When the T3 trailer's the highlight there's somthing to worry about

Rating: 1/10 (25 May 2003)

Plenty of Spoilers
To start, I am not a huge fan of The Matrix. I do think it possibly has the greatest trailer even, but the film itself was a major let down. "You cannot be told what the matrix is, you have ot see it". Um... No! The matrix is a computer simulation which we live in, unaware, because machines have taken over the earth. Don't ask me why, but I don't find that the most mind bending complex realisation. But, anyrate, I degress, kinda. Basically the original was great whne in the matrix, mostly, while not very good when outside it. The 'real' world is just not interesting. All the wonderful potential of the ideal thrown away on a lazy comic book explanation. And the last ten minutes, oh my god... What an horrifically terrible ending!
Still, the sequels still interested me. The trailers, while not as phenomenal as the first, were still excellent and I really didn't expect that all the great shots were in the trailer like first time round. This time I thought the Wachowski's had held something back for us. Well, they had. Just not what I had hoped for.
Despite the fact we have already seen the vast majority of the opening in the trailers, it is at least a reasonable start to the movie. But from Neo's waking up from his dream in the 'real' world, everything starts to go horribly wrong. We get 45 minutes or so of Zion.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!
Man, the way the story was set up felt so forced, so ugly. The dialogue reaches a level of dismallity (which probably isn't a real word and would've fit quite eloquently into this script) that I haven't witnessed since "the worst film ever made "(imho) Rancid Aluminium. Every new charcter introduced is an instantly forgettable cliche. And the rave scene... Oh no, the rave scene. In the original the Wachowski's showed an understanding of how to use music and images together wonderfully. The rave scene is the polar opposite. No-one moves in time with the music. The camera doesn't move with the music. Nothing cuts with the music. Never, for a second, do you believe in this rave scene at all. OK, the rave looks good. OK, the tune is good. Put 'em together and what have you got? Bippity Boppity Poo!!!
Inbetween all this dross in the 'real' world we are subjected to a couple of extremely lazy fight sequences. OK, so you don't want to start with the coolest fight scene on the planet and never top it, but you att least start with a fight that matched even the worst fight from the original. Neo is completely static. The fights are uninspired. And the famed 'bullet-time' just doesn't have the impact.
When we finally get to meet the Oracle again there's the hint of a pulse for the movie. The ideas she puts into the movie are interesting, but why we need to be told this for 10 minutes is beyond me. She makes her point, then makes it again, before, finally, making it again. It was like the end of AI (although far less impressive that even the worst moments of that film) in that it just kept hammering and hammering it's point, just so even the most idiotic person can understand. The problem is that if you get it the first time she starts making everything sound more confusing than it it. This problem returns throughout the movie.
Then, at last, a sequence of quality. Neo versus a horde of Agent Smiths is class. Pointless, but class. While there's nothing spectacularly new we didn't see in the trailer, this fight is actually worth it. It builds well and doesn't really hang around too long. But it has it's problems, although I can just about forgive them here. The first is the CGI characters. The lasck of realism isn't the main problem. It's the lack of heart they have. Especially in the 'bullet-time' shots. In the original that was Keanu and Hugo Weaving in slow-mo. This time it's just an animated charcter. So, now, we're not stopping reality for a moment as we were before. We're just seeing a cartoon version of it. The other problem with this fight is that basically it's completely redundant. While I loved it for pure 'cool' value, it is basically only there to inject a bit of life in.
It starts to inject...
then the needle breaks.
TBC...