worst sequel ever

Rating: 1/10 (9 November 2005)

And yet this fact took me a while to realize--some sequels are horrible and your recognize the fact right away. Others are so deceptively bad that it takes just more than one viewing to realize the extent of their rottenness. "The Matrix Reloaded" was in every way one of the worst sequels ever. The Watchowski brothers went around saying that they planned the "The Matrix" as a trilogy--but what rubbish. All the gold was in the first one. Clearly they WANTED three movies but didn't think of enough material to sustain three movies.
At the heart of the problem is that "the matrix reloaded" is a pointless continuation of a story that didn't need a continuation. At its best the first Matrix film was about revelation--the shock that comes with sudden found knowledge that undermines any and everything we believe. This idea of revelation was mixed in with Philip K Dickean sense of storytelling--the kind that doubts reality and where things fold back on themselves. And though "The Matrix" had a simplistic division between the real and unreal--the plot was handled so that we never thought we were watching a video game.
I go back to revelation--there's something always affecting in any book or film when information that sheds light on an immediate situation is presented dramatically. Think of that chapter in a "Tale of Two Cities"...I believe it's titled "The Substance of the Shadow"...in which we learn the history and root cause of the central crisis in the novel. The best bits of the first Matrix film we're like this chapter.
The audience is Neo.
There are questions. They are expertly answered to fine dramatic effect. We can then proceed to enjoy the action that follows because we have shared in revelation.
For all intents and purposes the film concludes with a hopeful ending: A fair number of our characters have made it and Neo can now save the world. How he goes about this needn't be told--all we need is the assurance that he will. In the great sci-film "Dark City" (which is disturbingly similar to The Matrix, despite coming out a year earlier) the city is still lost at the end, but the story is over. I did not ask "but how did they make it back to earth..." because I knew that's a question outside the parameters of this tale.
After watching the first Matrix movie I did not proceed to ask "but how did Neo save the world..." No, all that was necessary was the hopeful tone at the end--this man will go about saving the world.
The Matrix sequels, then, present that needless story about how Neo went about saving the world. There of course not being any inherent mystery in this mission the writers inserted plot threads that more or less undermine the staggeringly effective simplistic premise of the first film: apparently there's a cycle to the Matrix, other Neo's, etc. The plot of The Matrix Reloaded is like an RPG game: The characters visit one character, who tells them to visit another character, who actually refers them to someone else. In all of this there's no sense of storytelling craftsmanship, never any sense of surprise or revelation. It all exists to appear sophisticated: the film comes to a dead halt several times because of philosophical musings by otherwise lame side characters. And yet when Mr. Anderson calls the human race a virus when confronting a captured Morpheus in the first film--it was fitting. It was more or less a play on the "raving villain" archetype necessary to give motif to the baddie. It's an essential storytelling technique in the cinema. On the other hand, characters randomly going off on philosophical discussions about machines and causality in The Matrix Reloaded reminds one of writers short on ideas yet desperate to come of as more profound then they really are.
What the director/writers of this Reloaded failed to realize was that sophistication of plot needn't mean confusing the audience as to what the hell is going on. No, sophistication of plot means having a simple premise or premises unfold in unexpected ways. We ask the end in an admiring tone..."how did we get to this?" wishing to go on the ride again. When the Architect comes around towards the end of Reloaded, we ask, "how the hell did we get to this?" wishing to stay away from this this poor excuse for film for the rest of our days.