Matrix Rejected

Rating: 1/10 (5 June 2003)

After so much hype and build up surrounding the sequel to The Matrix, it was always going to be difficult to live up to.
The Matrix was a ground breaking film in so many ways; it was a science fiction film that didn't have to lower itself to meaningless technobabble in an attempt to look futuristic, it had fantastic art direction, it treated the audience with respect, and to top it all, it also had great characters you could empathise with. The effects of the original were awesome. They managed to seamlessly integrate the CG shots into the live action without distracting the audience or diverting from the story. In many ways, it was the new Star Wars.
Now take The Matrix, remove all those good points, and what you are left with is Matrix Reloaded. Once again Hollywood and it's over-eager search for sure fire money spinning blockbusters strikes again. If men are supposed to always think with what's beneath their waistline, then Hollywood surely does, except here we're talking about their wallet.
The main problem with MR is that the story telling has all but disappeared. What we have been left with is a blend of uninspiring opaque dialog, mixed with contrived action sequences. It left me thinking that there really was no story line at all. There was of course, but it was just well hidden. Instead, the focus of MR was split. Firstly, it attempted to increase the mysticism factor by using language in such a way that film geeks all over the world will be reading meaning into phrases that were never intended to mean anything at all. In many ways this resembles a new religion, except here people are reading from a film, not the Bible or the Holy Qur'an. Secondly, MR tried to outdo the first film in terms of the scale of the effects, without asking a) should we, and b) will it look any good. The answer to both being no.
Producers and studios now seem to regard the new crowd puller as special effects. Effects movies are larger than life when done well, and provide the spectacle that everyone loves to see when they go to the movies. But effects alone are insufficient to make a good film, as George Lucus only now seems to be learning.
The scene where Neo is fighting a crowd of Agent Smiths was undoubtedly one of the most ambitious effects shots to date. The sheer logistics of coordinating that scene must have been frightening. The problem, apart from being too long, was that it was obviously CG. The rendering of Neo was so poor it reminded me of that awful kite surfing sequence in Die Another Day. The camera movements were so erratic and overengineered that it forgot the number one rule of special effects; to look convincing, always try to mimic a real world camera rig. David Fincher loves to use CG camera moves (see Fight Club, Panic Room), and you rarely notice when he does, because he sticks to moves that the audience have seen before and are confortable with. MR's camera moves for this sequence were straight from a games console, overdone and over worked.
A major bone of contention amongst members of internet forums talking about MR, is how consistent the films 'rules' are from film to film. For example, in the original Matrix, Morpheus is unable to beat agents in a fight. In the sequel however, he seems to be much more adept at kicking agent butt. Of course, since this is a fictional world, you can usually find a way to explain this, but it nevertheless leaves fans feeling cheated. Other examples; why didn't Neo 'jump' into any agents to kill them, like he (supposedly) did to Agent Smith in the first film? Why? Because that would have spoilt the plot. Why didn't Neo run away from all those Agent Smiths earlier? Because that would have shortened the fight and meant less special effects. Similarly, later on in the movie, he could have easily killed the bad guys at the beginning of a fight, but he decided to string it out. So do we believe that Neo's got a sadistic streak - or did the producers just want a longer sequence, hmmm...
If the Matrix Reloaded were itself a computer program, you could write it in three lines:

1) Action sequence
2) Technobabble
3) Repeat until run out of money.