Stay with the original

Rating: 1/10 (21 July 2004)

Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions both fall short of high expectations. Actually, I really didn't know what to expect besides the return of Agent Smith. The evil agent's henchmen were all the wiser in skipping the sequels. I heard that Tank was strongly disliked by his co-stars that he was voted out of the sequel. Lucky him.
In the second film, we are introduced to a bunch of new people as the citizens of Zion. Why anyone would want to live among a bunch of wanna be cool twits wearing shades is beyond me. My first impressions were that these people of Zion are just way to cool for me. Any sympathy and caring for anyone in Zion quickly went out the door. Pinkett-Smith (Will, what the hell do you see in her???) has way too much attitude for me to even take seriously. Morpheus regresses from a mysterious leader into a Zion whipping boy and has to take too many orders from too many "chiefs" who seem to take a delight in revealing how incompetent he is. The special effects were mostly good, except that one scene where one of the rasta haired albino twins jumps on the hood of the car, that had fake written all over it. Surely they could have done that better, couldn't they? The movie had it's moments like everyone's favorite Neo vs. the 101 Smith clones but after leaving the theater I suddenly was not in a rush to see the third.
Which brings me to the third. Again, I have a problem with the people of Zion and their terrible attitudes. Did someone take a dump in their Tastee Wheats? My god the leaders were a bunch of grouchy jerks. Why do they behave like such as$holes? All except the Asian guy, who is so silent and so lack of any personality that we really don't care what happens to him either. My favorite part was the train station, kind of reminded me of "Ghost" with the subway bit. Though I didn't like the part where the Indian woman rudely tells Neo that he doesn't belong here. "Go back to India - b--ch" should've been his response. Agent Smith goes through a personality change and suddenly Neo's cool mannered nemesis turns into a raging psychotic bloodthirsty killer. Was this change needed? Again, Zion could get whiped out entirely by the "squiddlies" - and who cares? It's hard to be introduced to these new characters who were never in the original and have any feeling for them besides: WTF are they doing here now? Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity deserved a better fate than to be left in this ho hum city full of losers. I'll take the Matrix covered surface any day.