boe_dye sez: It was such a great concept, and then they ruin it with a sequel.

Rating: 6/10 (3 January 2009)

In the first Matrix, we were given riddles and hyperbolies, along with esoteric sight gags so to speak, as well as a bit of philosophical meanderings.
Coupled with Anime Style fight scenes and ground breaking cinematography, the original is in a class all its own.
...
Like all great movies, someone realizes that its a huge money maker and goes and ruins it by making it a franchise. A fast food, super sized, version of the original.
And like most of Hollywood, they figure that most people simply want to see epic fight scenes and explosions and car chases and oodles of mental masturbation supplied by the wonders of C.G.I.
Which really is what hurt this film the most. It tried too hard to be deep and philosophical. Yes, the names of the majority of characters lent some inspiration towards a philosophical dialogue, but in the end the whole movie was treated as a porn: "Okay, enough talking, let's just get to the action".
That really was what all of the dialogue and philosophy was in place for, at least in this particular film.
Instead we have a few moments of "wow that was really deep" in order to break the monotony of "wow that was a really cool explosion!".
Which ultimately is why this movie fails on so many levels. Sure you could look at it from the college academia nut stand point, build a whole belief system on it, and tell everyone how deep the movie was. And admittedly I do own "The Matrix and Philosophy", which is a real book by the way, but only to understand some of the more embedded sight gags.
However in the end, the movie made itself way too complicated by introducing the idea that there were more then one "Ones", and that Zion has been destroyed, and rebuilt "x" amount of times.
When all was said and done, one must wonder then what exactly was the point? Sure all of the philosophical breaks about "choice" and "causality", and "no spooning", made a great deal of sense, but over all it made the story a bit convoluted.
Sadly, it only get's worse when Matrix Revolutions came out as the majority of that movie was about 20 minutes of philosophy and an hour and thirty minutes of Mechs, Marital Arts, and Dragon Ball Z.