Fails as a sequel, as an action flick, and as a psychological piece

Rating: 3/10 (26 April 2018)

After the fantastic first film that was 'The Matrix', it is safe to say its sequels are simply money grabbing pieces of junk. The Matrix wasn't intended to have sequels, but due to the success of the first one it was unfortunately decided to create this incoherent pile of nonsense.
Where did The Matrix Reloaded go wrong? First off, the fascinating concept behind 'The Matrix' is not so fascinating anymore since this sequel feeds on the same ideals, yet that kind of thing doesn't necessarily have to be a problem. ( Look at Terminator 2: Judgment Day for example as how a sequel should be ) But The Matrix Reloaded just comes across as a bunch of incoherent and pretentious nonsense because they wanted to build further on the original's ideas instead of the intelligent psychology that made the first one great. It is the kind of movie that tries to fool audiences in liking it so they can feel intellectually superior, which is something the original managed to avoid so well.
Secondly, we have these terrible new characters like Niobe, Lock, Link, Link's girlfriend or something and that annoying kid that idolizes Neo which name i forget since he isn't memorable whatsoever. None of them seem to be able to act, and all of them have subplots devoid of any kind of emotional attachment to them since we first off barely know these characters due to their sudden appearance in this sequel, and the obvious fact that they cannot act ( especially that kid ). Smith has been changed to a prophet of some sort and seems to only be in this movie because of the success the first had. His character is really totally irrelevant otherwise.
Third we have the obvious lazy CGI problem. Especially the scenes with Neo fighting the clones are just absolutely terrible. It uses a lot of CGI which was already dated at the time this was made and is comparable with a dumbed down weak fighting videogame. Especially the one where he pole dances around them horizontally, not sure who thought it was a good idea to put that shot in the film, but that person deserves to be fired, since it looks absolutely terrible. There is also simply put too much martial arts in it, like they wanted to impress audiences with their choreography instead of coherent storytelling yet use lazy CGI which basically ruins entire fighting scenes. The exception is the fight in the Chateau, which is one of the few pieces in this entire movie that was brilliantly filmed.
Fourth we have Zion, the only human city left in the world which was mentioned a bit in the first Matrix. Yet every Zion scene is bleak, dead, dull, grey and lifeless. It has a lot to do with the characters there having the same characteristics, but the shots are ugly and the design behind the city is just terribly bleak all around. It does fortunately still have the stylish direction the first one had in scenes taking place inside The Matrix itself, and has a relatively interesting character with the Merovingian, yet it seems every little piece of strength this movie has has to come from the scenes in The Matrix, and even those suffer from terrible CGI and generally weak storytelling. There is also a character later on in the movie who basically destroys the concepts the first Matrix stood for ( stating anymore would be a spoiler ), so as a sequel it is also mediocre since it cannot follow up with an enhancement of the story, and instead overwriting it. It is both disrespectful to the original in this way, and pretentious in its own way of adding new concepts which make no sense after watching the first one.
It is an unfortunate turn of events that these sequels were even created, as The Matrix was an amazing movie on its own. The smartest thing to do is to ignore the fact that The Matrix has become a trilogy and just keep watching the first one.