The Matrix Reloaded

This is the really fast review of “The Matrix Reloaded,” released in 2003: One incredibly cool, gravity-resisting, CGI-helped, spinning-camera kung-fu fight; one jaw-dropping, 100 MPH, against-traffic freeway chase; and too much long-winded, expository, circular, self-important, pseudo-philosophical talk.

Rob Blackwelder stated in his review, “Writing-directing brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski saddle their cast with endless equivocal prattle while toiling to buttress the complex plot and metaphysical undertone of this picture's uber-stylish 1999 predecessor, which saw what we think is the real world exposed as an elaborate virtual reality prison for the minds of all humanity.” Mankind’s suspended bodies give a power source for a tribe of machines, which a small group of escapees want to destroy in the post-apocalyptic world outside the Matrix.

“We can never see past the choices we don’t understand,” wise but vague computer-prophet The Oracle says secretly to Neo, the computer-Messianic hero whose realization that physical laws don’t apply in the Matrix which was mentioned in the first film’s groundbreaking wire-work martial arts fights and bullet-dodging slow-motion stunts.

In another scene, Neo says to a slippery, French-accented villain, “You know why we’re here.” This man, played by Lambert Wilson, replies, “Yes, but do you? You think you do, but you do not.”

This type of boredom drags on for three to four minutes at a time, in scene after scene, throughout the movie – which comes to feel empty and meaningless in the end. Blackwelder admitted, “Sometimes it was all I could do to keep from going cross-eyed and zoning out.”

Even when this movie takes a break from all this sleepy talk, the Wachowskis give only two action scenes that are on the same level as the breathtaking standard made in the first movie. The first is when Neo (who can now “see” in flowing green computer code made into the tech world) fighting a countless amount of Agent Smith, the slippery responsive computer program in a Secret Service suit who was the first film’s antagonist and now has gone rouge inside the Matrix, like a virus.

Blackwelder mentioned, “The scene is choreographed and computer-enhanced within an inch of its highly-stylized life, with Neo knocking Smiths across courtyards and up several floors into the sides of adjacent buildings while the camera circles around him wildly, using the Wachowskis' trademark of speed-up-slow-down trick photography. This fight doesn't have the "wow" factor that such moments did in 1999, but it's the first time "Reloaded" really comes to life (even if it is inundated with a cheesy, over-orchestrated, metal-guitars-and-angel-choruses musical score).”

The second adrenaline-rushing action scene is the freeway chase that sees seriously spiritual leader Morpheus fighting another Agent (Daniel Bernhardt) on top of a speeding 18-wheeler while the eye-candy that looks super-hot in leather heroine Trinity outruns cops, Agents (David A. Kilde and Matt McColm) and the Frenchman’s henchmen (two indestructible, ghost-looking albino twins in white suits and dreadlocks (Neil and Adrian Rayment)) by speeding in and out of head-on traffic on a Ducati motorcycle. Along with its countless amazing slow-motion crashes and explosions, this scene is the movie’s only real showstopper.

A good amount of the story takes place in Zion, the deep-underground last fortress of mankind in the real world. Blackwelder said, “The place looks like a sci-fi version of a 1950s biblical epic -- complete with wide-eyed worshipers, women carrying bread baskets to lay at Neo's feet and men in military tunics, many of whom are doubters in the prophecy of Neo as their savior.” (One of the clichéd people says, “Morpheus, I don’t care about Oracles or prophecies or Messiahs! I only care about saving our city!”)

Zion is preparing for an attack by 250,000 sentinels (the scary, giant-squid-like robots from the first film) that are digging toward the city, and it looks like the only hope is for Neo to fulfill his destiny by sneaking through digital “back doors” in the Matrix program and attacking the system’s mainframe. Once he is there, he will have to face a complete surprise and what might look like an impossible choice – if only the scene didn’t have another five minutes of tedious, tightly packed dialogue.

Blackwelder is right when he says, “Often hard to follow (one character with less than four minutes of screen time turns out to be pivotal -- if you can remember what he looks like), "The Matrix Reloaded" is further burdened by the franchise's monotoned acting style, by atmospheric scenes that serve no purpose (Neo and Trinity make love during a Burning Man-styled rave in Zion) and by effects sequences that have so many layers of soft-focus CGI they look more like a videogame than a movie.”

Aside from that, is it worth actually watching for the action alone? For fans, yes but just barely. Blackwelder suggested at the time this was released, “But if you're anywhere near an IMAX theater, you might want to wait until June when the film will be released in large-format -- and mercifully 20 minutes shorter because IMAX projectors can only run films under two hours.” However, I would not recommend anyone to watch this movie at all because you will hate it so much and be bored by it easily. If you do, just watch it for the action.

If you do succumb to the torture of this film, be sure to fast forward through the unresolved ending and closing credits for a preview of the last in this trilogy, “The Matrix Revolutions.”

I saw this in the theaters when I was 13, after only seeing parts of the first movie. At the time, I liked it since, like Nostalgia Critic stated, this was a “No Holds Barred Movie” with being over-the top. My siblings didn’t like it, and after I saw the first movie the whole way through months later, I didn’t quite understand the horrendousness of this movie until I was older and thought about it more. I never saw the movie again, and watching the Nostalgia Critic’s review, I started to notice all the problems that people talked about with it. Except for those two action scenes, the rest of this movie is not even worth checking out with its long-winded, boring philosophical talks. Even though there were problems like that in the first film, at least that movie kept a central focus, unlike this one where all the problems that were in the first film just escalated more and more.

Before I get to the third in this “Shameful Trilogy that didn’t need to be made into a trilogy,” there is an animated movie that came out a month after this one that I would like to talk about. Is it any good compared to how good the first one was and how horrible this movie turned out to be? Find out next week in my continuation of “The Matrix Month.”