The Wachowskis pulled a Phantom Menace

Rating: Null/10 (19 May 2003)

It was like a videogame. Scott Kurtz hit it dead on when it said its basically: intro, fightscene, cutscene, fightscene, cutscene, fightscene, cutscene, carchase, cutscene, ugh.
Neo in this was just... I can say "Imagine Luke Skywalker in a movie right after Return Of The Jedi, but as whiney as he was in the 1977 Star Wars" and that's about it.
Unlike X2, T2, Godfather 2, Two Towers, Back To The Future II, or any other middle film, Reloaded simply can not be enjoyed on its own. You NEED to have seen the first, there's nothing to remind you of what is what, and it ends forcing you to see the third to get any semblance of a satisfactory conclusion.
And don't even get me started on the porn rave at the beginning. Talk about not following up your opening with anything interesting. I was hopeful that because they were getting the lovescene done so early that it would allow the rest to be unimpeeded, but alas...
Essentially, the characters don't understand what's going on until 2 hours in. They are told this numerous times. They admit to this. Yet still do it unquestioningly. Naturally, the audience is even MORE lost. This is bad filmmaking.
Phantom Menace has some cool bits that are DEFINITELY worth rewatching, but on the whole was bad. Matrix Reloaded is the same. Essentially Revolutions will pick up and be the movie Reloaded should have been from what I can tell so far, which is just bad storytelling too.
Oh yeah. The core themes were blunt as hell, but themes do not make a plot. The fanboys saying "You need to see Revolutions too" don't understand... this film simply cannot stand on its own two legs, which hampers it indefinitely. Is it meant to? Not entirely, but neither was Two Towers and it did it without problem.
Oh yeah, CGI, the bane of movies lately... flailing characters that move too fluidly and effects that could have been a simple bluesceen wireshot done with CGI. The Wachowskis went from having a smaller budget an having to maximize it, to all the money they needed and spent too much I think.
It is a shame that the success they had on the first one was the downfall of the second.
Essentially, the Wachowskis pulled a Phantom Menace.