The Matrix Reloaded

I had my doubts going in, but I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I figured that, at the very least, I’d get some neat action scenes.

And that’s pretty much all I got.

I’ve never really bought that the Wachowskis always intended this to be a trilogy of movies. Sure, at SOME point during the initial planning stages, they MIGHT have come up with an idea for a trilogy, but I think it’s obvious that they wrote the first Matrix to be a self-contained film. It not only stands on its own plotwise — they give it a clean ending and the loose-ends are few and rather unimportant — but they also fully complete Keanu’s character arc.

To that end, going into Reloaded, I figured that in order for the story to work at all they had to do something rather radical, plotwise, to give us reason for watching the next two movies. Unfortunately, there was no twist — we’re on the same track set upon at the end of the first movie, more or less, all that’s changed is the window dressing.

It feels a bit like one of Rare’s N64 efforts where at some point the programming team panics and says “Shit, we need to make this game longer — let’s throw in a bunch of mini-quests and collectathon-type-things in order to make it last longer!” So we get Neo and company running about in search of keys and advice from NPCs when, really, we just want to see them get to the damn point.

So ultimately, The Matrix: Reloaded is an aimless, emotionless, wandering mess filled with some cool fight scenes that, like everything else in the movie, drag on too long. The Matrix universe, which was once so promising, has become a jumbled mess of pseudo-philosophy and inconsistencies. Like a bad FYP paper hacked out at 4 a.m., it plods along, attempting to sound important and intelligent, but ultimately it’s empty, uninspired, unoriginal hackery.

But yeah, some of the fight scenes are cool.