Talk, talk, talk... Fight, fight, fight!

Rating: 6/10 (20 May 2003)

Ok it's a good movie, very high concept, and of course it had to be to compete with the original. However this movie underlines the fact that it's very hard to top yourself when you set the bar so high in the first place. It's a little ironic that the very guys who set the new standard for action/sci-fi movies are themselves now victims of that very standard.
First I'll address some of the concerns I have read in other peoples reviews, then I'll add a few concerns of my own;
The big one people seem to have a hard time with is the dancing scene near the beginning of the movie. It seems that most Matrix viewers are comfortable with narrative symbolism but are completely unable to comprehend visual symbolism. The dance scene is symbolic of why humans will always triumph over the machines, it's because we have that joy, that 'rubbing up against each other' that machines don't have and never can have. The dance scene was a symbolic reference to the human spirit, but I guess that concept is a bit subtle considering most of the audience was waiting for buildings to blow up.
So I have no problem with that scene, it made perfect sense to me and humanized the movie a little.
The other scene people either loved or hated was the Neo vs. 100 Smiths. I have a problem with that scene too but not the problem most other people had with it. My problem is that in the first Matrix, he was able to destroy agents by flying into them and 'absorbing' them or whatever. Why then in this movie does he just keep fruitlessly hitting them over and over with no real results? I can tell you exactly why, because the film makers thought it would look cool to have Neo fighting 100 Smiths, and they decided style was more important than continuity or coming up with a better idea.
A better scene would have had Neo destroy all the smiths rather than having hit continually hit them over and over with increasingly big sticks, and then finally retreating. The final scene would have been Neo surrounded by dead Smiths, and would have been cooler than him running away.
My second problem with that scene is connected to another fight Neo has a little later after they free the keymaker, Neo has to fight 6 guys who don't seems to be anywhere near as powerful as Smith is. Even though he has only 6 guys to fight instead of 100, it takes him forever to kill them. Why was he able to beat off 100 Smiths without too much trouble, but these 6 guys kept him busy for what seemed like an hour?
A better scene would have been for Neo to beat them incredibly fast, solidifying the concept that he is the most powerful thing in the Matrix. This scene diminished his perceived power greatly and for no good reason.
I do sympathize with the writers of this movie, they made Neo a little too powerful at the end of the first Matrix, thus leaving themselves little room to move with the character in this movie. Evidence of that can be seen in the tricks they used to keep Neo out of scenes where he simply would have been to powerful, like when he found himself suddenly 500 miles from the battle that was happening on the freeway.
These writing tactics are similar to what they have done for years in the Justice League comics, its hard to present any threat to a team where Superman is more powerful than all the other hero's in the group put together. The writers often resort to temporarily de-powering Superman or they conveniently get him out of the way for a while so the other characters have something to do till he can get back to save the day. Both of these things happened to Neo in Matrix Reloaded. The de-powered version of Neo shows up at the end where he destroys 3 squids outside the Matrix. He is so powerful inside the Matrix that I suspect the next movie will happen mostly outside the Matrix where Neo still has some power, but nowhere near as much.
I really liked the symbiotic relationship between the machines and Zion. They created a flawed program to fit flawed humans. The flaws in the program always leads to some people escaping and forming a city, and eventually leads to an anomaly like Neo who signals to the machines when the cycle is ending and its time to destroy Zion and start again.
It's an elegant solution to the flaw built into the system they made. But it's an ironic plot twist that I think most people missed, again maybe in a movie that is so visually stupefying, narrative subtlety is lost on the viewers.
The fact that Neo chose not to continue the cycle is interesting, but again I think that was lost on most of the viewers who were waiting for the next visual feast. Just like the Oracle kept telling him, its about choices, his choice was to continue the cycle or risk everyone's life on a gamble.
I guess this movie is an example of how you cannot have your cake and eat it too, when you have that much eye candy on the screen it becomes impossible to get any kind of deeper meaning across to the viewer. I think the impact of the story would have been more dramatic if the visuals had been toned down just a little. But the film makers had themselves boxed into a corner, they simply had to do both. Make it a bigger story and bigger special effects as well. I think they would have been better off topping one or the other, but not both.
No rating, it's a good movie, just not an easy one to watch, like staring into the sun too long. I was relieved I did not have to suffer anymore visual dynamite at the end of the movie.