo Balić's criticism of Maritain's "Integral Humanism," who said:

Jacques Maritain is considered a heretic. He would have already been condemned—on the twofold ground of progressismus [progressivism] and laicismus [laicism]—were it not that he had been French ambassador to the Holy See.... He will not be condemned ... never! Still progressivism and laicism are heretical. Integral Humanism is a dangerous book.^[3]

Sayings[link]

• "Vae mihi si non Thomistizavero" [Woe to me if I do not Thomistize].^[4]
• "Je n’adore que Dieu" [I adore only God].
• "The artist pours out his creative spirit into a work; the philosopher measures his knowing spirit by the real."
• "I do not know if Saul Alinsky knows God. But I assure you that God knows Saul Alinsky."
• "We do not need a truth to serve us, we need a truth that we can serve"

See also[link]

• Personalism
• John F. X. Knasas
• Our Lady of La Salette

References[link]

• G. B. Phelan, Jacques Maritain, NY, 1937.
• J.W. Evans in Catholic Encyclopaedia Vol XVI Supplement 1967–1974.
• Michael R. Marrus, "The Ambassador & The Pope; Pius XII, Jacques Maritain & the Jews", Commonweal, Oct. 22, 2004
• H. Bars, Maritain en notre temps, Paris, 1959.
• D. and I. Gallagher, The Achievement of Jacques and Raïssa Maritain: A Bibliography, 1906–1961, NY, 1962.
• J. W. Evans, ed., Jacques Maritain: The Man and His Achievement, NY, 1963.
• C. A. Fecher, The Philosophy of Jacques Maritain, Westminster, MD, 1963.

Writings[link]

I. (His most important and influential works.)[link]

• The Degrees of Knowledge, orig. 1932
• Integral Humanism, orig. 1936
• A Preface to Metaphysics, engl. 1962
• Education at the Crossroads, engl. 1942
• The Range of Reason, engl. 1952
• The Person and the Common Good, fr. 1947
• Approaches to God, fr. 1953
• Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, engl. 1953
• Moral Philosophy,
• Introduction to Philosophy, Christian Classics, Inc., Westminster, MD, 1st. 1930, 1991.
• Existence and the Existent, (fr. 1947) trans. by Lewis Galantiere and Gerald B. Phelan, Image Books division of Doubleday & Co., Inc., Garden City, NY, 1948, Image book, 1956. ISBN 978-0-8371-8078-6
• Man and The State, (orig.) University of Chicago Press, Chicago, ILL, 1951.
• The Peasant of the Garonne, An Old Layman Questions Himself about the Present Time, trans. Michael Cuddihy and Elizabeth Hughes, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, NY, 1968; orig. 1966.
• God and the Permission of Evil, trans. Joseph W. Evans, The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, WI, 1966 (orig. 1963).
• Art and Scholasticism with other essays, Sheed and Ward, London, 1947

II. (original)[link]

• La philosophie bergsonienne, 1914 (1948)
• Eléments de philosophie, 2 volumes, Paris 1920/23
• Art et scolastique, 1920
• Théonas ou les entretiens d’un sage et de deux philosophes sur diverses matières inégalement actuelles, Paris, Nouvelle librairie nationale, 1921
• Antimoderne, Paris, Édition de la Revue des Jeunes, 1922
• Réflexions sur l’intelligence et sur sa vie propre, Paris, Nouvelle librairie nationale, 1924.
• Trois réformateurs : Luther, Descartes, Rousseau, avec six portraits, Paris [Plon], 1925
• Réponse à Jean Cocteau, 1926
• Une opinion sur Charles Maurras et le devoir des catholiques, Paris [Plon], 1926
• Primauté du spirituel, 1927
• Pourquoi Rome a parlé (coll.), Paris, Spes, 1927
• Quelques pages sur Léon Bloy, Paris 1927
• Clairvoyance de Rome (coll.), Paris, Spes, 1929
• Le docteur angélique, Paris, Paul Hartmann, 1929
• Religion et culture, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1930 (1946)
• Le thomisme et la civilisation, 1932
• Distinguer pour unir ou Les degrés du savoir, Paris 1932
• Le songe de Descartes, Suivi de quelques essais, Paris 1932
• De la philosophie chrétienne, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1933
• Du régime temporel et de la liberté, Paris, DDB, 1933
• Sept leçons sur l'être et les premiers principes de la raison spéculative, Paris 1934
• Frontières de la poésie et autres essais, Paris 1935
• La philosophie de la nature, Essai critique sur ses frontières et son objet, Paris 1935 (1948)
• Lettre sur l’indépendance, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1935.
• Science et sagesse, Paris 1935
• Humanisme intégral. Problèmes temporels et spirituels d'une nouvelle chrétienté; zunächst spanisch 1935), Paris (Fernand Aubier), 1936 (1947)
• Les Juifs parmi les nations, Paris, Cerf, 1938
• Questions de conscience : essais et allocutions, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1938
• La personne humaine et la societé, Paris 1939
• Le crépuscule de la civilisation, Paris, Éd. Les Nouvelles Lettres, 1939
• Quattre essais sur l'ésprit dans sa crudition charnelle, Paris 1939 (1956)
• De la justice politique, Notes sur le présente guerre, Paris 1940
• Scholasticism and politics, New York 1940
• A travers le désastre, New York 1941 (1946)
• Conféssion de foi, New York 1941
• Ransoming the time (Redeeming the time), New York 1941
• La pensée de St.Paul, New York 1941 (Paris 1947)
• Les Droits de l'Homme et la Loi naturelle, New York 1942 (Paris 1947)
• Saint Thomas and the problem of evil, Milwaukee 1942;
• Essays in Thomism, New York 1942;
• Christianisme et démocratie, New York 1943 (Paris 1945)
• Education at the crossroad, New Haven 1943
• Principes d'une politique humaniste, New York 1944 (Paris 1945);
• De Bergson à Thomas d'Aquin, Essais de Métaphysique et de Morale, New York 1944 (Paris 1947)
• A travers la victoire, Paris 1945;
• Messages 1941-1944, New York 1945;
• Pour la justice, Articles et discours 1940-1945, New York 1945;
• Le sort de l'homme, Neuchâtel 1945;
• Court traité de l'existence et de l'existent, Paris 1947;
• La personne et le bien commun, Paris 1947;
• Raison et raisons, Essais détachés, Paris 1948
• La signification de l'athéisme contemporain, Paris 1949
• Man and state, Chicago 1951
• Neuf leçons sur les notions premières de la philosophie morale, Paris 1951
• Approches de Dieu, Paris 1953.
• L'Homme et l'Etat (engl.: Man and State, 1951) Paris, PUF, 1953
• Creative intuition in Art and Poetry (engl.), 1953
• On the philosophy of history, ed. J.W. Evans, New York 1957
• Truth and human fellowship, Princeton 1957
• Reflections on America, New York 1958
• Pour une philosophie de l'éducation, Paris 1959
• Le philosophe dans la Cité, Paris 1960
• The responsibility of the artist, New York 1960;
• La philosophie morale, Vol. I: Examen historique et critique des grands systèmes, Paris 1960
• Man's approach to God, Latrobe/Pennsylvania 1960
• On the use of philosophy, Princeton 1961
• A preface to metaphysics, New York 1962
• Dieu et la permission du mal, 1963
• Carnet de notes, Paris, DDB, 1965
• L'intuition créatrice dans l'art et dans la poésie, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1966 (engl. 1953)
• Le paysan de la Garonne. Un vieux laïc s’interroge à propos du temps présent, Paris, DDB, 1966
• Challenges and renewals, ed. J.W. Evans/L.R. Ward, Notre Dame/Ind. 1966
• The education of man, The educational philosophy of J.M., ed. D./I. Gallagher, Notre Dame/Ind. 1967
• De la grâce et de l'humanité de Jésus, 1967
• De l'Église du Christ. La personne de l'église et son personnel, Paris 1970
• Approches sans entraves, posthum 1973.

• Oeuvres complètes de Jacques et Raissa Maritain, 16 Bde., 1982-1999.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jacques Maritain

• Études maritainiennes-Maritain Studies
• Maritain Center, Kolbsheim (in French)
• Cercle d'Etudes J. & R. Maritain at Kolbsheim (France).
• Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Jacques Maritain by William Sweet.
• International Jacques Maritain Institute.
• Bibliography of the primary and secondary literatures on Jacques Maritain.
• Works by or about Jacques Maritain in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

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The Matrix Revolutions is a 2003 American science fiction action film and the third installment of The Matrix trilogy. The film was released six months following The Matrix Reloaded. The film was written and directed by the Wachowski brothers and released simultaneously in 60 countries on November 5, 2003. Despite the fact that it is the final film in the series, the Matrix storyline continued in The Matrix Online.

The film was the second live-action film to be released in both regular and IMAX movie theaters at the same time.

Plot[link]

After the events of The Matrix Reloaded, Bane and Neo are unconscious. Neo's neural patterns suggest he is in the Matrix. Neo finds himself trapped in a subway station, a transition zone between the Matrix and the machine world. Neo meets a "family" of programs, including a girl named Sati, whose father tells Neo the subway is controlled by The Trainman, an exile loyal to the Merovingian. When Neo tries boarding a train with the family, the Trainman refuses to let him aboard and punches Neo into a wall.

Seraph contacts Morpheus on behalf of the Oracle. The Oracle informs Morpheus and Trinity of Neo's confinement. Seraph, Morpheus and Trinity enter Club Hel to persuade the Merovingian to release Neo. The Merovingian demands "the eyes of the Oracle" in exchange for Neo's release. Trinity provokes a Mexican standoff, forcing the Merovingian to release Neo.

Troubled by visions of the Machine City, Neo visits the Oracle. She characterizes Smith as Neo's exact opposite and negative, who threatens to destroy the Matrix and the Machine City. She states that "everything that has a beginning has an end", and that the war is about to end. After Neo leaves, a large group of Smiths assimilate Sati, Seraph and the unresisting Oracle, gaining her powers of precognition. This also has the effect of destabilizing the Matrix.

In the real world, the remaining crew of the Nebuchadnezzar and the Mjolnir ("Hammer") find Niobe's ship, the Logos and reactivate it. They also interrogate the now-awakened Bane, who claims he has no memory of the events of the earlier battle. As the captains plan to return to defend Zion, Neo announces that he needs a ship to travel to the Machine City. The captain of the Hammer refuses, but motivated by her meeting with the Oracle, Niobe offers Neo the Logos.

Niobe pilots the Hammer through service tunnels in order to avoid the Sentinel army. They discover that Bane has murdered a crew member and presumably hidden aboard the Logos, but are unable to warn Trinity and Neo since Bane would have control of an EMP and disable both of their ships. Bane ambushes Trinity, taking her hostage. Neo fights Bane and to his horror, realizes he is Smith. Smith blinds Neo by cauterizing his eyes with a power cable. Despite his blindness, Neo sees the glowing form of Smith and kills him. Trinity pilots them to the Machine City.

In Zion, the defenders deploy Armored Personnel Units tasked with fighting the Sentinels and infantry armed with rocket launchers to destroy the two drilling machines. Zee (Nona Gaye) and her partner manage to take down one of the drills, but the APUs are unable to hold the docks and Captain Mifune is fatally wounded. Mifune tells the Kid (Clayton Watson), who has been rearming Mifune's APU, to open the gate for the Hammer. Kid pilots the APU and opens the gate. The Sentinels are on the verge of overwhelming the humans when the Hammer arrives at Zion and discharges its EMP, disabling the Sentinels but also the remaining defenses. The humans are forced to retreat to the temple's entrance and wait for the next attack, which they believe will be their last stand.

Neo and Trinity are attacked by the Machine City's defenses. Neo uses his powers to destroy the incoming weapons, but Sentinels overwhelm the ship. Neo tells Trinity to fly the Logos into an electrical storm cloud, disabling the Sentinels but also the ship's engines. Trinity sees sunlight and blue sky for the first time before the ship free-falls into the Machine City. Trinity fails to restart the ship in time and it collides with a tower, the impact causing several pieces of the tower to pierce the ship, killing Trinity.

Neo enters the Machine City to bargain with the Machines and their leader, the Deus Ex Machina. Neo warns that Smith is beyond the Machines' control and will assault the Source. He offers to stop Smith in exchange for peace with Zion. The Machines agree, and order the Sentinels to standby. The Machines provide a connection for Neo to enter the Matrix. In the Matrix, now wholly populated by Smith's copies and in a constant thunderstorm, the clone with the Oracle's powers steps forth, claiming that he has foreseen his victory.

The Smith clones watch while Neo and Smith fight, and as Smith now possesses the power of flight, their battle eventually takes them into the sky, where Smith forcibly drives Neo into a crater. Neo is outmatched but refuses to give up. Seeing Neo's determination, a frustrated Smith continues attacking, but when he repeats the Oracle's words, "Everything that has a beginning has an end", Neo realizes the meaning behind the words and baits Smith into assimilating him. Since The Matrix was built on balance, with Neo gone, The Smiths cause an imbalance to the system which in turn must destroy them. An energy surge is sent through the connection. The Neo-Smith and the clones burst into light that ripples through the Matrix. After the energy burst, the Oracle's body is shown lying in the crater. In the real world, the Sentinels withdraw from Zion. Neo has sacrificed his life to save the Machines and the humans. The Deus Ex Machina says, "It is done", and Neo's body is carried away by the Machines.

The Matrix "reboots", repairing the damage caused by Neo and Smith's battle. Niobe and Morpheus embrace, with Morpheus's last line being, "Is this real?" The Architect and the Oracle meet, agreeing that the peace will last "as long as it can" and all the humans who wish to be free from the Matrix will be allowed to leave. Sati, who has created a colorful dawn sky to honor Neo, asks the Oracle whether they will ever see him again. She replies that she thinks they will. Seraph asks the Oracle if she knew this would happen, and she replies that she did not know, but she believed.

Cast[link]

• Keanu Reeves as Neo
• Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus
• Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity
• Hugo Weaving as Smith
• Nathaniel Lees as Captain Mifune
• Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe
• Harry J. Lennix as Commander Lock
• Harold Perrineau as Link
• Mary Alice as The Oracle
• Helmut Bakaitis as The Architect
• Lambert Wilson as The Merovingian
• Monica Bellucci as Persephone
• Tanveer K. Atwal as Sati
• Collin Chou as Seraph
• Nona Gaye as Zee
• Ian Bliss as Bane
• Gina Torres as Cas
• Cornel West as Councillor West
• Bernard White as Rama-Kandra
• Anthony Wong as Ghost
• Anthony Zerbe as Councillor Hamann
• Bruce Spence as Trainman
• Tharini Mudaliar as Kamala
• Maurice J. Morgan as Tower Soldier

Actress Gloria Foster, who played the Oracle in the first and second films, died before the completion of her filming for the third.^{[citation needed]} She was replaced by actress Mary Alice. Her changed appearance is addressed in the film's plot, and the directors stated they had coincidentally explored such a change early in the script's development.^{[citation needed]}

Production[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Filming occurred concurrently with its predecessor, The Matrix Reloaded, and live-action sequences for the video game Enter the Matrix. This took place primarily at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia.

Sound design[link]

Sound editing on The Matrix trilogy was completed by Danetracks in West Hollywood, California.

Soundtrack[link]

In contrast to the movie's predecessors, very few "source" tracks are used in the movie. Aside from Don Davis' score, again collaborating with Juno Reactor, only one external track (by Pale 3) is used.

Although Davis rarely focuses on strong melodies, familiar leitmotifs from earlier in the series reappear. For example, Neo and Trinity's love theme—which briefly surfaces in the two preceding movies—is finally fully expanded into "Trinity Definitely"; the theme from the Zion docks in Reloaded returns as "Men in Metal", and the energetic drumming from the Reloaded tea house fight between Neo and Seraph opens "Tetsujin", as Seraph, Trinity and Morpheus fight off Club Hel's three doormen.

The climactic battle theme, named "Neodämmerung" (in reference to Wagner's Götterdämmerung), features a choir singing extracts (shlokas) from the Upanishads. The chorus can be roughly translated from Sanskrit as follows: "lead us from untruth to truth, lead us from darkness to light, lead us from death to immortality, peace peace peace". The extracts were brought to Davis by the Wachowski brothers when he informed them that it would be wasteful for such a large choir to be singing simple "ooh"s and "aah"s (according to the DVD commentary, Davis felt that the dramatic impact of the piece would be lost if the choir was to sing 'This is the one, see what he can do' in plain English). These extracts return in the denouement of the movie, and in Navras, the track that plays over the closing credits (which may be considered a loose remix of "Neodämmerung").

Reception[link]

The film's budget is an estimated US$110 million,^[1] grossing over $139 million in North America and approximately $427 million worldwide,^[2] roughly half of The Matrix Reloaded box-office total. The Matrix Revolutions was released on DVD and VHS on April 6, 2004. The film grossed $116 million in DVD sales.

The film received generally negative reviews from film critics. The Matrix Revolutions received a score of 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, a movie review aggregation site (with a score of 27% when filtered to include only Top critics).^[3] The film's average critic score on Metacritic is 47/100.^[4]

The Matrix Revolutions grossed $83.8 million within its first five days of being released in North America.^[5]

The film was criticized for being anticlimactic.^[6][7] Additionally, some critics regard the movie as less philosophically ambiguous than its predecessor, The Matrix Reloaded.^[8][9] Critics had difficulty finding closure pertaining to events from The Matrix Reloaded, and were generally dissatisfied.^[10][11] The film's earnings dropped 66% during the second week after its release to theaters.^[5]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Matrix Revolutions

• The Matrix Revolutions at the Internet Movie Database
• The Matrix Revolutions at Box Office Mojo
• The Matrix Revolutions at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Matrix Revolutions Explained – a comparative-literature-style exegesis of selected parts of Matrix Revolutions.
• Lyrics to Neodammerung, including translation
• Understanding The Matrix Revolutions – A comparative guide to possible meaning and interpretations of The Matrix Revolutions
• The Matrix Revolution October 27, 2000 draft script by Andy & Larry Wachowski