Such a Disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (16 May 2003)

"Granted, you can't give us the same sense of wonder that we had with the first film."
This is the statement I've heard from many people and, having just watched the movie myself, I agree with this sentiment entirely. The film seems to lack solid direction on many fronts and is not really watchable in of itself, unlike many other trilogy "middles."
Whereas the first film had characters that evolved throughout the film, the characters in this film do not. They are given simple fortune cookie dialogue answers which they then go about and repeat to the other characters and so everyone instantly changes. This dialogue, although not as bad as any line in your average Crichton film, is so terse and ultimately useless to the audience as everyone does just repeat what is truly fortune cookie zen blather based on silly events and analogies. What was present just enough to be hip and interesting in The Matrix is now omni-present, filling virtually every line of the movie that is not directly about sex or a threat. This would be forgiveable if it did not so suddenly disrupt the flow of the movie, bringing events to a sudden jarring and unforgivable halt as we watch dialogue of the nature of man's existence provoked by, of course, orgasmic cake. I wish I were making this up, but unfortunately for viewers I am not. In any movie where the audience laughs at the cheesiness of the dialog is in trouble, but after four years of waiting I really expected more from a script.
That brings me to the other chief complaint with this film: it isn't really a film. In other trilogies, there are of course "hooks" given in the film which go intentionally unresolved. However, there are issues that do get solved in the movie you watched so that you leave the film feeling that the heroes, although they have work yet to do, have at least accomplished something. With Reloaded, almost nothing is resolved, to the point where you wonder why some things made it into the movie at all. (Example: Link's family problems. We spend too many scenes finding out that his wife doesn't like him with Morpheus, particularly for such a minor character. That's all we find out, not resolution whatsoever to it.) The heroes resolve nothing at the end of the film, which was why two of the three audiences I saw it with booed at the end of the film. The story is wholly incomplete, and ultimately very unsatisfying. I left the theater feeling that, instead of having watched a film, be it part of any trilogy or stand-alone, that I was conned into paying full price for what only amount to an Act Two. In the Act two of a play, nothing is resolved but instead the conflict is better explored and the situation made dire. This is not the usual course for a movie trilogy "second film," which instead has historically (and correctly) been essentially a three act play that fulfilled the larger Act Two role instead of being only that, the setup to a conflict without any resolution, big or small.
If the Wachowski brothers have an artistic vision they feel the need to express in two films beyond The Matrix (which did have its hooks but also stood alone as a real film), that is absolutely fine. However, if they expect me to pay for dissatisfaction, which is what they offer, then that is not fine. I spent four long years waiting for this film, and I couldn't have been more excited. Reloaded has left me fundamentally betrayed and I will be happy never to support the Wachowski Brothers again.