Worst sequel ever...- Spoilers

Rating: 3/10 (17 May 2003)

Once upon a time a movie came out called "The Matrix." It is one of my favorite movies and I have seen it at least 13 or 14 times. I knew that it would be impossible to live up to the first movie (although there are some instances: The Godfather II, Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, etc... all the classics) but I didn't expect it to be this bad.
Anything that was good about the first movie was lost in this one. If I were to list all the things that were wrong with this movie it would go WAY over the 1000 word limit, so here are the top 5 (in no order):
Oh, and if you don't want spoilers, go away now.
1) Too many new characters: Tons of new characters introduced, most of them with very little introduction and no development. Pretty much every bad guy with the exception of Agent Smith(s) has "Darth Maul Syndrome." The Twins, who look really really cool in the trailers, die in an automobile accident that they could have easily escaped. All they did was vaporize around and look cool and growl menacingly for a while until they just died without having hurt anyone else. One of the vampires, who are the Merovingian's personal bodyguards, gets shot in the head with a silver bullet. Come on, a VAMPIRE! So much wasted potential there. There are other instances of DMS in this movie but I will just move on here.
2) The movie is inconsistent with the first one: In the first movie, Morpheus gets badly beaten by Agent Smith while trying to give Neo a safe escape. When Neo is fighting agents in this movie, he notes that the agents are improved from when he last fought them. THEN HOW THE HELL CAN MORPHEUS HOLD HIS GROUND AGAINST AN AGENT ON TOP OF A MOVING 18 WHEELER? (No, I didn't count the wheels, but you get the point).
3) Too much fighting (yes, I said it): Now I'm all for meaningless violence and action but there is a line, and it was definitely crossed. To put the flow of the movie in one word: "random-philosophical-crap-between-twenty-minute-fight-scenes-with-no-purpos e-that-don't-advance-the-plot-and-reuse-the-same-moves-over-and-over-includi ng-moves-from-the-first-movies-that-are-just-old-by-now." Ok, it's not one word but you get what I'm saying, there was no plot advancing sequences or meaningful fighting, it was just Neo fighting fights he can't lose (remember he is pretty much GOD in the matrix) and then running away. How many times do I need to see a Smith copy being non-lethally beaten? Apparently the answer is in the triple digits.
4) The enemies were less dangerous than the Energizer Bunny: The truth is, there were no enemies inside the matrix. The only antagonists were Agent Smith (who poses no problem to Neo), The Twins (who suffered from a horrible case of DMS), and some other random expendable agents. The only real conflict was within the characters themselves as they prepared for the attack of the machines (who haven't even reached Zion by the end of the movie).
5) The movie was Minority Report: Ok, I don't know if I'm the only one who noticed this, but there were some striking similarities. For small stuff, the computers at Zion look exactly like the precrime computers. But that's minor stuff. The major stuff is that the whole movie was about choice. The characters were all deciding whether or not there was such thing as choice and eventually decided that everything was predetermined and that all the choices were premade and they had to figure out why they were doing it. If that isn't Minority Report, I don't know what is.
I have plenty of other issues with this movie, but I'm getting pretty tired of trashing it. If you really want to enjoy this movie, see it BEFORE you see the first one because then the plot will be interesting and mysterious and the effects will all seem original and not overused old stuff. Otherwise you might be disappointed. I give this movie a 3/10-- it's not as painful to watch as some other movies, and you may even want to see it more than once on DVD, but don't take this movie too seriously...