The emperor's old clothes

Rating: 7/10 (5 May 2006)

'The Matrix' was the surprise hit of 1999, blowing away the much hyped 'Star Wars: the Phantom Menace' by using similarly elaborate special effects, but with much fresher purpose. The acclaim that the film's extraordinary visuals generated, however, appeared to blind many to the movie's inherent unoriginality. The grungy-cool aesthetic and cod-philosophy, for example, are de rigeur in the sci-fi genre: while the "you can be anything you want to" message and the endless violence were pure Hollywood. The theme of computers turning on their masters dates back to at least '2001', while even the idea of a film where life is a video game seems less than striking when in real life, video games are turned into films! But when two sequels came out, there was a fierce negative reaction. In the absence of a similar visual advance over the first film to that which the first film had been over all preceding movies, the flaws were revealed to all, and both movies were badly slated. In truth, while the original was hardly as ground-breaking as its fans would have you believe, 'The Matrix Reloaded' (film two in the cycle) is not nearly as bad as its critics would make out. It's a highly polished piece of hokum, just as the fist film was, and generally, very entertaining except in the interminable fight scenes (which are spectacular, but sadly as engrossing as watching someone else on a Playstation). The second film in a series of three is always going to be the hardest to make work as a stand-alone entity (which perhaps explains why film three was released so quickly after it); but I think the Wachowski brothers have made a pretty decent fist of it. This is still a stylish movie, and an enjoyable one as well, as long as the original didn't fool you into expecting anything too profound.