Chronos Tachyon
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 Review: (2003) The Matrix Reloaded
Yeah, another review. I just caught the ESOTERiC release. It's by no means a bad movie, but I thought it suffered from "Look at me! I have an effects budget!" syndrome.
Review summary: Not as good as the first Matrix movie, but a pretty impressive action movie nonetheless. 8/10.
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
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First, the mile-high view of the plot.
The first third of the movie is rather content-free. Quite a few characters are introduced, but only Tank^WLink (the new ship's operator, after Tank was presumably killed between the movies) and Zion Councillor Hamann are developed notably; Morpheus's ex, Captain Niobe, is a cardboard cutout throughout the movie. Basically, two of the three major plot points of the entire movie (the sentinels are drilling to Zion, and Agent Smith is alive, rogue, and cloned) are introduced in the first ten minutes, and the next thirty are filled mostly with predictable exposition (ooh, General Hein^W^WCaptain Lock isn't a True Believer and wants a brute force solution, isn't that original?) and 5 minutes of gratuitous tribal-rave music, dirty dancing, and nudity. Strangely, the Neo/Trinity love scene didn't feel as completely gratuitous as the rest of the crap (*pout* prophetic dream angst *sniffle*), yet the chemistry between the two was... off. It should have been a good character scene. Dunno the precise cause, but neither of the actors seemed to have their hearts in it. Oh, one subplot point somehow got thrown in, where we find out that Agent Smith copies himself by overwriting other people, including those freed from The Matrix (unlike standard-issue Agents). He now has a clone on the inside of Zion named Bane.
The movie picks up in the next third when Neo finally visits The Oracle. When he confronts her, she readily admits that she's (a) an AI program, and (b) quite possibly an untrustworthy and deceptive component of The Matrix. She tells Neo to look for The Source (described both as the machines' mainframe and as the place where programs in The Matrix go when they die) and The Keymaker (who can get him to The Source) before strolling off. After running into Agent Smith and a few hundred of his favorite clones in the most-hyped scene of the movie, Neo and company visit a rogue program living in The Matrix, who holds The Keymaker prisoner. The scene drags a bit, with rogue-program-guy expounding on the philosophy of cause-and-effect versus choice, followed by more gratuitous sex (making me briefly wonder if I'd stumbled onto a copy of The Amazing Goth-Man: Adventures in the Sexual Underworld by accident -- I was half-expecting a pizza delivery boy and 70's porn music by the next scene). Rogue-program-guy's wife then offers to bring them to The Keymaker if Neo will kiss her (making me stare suspiciously at the screen and double-check IMDb that Keanu Reeves has never done a porno in case this VCD surreptitiously spliced it in). Moving on, Neo fights rogue-program-guy's lackeys, while Morpheus and Trinity escape with The Keymaker in tow and the poltergeist twin lackeys in pursuit.
The final third of the movie opens with the second-most-hyped scene of the movie, the highway chase. I really don't understand why the highway chase was so hyped. Yes, the scale of it (15 solid minutes of things going crash and boom) was very unique, but the actual content was a distinctly unimpressive mixture of bullet-fu (bullet-time plus wire-fu, obviously) and a circa-1980 car chase (complete with period music), ending with Goth-Man^WNeo swooping out of the sky for the last-minute save. After that comes The Most Confusing Scene In The Movie; basically, exposition from different conversations taking place hours apart is interwoven with the action of the plans coming into play, and you have no idea that that's what's happening until about halfway through this 5 minute lump of scene. The scene resumes real-time (and the viewers' sanity) when a power plant explodes so that Neo, Morpheus, and The Keymaker can head for The Source. More stuff happens, another hovership blows up, Trinity dives into The Matrix to pick up the slack, Agent Smith reappears, The Keymaker imparts his final instructions and dies, yadda. Neo then meets The Architect, the AI program that designed The Matrix. Rather interesting conversation ensues, revealing the third major plot point of the movie (The Oracle helped create The Matrix, and The Prophesy and The One were just part of the programming to make The Matrix be self-resetting and get better with each try). Neo dooms Zion (and possibly the inhabitants of The Matrix) by running off to save Trinity in the nick'o'time, pulls out the bullet by reaching non-corporeally into her chest, and restarts her heart by reaching into her ribcage and squeezing it. Foreshadowing occurs that perhaps Morpheus will die and be brought back to life in the third movie. Anyway, they pop out of The Matrix and sentinels are bombing Morpheus's ship, so they all hotfoot it on the ground outside for a last-minute save. The sentinels come to inspect the wreckage and find the crew running away. Suddenly, Neo mutters something about feeling the sentinels, turns around, and emits an EMP burst from his hands and kills a swarm of them, then suddenly collapses (presumably waking up from the "real" world and into the real real world). Exposition, exposition, a surviving ship shows up, Zion was destroyed, possibly sabotage, one survivor, it's the guy that Agent Smith took over waaay earlier in the movie, yadda. Neo and Bane-Smith are both unconscious in the medlab. The end. What, you wanted a conclusion? This is 2003, Year of the Rings.
Now, effects and action. Basically, the movie follows the mantra of "More, more, more!" The bullet-fu is pretty much the same as in the first, but used in every action scene. The not-quite-real explosions are much more frequent, with 3 in-Matrix explosions doing the ripple effect and one of those also doing the liquid fire effect. The major new effect, the Agent Smith clones, is very seamless (as far as I can see on the cam-quality video) and looks like really good blue-screen work. The first half of the movie will be painful to action fans who want to see pretty CGI rather than lengthy philosophy debates, but the Agent Smith brawl looks very nice, Neo's fight for The Keymaster has rather impressive wire-fu, the highway scene never drags (despite the incredible duration) and is frequently cool, and the Goth fanboys will absolutely drool at Neo taking out the sentinels. *cough* wish fulfillment *cough* Oh, and the Trinity fanboys (who presumably overlap considerably with the Goth fanboys) will probably be both elated that Trinity gets naked on-screen and disappointed that Trinity never actually shows any of her naughty bits. Tasteful shoulder time.
Next, philosophy. Not bad. It goes a bit deeper than the first movie, but not enormously, discussing different views of fate, choice, and cause in addition to the usual Buddhism Lite. The two mindfucks at the end are nice; the first takes the fanboy fantasy (Neo is The One and will save the world) and shatters it, while the second takes the philosophy of both movies and applies it recursively (Not only is The Matrix an illusion pulled over your eyes, but so is the world outside The Matrix that you were "free" in).
Next, nitpicks. Numero uno, too much gratuitous sex. Yes, this is an action movie, and gratuitous sex is almost de rigueur, but the first movie did quite nicely without outright pandering to the 13-20 straight male demographic, and I'd like to think that this movie could have chosen the same path. The first movie got where it did by being deeper than your average Arnie movie, not T&A. Stick with that. Numero dos, too much exposition for too little effect. Seeing the Council of Zion in session was not exactly the highlight of the movie, nor was the Morpheus-Niobe-Lock love triangle. Numero tres, it makes no logical sense that Goth-Boy^WNeo would still be using kung-fu in The Matrix when he has the power to alter physical reality within it. I mean, the guy flys like Mighty Mouse by changing the laws of physics around him, stops bullets by thinking about it, and can telekinetically pull weapons off a wall. Why does he punch and kick when he could pull a Darth Vader and crush people's windpipes from afar?
In the end, though, the problems with the movie don't outweigh the parts that work, and the looong action scenes imprint themselves strongly enough into your memory that you forget some of the bad exposition scenes. Plus, alongside the action you get Philosophy In A Nutshell, and what's expounded upon is largely plot-relevant. Overall, not quite as good as the first Matrix, especially with the dragging first third, but still pretty damn entertaining.
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05-15-2003 03:10 PM
Certainly not dissapointed, at all..
