Highlander 2 all over again; a terrible movie

Rating: 1/10 (3 June 2003)

When the Matrix 2 was announced, many years before it was actually finished, everyone seemed really excited. I did not understand why. It seems that every few years everyone together forgets the first rule of film-making: `If the 1st movie was great and a hit, it is followed by a terrible sequel'. Highlander 2 is the prime example of this, as it tastelessly tore apart the first installment of the trilogy (ignoring Endgame here).
Now this film fulfilled my expectancy in being really bad, but it overshot that target. The first film wasn't as brilliant as most people claim it to be, but this one was terrible. Maybe if I was capable of turning off my higher brain functions I would've enjoyed it, but try as I might, I couldn't. The problems of the Matrix are many, and to view them best would be to look at them systematically; I shall discuss several points, from easy to hard; the special effects, the dialogue, the acting, the plot holes in both movies and the originality of this work (and it's philosophies).
The special effects were great, from a very basic point of view. Once you start to look closely, you notice how this movie is more a glorified video game than a piece of cinema. The CGI imaging is thrown smack in your face. None of the subtle camera-tricks of the Matrix 1 could be found anywhere.
I mean, be honest, how much CGI effects were there in the first Matrix? Next-to-none. I'll admit the CGI was necessary in some of the scenes of the Matrix Reloaded, but they were made without any care or love, just slapped on the movie. At times the faces and clothing look so unrealistic that it becomes more of a joke than an effect.
The dialogue all through the movie might've been one of the biggest flaws. The biggest speeches and monologues of the film are tasteless at best, and usually just circle around the point to express it in such a meandering way that half the audience won't get it. There are three key speeches in the film, one of them about freedom and not being afraid, two of them being about fatalism. Those last two fall short of even explaining the concept of fatalism (and the first one is completely pointless), despite a handily taped in Neo going `Whoa, you mean...' every now again, for the real dunces.
The acting...well, actually, I won't discuss this point much. Carrie-Anne Moss is as bad as she is in the first movie, which is too say horrible. Keanu Reeves is his usual self and as such doesn't add or detract much from the movie. Fishburne is alright. Hugo Weaving stands above the rest as a shining beacon of light, and is the only one even worth mentioning. The acting of this movie made me glad the Academy never hands out awards for SF-movies.
The plot holes in both movies, though nobody ever realized this, are gaping huge. It's incredible how anybody with half a brain could watch this movie and not pick up on this. Take the whole concept of the Matrix in the first place; how do you get energy out of humans? There is no possible way to get more energy into humans than they have consumed through food beforehand? And food? How could the robots grow food for the humans without the sun? And haven't the robots ever heard of nuclear energy? Gee, maybe that'd work a bit better than the odd human battery. A computer program also pointed out to me how the whole idea of a programmed Matrix in which people die when being unplugged suddenly was ludicrous, but I'll not get into that.
Next point; anyone that paid attention at the first movie might've noticed how it ended with Neo being (or becoming) the One. You might also remember Morpheus saying that the One had the power to bend the Matrix to his will. If so, Neo has no need to fight with people, he can just kill them instantaneously. It's as simple as that, if he can freeze bullets in the air, then why not freeze Agent Smith? There are many small holes like these, but these two alone invalidate the entire plot, especially that of the second one.
The originality and philosophy of both movies left a lot of people sitting with gaping mouths. For instance, the whole idea that the world might not be real is original...right? Not at all, it goes back to, for example, Lewis Carroll's `Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and `Through the Looking-Glass'. In the second book, one of the twins Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-Dum, remarks `Do you think those are real tears?' when Alice is crying. While Carroll made his point a lot less subtle, the Matrixes just push it into your face. As for the idea of the world consisting of number, that was thought up some centuries before Christ by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras.
The Matrix 2 inserted another idea; the whole struggle of fatalism (cause-and-attempt theory; because everything is caused by something else, free choice doesn't exist) and the free-choice theory, which basically stems from anthropocentrism (i.e. everything is fixed, except human choice). You must be a social recluse with no schooling whatsoever never to have gotten in touch with either philosophies before, so this is not renewing. And I'm not even going into the way this awful film portrays the free-choice idea as ultimately good and fatalism as ultimately evil (and while fatalism might be, the directly-related determinism certainly isn't).
All-in-all, this is a definitive `stay away no matter what happens' film, and though I was willing to give the Wachowski Brothers a chance in this film, I now know there's no hope whatsoever for the Matrix 3. Hopefully, once the hype is completely over, people will come face-to-face with the fact that this is a terribly-made stupid action flick.