Oh My God! So great! Just saw Reloaded.

Rating: 10/10 (21 November 2003)

I haven't read any other reviews on this site. Sorry, But I don't feel I need to. I have heard from people I know and reviewers that this movie did not live up to the original. Let me just say that that is completely FALSE! I never put stuff in all caps. I swear. This movie was and is phenomenal. It upped the ante bigtime! No new special effects? What?! Screw the special effects! Before I say that, I should say that the special effects were amazingly different, but that's not why I am so psyched about this movie (I'll get into special effects later, SOOO second on why this movie is so good). This chapter introduced a level to the story that smackingly amazing to me. The first movie was about discovering. By that I mean Neo discovered what was there. This movie was about understanding, and about how that perception of understanding leads to a more important concept of what that understanding entails. I haven't seen the third movie yet. I will see it tomorrow. Not important right now. Right now I am writing not to try to sway the other tens of thousands of reviewers, but because I had to, I figured IMDB.com was the best place to tell as many people as I could why I loved this movie. Damn, I'm gonna be long-winded... oh well.
So at the end of the first one, Neo accepts that he has a role to play. I'm not gonna get into why that one was great, lots of people thought it was (perhaps for technical/mass-appeal reasons rather than philosophical ones, but whatever). Reloaded was not a sequel, it was a continuation - difference being that it was not the same story in a different setting, it is the next step. There is obviously a lot that happened between the first movie and Reloaded. Maybe Animatrix or the video game filled that in, but I haven't experienced either. Still, work had been done, and they are at a turning point, which involves the survival of Zion, but I'm not gonna get into how or why, just in case anybody with enough time to read this hasn't seen the movie yet. Anyway, the story evolves, as some might have heard, with the notions of love and choice and causality. There are old characters in the same light as the last film, old characters cast in a new light, and new characters with a new light altogether. The story evolves, that is what is important. And the significance of this evolution is what makes this movie so great.
Technically speaking, some people wanted another Bullet-time-like advance in the special effects. There was, though the obviousness might not have been as visually different from the first movie from its predecessors. There are scenes here that have never been done before, just as the bullet-time wasn't done before, only more subtle in that the effects don't involve a visual change (i.e. characters on a screen), but a technological one (i.e. what those characters are and can do). So difficult, but perhaps easy to underappreciate. Rest assured, try to compare the technical aspects of the movie, and you will be hard pressed to find an equal.
While watching this movie, either for the first time or again, think about the evolution in skills and in opponents. Both have risen in scope and intensity. In the story, think also about scope and intensity - both have increased significantly. Face value is nice, really nice, but the beauty lies beyond. If you don't see it, this review may not help you to. But rest assured, it is there. The question is always more important than the answer.