Dude, I ve been to Zion. The New England Patriots play there. In 1987, I attended a Grateful Dead concert outside Boston, and everyone in this huge parking lot debated the coming of The One (his real name, Jerry), ate stir fry, took themselves too seriously, and argued the merits of eastern vs. western religions.

They also wore thin, tattered, stretched-out sweaters made of hemp, available in a wide variety of colors, including putty, cement, and gray. If that doesn t sound like Zion I don t know Zion. But I do know now that it is not worth saving, no matter how often Laurence Fishburne says Keanu Reeves will save it because only Keanu can deliver Zion from the evil robots.

Yes, yes, I know, evil robots who have enslaved all of humanity in a matrix, blah, blah, blah, a digital construct of reality pulled over your eyes to hide the fact that your actual body is being harvested for all sorts of nefarious purposes. As we speak, robots are putting you in compromising positions and taking pictures. Now, mankind makes its final stand against its cyber masters, and the end of the world could not be more unemotional or tedious.

The Matrix Revolutions is the Plan 9 from Outer Space of massive blockbusting spectacle moviemaking, and not just because it s pretty dreadful and anticlimactic. It s a distinctive, ambitious kind of bad, bad in ways other movies aren t bad and could never be bad. It s actually well-made, technically proficient; the visuals are eccentric, so artfully chaotic they verge on abstract. I liked a fistfight in midair between dueling neo-supermen as dark, piercing rain slaps against their faces; the centerpiece is the 20-odd minute attack on Zion in which enormous drills bore into a huge dome and the robot armada swarms through in thick black clouds, while the humans, with steel exoskeletons and big guns, fire away - it looks great.

But for all the art direction in the world - and quite possibly all the art direction in the world is actually on display - Revolutions comes off as soulless junk with a voice all its own.

Ed Wood, the director of Plan 9, that beloved bad movie to end all bad movies, worked fast and enthusiastically. He was more thrilled that the film in his cameras actually developed than worried about what was on it, and he allowed his actors to speak in long dull lectures of such little consequence, his movies do not behave like other bad movies.

What s uniquely bad about the two Matrix sequels is they are not just big, numbing noise makers merely content to assault you with a barrage of big special effects. As with Reloaded, for the entire first hour of Revolutions, someone is always running off to meet with a cryptic gatekeeper who gives long speeches (this time about war and love, as opposed to free will and destiny). And the film moves at a smoother pace than its predecessor - if only because those talky scenes alternate with tedious battle sequences that start off spectacularly and quickly settle into been-there-seen-that mode.

Men stand over desks with their arms splayed forward and pretend to read monitors, in grand Star Trek tradition, then argue long and hard for the best route into the inner shell - no, not that way; that way is certain death, the outer circuit is the other way, and so on. The storytelling is arbitrary, sloppy. Each time you re certain of the rules, the logic changes. Suspense is nonexistent, despite a plot centering on the end of life as we know it; and the dialogue, spoken in a single tone of urgent whispering, is maddeningly elliptical.

Does this make sense to you? “Everyone knows the Oracle. I consulted with her before I saw the Frenchman.” Here s another: “Cookies need love, just like everything else.” And here s my favorite: “Tell me how I separated my mind from my body without jacking in.”

Would somebody please nuke Zion? Let the Sentinels have their way with the miserable place. Burn it down. This thing is just no fun anymore. The pulp thrills of the first film seem very far away now. I wish the Wachowski brothers, the writers-directors of The Matrix films, had tried something revolutionary and rethought from the ground up.

Because they know how to write a bad guy. When we last left Keanu, a.k.a. Neo, a.k.a. the One, he was in a coma. Agent Smith, his nemesis, was mere inches from murdering him. We pick up here. Smith has infiltrated Zion, and is now intent on not only destroying the last remnants of mankind but the Machines as well. So, hey, why not give the story over to Agent Smith, that smug, leering man in black with all the good lines?

What s to lose, beside all of humanity, so wooden in these pictures, I m not sure it s worth saving. The cast is an afterthought in this last film. And yet Agent Smith is played with such refreshingly nihilistic wit by Hugo Weaving you wonder if the actor is not actually poking fun at the solemnity of it all.

“It ends tonight,” Neo says.

“I know it does,” Smith answers. “I ve seen it.”

So have I. The Matrix was a revelation: a hybrid kung fu-sci-fi flick of ideas wrapped in black leather with balletic freeze-framed chop socky action, and the constant veneer of cool. But it s turned out the Wachowskis never had an especially deep bag of tricks to begin with. They re grabbing at some grand sense of a higher significance to fill the gaps, much the way George Lucas tossed the Ewoks into Return of the Jedi. No doubt there is a philosophical foundation to The Matrix trilogy. But whatever the Wachowskis have left to say, their storytelling has become so haphazard their points are opaque at best.

I suspect they know it, too.

At the end of Reloaded we re told Neo was actually one of many Ones, and Zion was a control created by the Machines, destroyed many times over; there is no way to stop its next destruction. Released this past May, hugely successful but not particularly liked, it clumsily set up the climax, and dramatically reduced expectations. So much so, this finale doesn t even bother to rectify those revelations in any satisfying way. The biggest revelation, it turns out, is how unimaginative The Matrix trilogy becomes, right down to the heavenly chorus on the soundtrack as you leave the theater. To quote the tagline for Revolutions: “Everything that has a beginning has an end.”

And none too soon.

On the upside?

No Ewoks.

First Published November 5, 2003, 3:04 a.m.