Eye candy smothered with well-worn stereotypes

Rating: 4/10 (21 May 2003)

Yes, indeed, the Matrix Reloaded has a lot of fun eye-candy. The special effects are worth the price of admission alone. Unfortunately, all the excitement is layered over great heaping piles of stereotypes over what the "future" will be like.
Like a large number of other science fiction and fantasy movies, such as Strange Days, The Crow movies, and many others, the Matrix Reloaded shows us a future that takes place in a sweaty, dense urban cavern, where nearly everyone is perfect looking, between the ages of 20 and 35, 90% of whom have their heads shaved or have long dreadlocks, and break into ecstatic, sex-fueled dancing whenever music starts playing. When some insightful, philosophical-sounding dialogue is needed, and older person is trotted out to recite it.
There's also a stale love-triangle plot involving the fearless prophet Morpheus, who's partner left him for an incompetent, pointy-headed bureaucrat who somehow became leader of the "defense" of Zion, but who does little else in the movie except whine.
The first Matrix film was about waking up to things you didn't know. This film is so full of itself, and so completely immersed in the past, that there can't possibly be anything new to wake up to.