The Reviews are Worse than this Film Actually Is

Rating: Null/10 (17 May 2003)

I've read a lot of bad reviews on this film which lowered my expectation considerably, and that always raises the chances that the movie will be enjoyable. For the first while of the movie I thought it looked like most of the reviews were going to be right, just taking elements of the first movie and pushing them over the top (in the first movie Neo and Trinity kiss one time, in this one they have sex). Well, in a way this is the case, but at the same time what was great about the first movie is still great in the second. The premise of the films raises some important questions from modern philosophy concerning sense-data (Is our perception of the world an authentic representation of reality?). The first film as a whole turns out to be analogous to Plato's Cave from book VII of the Republic. You could also read politics into it, and it's this openess that makes the story great. Beyond having intellectual appeal, it was a special-effects and action film as well (one of the best), so it has a wide audience appeal. All of this still holds true in the second film! We already understand what the Matrix is, so they don't need to take any time explaining it again. This one deals a lot more with the problem of free-will and determinism. The implications of levels of reality were even more pronounced in this film, and the idea that principles from one level of reality hold true on other levels was put out (as above, so below). The aspect that I thought was the best in this second film was how the different characters namely the Oracle, Agent Smith, Merovingian, Persephone, and the Architect, and how they related to the Matrix. There was a bonus cameo by Cornell West which I laughed out loud for. Well I'm in it for the cosmology and metaphysics, I know there are a lot of others like me out there, and this film does not fall short despite the expectations.