They had little choice here

Rating: 5/10 (17 May 2003)

**SPOILERS**
Most of the bad things said about this movie here are dead on. They had to do it this way though. At the expense of creating multiple holes in the plot, Hollywood has at least insured the commercial success of the franchise. Lots of money is at stake here. It remains to be seen whether the third installment will be different; we can be optimistic, though, in believing that "Reloaded" will be commercially successful enough so that the cutting room floor for "Revolution" is littered with rave dancing, kung fu and extraneous love interests (Morpheus and Niobi) and not with scenes that better develop the plot to an intelligent and interesting conclusion.
To remain interesting on a cinematic level, "The Matrix" begged for a sequel in which conflict emerges between AIs that desire a future passive role for humanity (power supply or extinction) and those that desire a more active cooperative role for humanity. Moreover, the interaction between Neo and the Matrix, in light of his realized power there, should have become a bit more cerebral. A person with the power to fly faster than the speed of sound would not be doing so much stick-swinging, would he?
Instead we get in "Reloaded" more of the same that Hollywood thinks the mass market wants. To give "Reloaded" credit, the "Hollywood intrusions" are about as well done as any of the movie cliches we all love (but have no doubt seen 1000 times) can be. Despite the costs to the art of the movie, there is still room for a satisfying conclusion in "Revolution." Perhaps we should apply the Architect's summary of the human condition and "hope" for better in November.
The power play between the Merovingian and Persephone is really the only scene of dramatic interest in "Reloaded," and its ramifications could have been much better developed. Both AIs are very obviously entranced with humanity to the point of playing the roles of the debauched aesthete and the scorned woman. The interesting part stems from the question why beings of perfect intelligence would choose to mimic the emotions of the "inferior" species they subjugated. One answer would be that though perfectly rational, the pangs of consciousness demand the placation of culture, something the AIs haven't had time to develop for themselves. An answer more in tune with Hollywood sensibilities is that intelligence devoid of emotion (love in particular) quickly becomes a hell of boredom.
There were few extremely annoying holes. My two biggest pet peeves in "Reloaded" were 1) Why on earth would the Architect be such a gloating villain? I found myself waiting for the upturned pinky and the demonic cackle. 2) If the true purpose of Zion and "The One" are to ferret out anomalies in the power system, the elegance of the whole plot becomes botched. The powers that be could obviously tell which humans reject the choice the Architect speaks of, why not just flush em and nip it in the bud? Setting up such an incredibly inefficient system for debugging would be bad code indeed.