the formula sellout

Rating: 6/10 (19 May 2003)

worth every cent of the admission price for the explosions and fight scenes alone, this movie is a monument to subpar sequels. albeit this movie was made with the forthcoming revolutions in mind, so a lot of the plot lines that it leaves hanging can be solved by saying, well the matrix: revolutions will tie them up.
that does not satisfy me because 1. that's a cheap gimmick to make us pay to finish this movie, and 2. because it disregards the matrix reloaded's presence as a film of its own.
If the Wachowski brothers are expecting the audience to see both reloaded and revolutions as one 4 hour long movie, then i must say the first 2 hours were filled with a paper thin plot glossed over with superfluous slow motion fight scenes.
the action. the choreography has improved on a technical level, though the fight cinematography in this film now has an irritating tendency to favor strange angles over a wide view of the whole fight. The kung fu though is overall much better thanks to the actors' additional training time since the first movie. the special effects are on the top of the industry and film history as usual, however there is one complaint to be made about innovation in this movie. While the 'bullet time' developed by Gaeta in the first movie was a complete innovation, and the introduction of yuen wo ping's wire action fighting into american cinema was a bold move, we have nothing of the sort in this movie. The first's action amazed on a new level as well as impressed on the basic level. However in order to escape imitators, the Wachowskis have given us something no one could copy -- because it costs too damn much -- the highway scene, and the 100 agent smith scene. Essentially, they paid their way out of thinking up a new idea, the highway scene, though amazing, didn't bring action to a new level, but simply made it as big as possible. Within the world of the matrix, where our suspension of disbelief is complete -- we can accept neo flying without too much laughter, and their immediate knowledge of fighting and motorcycle riding is alright in the matrix. So when the fight scenes in this fantastic world do nothing new, it's like buying your favorite band's new album, and finding out that it's nothing but a collection of remixes.
the drama/plot.
laugh. cliches like "i love you too damn much" and "i'm never letting go" are supposed to get us to believe that trinity and neo are in love?! yes, the story says they are, yes other characters say they are, but with such stonefaced acting and poor fanboy writing, the love subplot did not succeed.
as for the philosophy presented by the movie of causality and free will versus destiny, there is nothing new here. While the first presented a mixture of philosophies and religious ideologies to create a new idea on the modern world and it's growing electronic foundations, this one does nothing to further that idea. in fact, it regresses, and provides the same stock answer for every problem the idea of such a huge system like the matrix vs. real world brings up: it's not our purpose to ask. There are many dramatic monologues that sound disgustingly deep through the use of big words, logic tricks, and tricky writing, but when analyzed, what they say is nothing deeper than a kid saying he stole the candy bar, "just cause".
the movie does introduce some interesting ideas in terms of its own world however. unfortunately, they come in the very last quarter of the film, and of course end abruptly in order to get you to watch the third one.
in terms of characters, the main ones introduced are painfully undeveloped and depend on the experience of the first movie to make them 3 dimensional. If one were to watch this movie on its own, then it's easy to see how quickly all of the people in the story are made of cardboard, with their one way motivations and actions.
conclusion. this sequel was a sellout. instead of spending time crafting their characters and the complex world in which they lived [which had already captured the audience's imagination], the wachowski brothers opted to forge straight ahead, and pump out two sequels, paying their way out of writing real love, 'human' characters [neo seems more robotic than agent smith does], and a substantial plot. We would have eagerly waited for a much better movie, but we got this first. In 5 years, the matrix dvd will be sitting in my dvd player, and the matrix reloaded super special collector's widescreen edition will be sitting in the back of my friends' closets gathering its fifth layer of dust.