Absolutely terrible

Rating: 1/10 (16 May 2003)

Grade: D-
A harsh grade deserves a very thorough explanation and I aim to deliver nothing less. But, let me begin by outlining what I liked about Reloaded. The action scenes were entertaining for the most part though no where near as breathtaking as the first movie. I actually have more complaints about the action than praise, but I'll get to that in a moment. The special effects were incredible even if they were unnecessary. This is where Reloaded is most comparable to Clones: it decides to use every last penny of it's huge budget (about $300 million for Reloaded and Revolutions) even if it means sacrificing the quality of the film. The masses will undoubtedly disagree with me and that's fine. I have no interest in accepting an action scene simply because it has a lot of explosions, effects, and "cool" camera angles. If you want to see well crafted sci-fi action scenes, see the original Matrix or better yet, see the underrated and underexposed Equilibrium.
Back on the subject though, I have no praise to hand out to the rest of the film except that Keanu Reeves doesn't have to mutter things like "I know kung-fu." The dialogue is probably my biggest complaint about the movie. The characters talk completely different in this movie than in its predecessor. Not only that, they talk in prose as if someone out of Philosophy 101 tried to write Shakespeare. The first and most important rule of dialogue that a movie screenwriter must abide by is to keep dialogue as a two way conversation whenever possible; the Wachowski's have completely ignored this and damaged their film beyond repair. Talking philosophically is not a problem nor is having a monologue a couple times in a movie, but the dialogue tired me out after the first few scenes. There is almost no doubt in my mind that The Matrix was not written as a trilogy. Forget what we see, the basic style and attention to detail in this script is miles away from the original.
There are also many characters thrown into the mix. We learn close to nothing about all of them, and they either die or remain inconsequential throughout the movie. Interestingly and eventually appallingly, a great portion of the characters in this movie are African American. What's wrong with that by itself? Nothing obviously except that they are exploited so obviously in this movie because the generation fueling this movie (sadly, mine) automatically associates black with cool. I would be offended by this whether I was a person of color or not. There's an almost orgy like party intertwined with a scene with Neo and Trinity having sex that is completely out of place. At that point my friends and I were wondering if we were even in the right movie. I don't come to see Reloaded for a dance club scene with terrible techno music. The music from the first movie was great, the music throughout this one was outright laughable, especially during the freeway sequence.
That brings us to the highly praised action sequences that apparently raise the bar of the original set four years ago. The action sequences would be fine if they were just shot separate from anything else, but they each play like an individual trailer for the movie. Every single action sequence in this movie has no sense of urgency, but most importantly no passion. Also, all action scenes are set up; a personal pet peeve. I don't mind set up action scenes in something like a Jet Li movie where you go just to see Jet kick some major ass, but in something that is supposed to be as intelligent as The Matrix, it's disappointing and offensive. The reason the action scenes carry no urgency is that the outcome of the scene is obvious no matter who is fighting. Neo cannot die since he is "The One" so all the action with Neo is basically just him kicking Agent ass whether there are three or thirty to fight.
The already deemed classic freeway scene was a huge letdown for me. First, about 99% of the cars on the freeway were from the 300 that GM donated to the movie, which is me just being picky about a movie I already loathed. More importantly, cars were being destroyed left and right for no purpose; all 300 of those donated cars were gone by the time the scene was over. Another waste of time and money was the freeway built just for this movie. Truly skilled directors (Spielberg comes to mind) would be able to find a way around building their own freeway. The greatest movie chase sequences have always come on normal roads without relentless destruction (remember Ronin, The French Connection, or The Transporter?). The only parts of the freeway scene that got my heart pumping was when Trinity was weaving her bike in and out of traffic to avoid agents and anytime the ghost-like twins were on screen (which was not nearly enough).
Last but not least is the hand to hand combat choreographed by the legendary Yuen Wo Ping. Again, the combat itself is impressive, but actually dull after sometime. I am probably the last person on this planet who would admit to any form of kung-fu being dull, but it's the same thing over and over and over again until our minds are numbed and we are dumber because of it. There's a lot of other things I detest about this movie, but I fear that exposing more of my dislikes will add insult to injury. In short, the other defects in the movie include inconsistent characters (especially Trinity), useless characters (Agent Smith), a terrible ending, a convoluted and ultimately absurd plot, and some really terrible editing, especially towards the last 15 minutes or so.
All in all The Matrix Reloaded is a severely hyped up letdown much like previous May releases like Attack of the Clones, Pearl Harbor, Godzilla, and a hoard of others. Reloaded is as bad as if not worse than most of these. It's a nasty thing to say, probably the biggest insult a movie can be handed, but this is a grand sci-fi world gone completely to waste. Why? First, because of a budget that's more than twice that of the original which relied on it's story to bring about it's incredible action. Second, it seems like the script was whipped up in a few days after the first one became a big hit. Argue what you want, the original was a movie within itself that concluded just fine. Reloaded makes the mistake of using its story so that the Wachowski's can direct some big action sequences. Be very cautious of your expectations on July 2nd when T3 comes out.