Nothing too new

Rating: 6/10 (19 May 2003)

Spoilers may be inside:
What I liked most about "The Matrix" was all the different things it did. We don't really get that with "Matrix Reloaded" and that's disappointing. The most disappointing thing was that, for the most part, the story in this movie seemed to be there only to get us to one extravagent fight scene to the next. There wasn't much juice or meat to the story. There was one really great and interesting idea/plot point that was put into this movie and it is all that exists of the actual plot. Unfortunately this is summed up in a very long, yet quickly rushed through, speech at the end. Any lengthy dialogue is rushed through way too quickly. It leaves us just enough time to begin to comprehend and then rushes off into an action scene before we can apropriately savor the ideas. Also, about the fight scenes, they are also not that new and incredibly CGI happy. To the point where almost entire scenes are done in CGI. Take the scene where Neo fights the hundreds of Agent Smiths that we all saw in the trailer and were so anxious to see. For a lot of it, Neo isn't fighting a bunch of Agent Smiths, some computer generated thing that's supposed to be Neo (kind of coincidental don't you think?) is fighting the Agent Smiths. The CGI is not to the point where it passes off as believable and it's blatantly obvious. Maybe it's there to show us that he's still being controlled by the Matrix although I kind of doubt it. That scene is also entirely too long it felt like I was watching Agent Smiths get thrown into the air for two hours and then he picks up a pipe in order to do the same thing for another two hours. I mean yeah...we get it. However, a lot of the fight scenes are really cool. They just aren't really anything we haven't seen before. It's a good movie, don't get me wrong, just kind of disappointing when compared to the first one. I did really like the Architect and what he had to say but it was too rushed and that was about the extent of the plot. Even after it was over I wanted to really love it but i just felt a hole inside myself. 6/10