The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

I finally saw The Matrix Reloaded yesterday - first tried on Friday but UGC cinemas couldn't get the projector to work! Now having seen it, I can honestly say that watching the blank screen for an hour on Friday was more entertaining. This film is fatally flawed on many levels.
The direction is terrible - the pacing is very bad, with some scenes dragging on forever and serving no purpose whatsoever, while other scenes feel rushed. There is no suspense whatsoever, and the structure is also poor. The audience is expected to remember every little detail from a film which came out four years ago, otherwise this one makes no sense. The film feels like The Two Towers ie sandwiched, and with a very poor ending. "Uh-oh, we've exceeded our running time, err.... The End".
Certain things were left unexplained such as What happened to Tank? and Where did Morpheus manage to find all the pies he has so clearly consumed? All they had to eat in the first film was yellow slop.
The ZZZion scenes are interminably dull and embarrassing, especially the rave scene and sex scene. The discussion between Neo and the senile old Councillor about some stupid water purification machine is particularly pointless. This last scene would have been greatly improved by having Neo pick up the mad old fool by the legs and throw him in, saying "why don't you take a closer look". It would at least have been entertaining. Other parts of the movie were so cloyingly sappy that I came close to vomiting.
There were also far too many characters, and no clear villain to identify with. I didn't have a clue who half these people were, they seemed to be there purely to sell action figures. For a film to work for me, I have to be able to relate to at least some of the characters and care about their fate. This movie shows me nothing about any of the characters- their desires and motivations are a complete mystery - they are on screen only to look 'cool' in their stupid sunglasses while they fight. And fight. And fight. The fight scenes quickly became boring for me due to their sheer length and the lack of any clear outcome. The special effects were laughable. Whoever made the decision to use CGI effects for the fight scenes instead of the quite good wire work of the first Matrix movie should be flogged until they drop. Neo's fight with the Smith clones was truly dire - such crude rubber-like figures belie the film's budget.
Keanu Reeves is an unspeakably horrible actor, but at least he looks good. Carrie-Anne Moss is not far behind him in the bad acting stakes, but looks like a fetish nightmare. Larry Fishburne's speech in Zion was worse than death. Monica Bellucci is hotness personified, but why did she only appear for five seconds? Those twins were the worst shots in the history of the Universe, and the Frenchman was a big cliché.
The whole script gave every impression of having been written by chimpanzees. "You didn't come here to make a choice. You've already made a choice. You need to understand why you made the choice" (continues with minor variations ad infinitum throughout movie.) That's cute. I, on the other hand, need to understand why I've paid good money and wasted three hours of my life to listen to this pseudo-intellectual pretentious tripe.
All in all I found this movie a big letdown after enjoying (six times!) the stylish imagination of the first one. Neo's "confrontation" with the 'Architect' (at least he wasn't a prominent Quantity Surveyor) was a laugh riot. You could see that poor Neo had trouble comprehending ole Colonel Sanders. After all, in the rest of the movie, he had difficulty answering the simplest questions. "So, Neo, what's going on?" "I don't know". "What happened?" "It's not important." Oh and maybe I'm going totally going crazy here but when the Architect says "I redesigned it [The Matrix] based on your history to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your nature" I swear I saw a picture of "Dubya" Bush appear on those screens, along with Hitler and the rest. However, I'm not going to sit through this mush again to find out if I'm right.

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written by Ed on 25 May 2003