Overall Rating
  Awesome: 33.39%
Worth A Look: 19.65%
Average: 9.9%
Pretty Bad: 12.14%
Total Crap: 24.92%
17 reviews, 524 user ratings
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| Matrix Reloaded, The |
by Robert Flaxman
"Didn't this franchise used to be good?"
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Usually, one of the ideas of a film is to make the audience feel a connection with its characters. If the audience can identify, they can get more into a movie, and in the end will enjoy it more. A corollary of this is that sequels, even when they fail to surpass the original film in quality, will frequently surpass their predecessors in box office gross. The audience is so excited to see these characters it fell in love with the first time around that the overall quality of the film is not called into question as much as it could, or should, be.1999's The Matrix was an interesting case. While it presented characters with whom the audience could somewhat identify, it also kept most of them coolly distant. Despite primary male and female characters between whom a bond was clearly being established, the sexual aspect of the film made practically no appearance until the final scenes, and even then it was pretty well sterilized. In addition, the multiple supporting characters defused the pressure to focus on the interaction between the leads.
Enter The Matrix Reloaded. From the start, it is highly sexualized in practically every way the first film was not. In the very first scene, Neo (Keanu Reeves) wakes up from a bad dream - and he's in bed with Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss). When the ship makes its way to Zion, Neo and Trinity find a spot to "be intimate" while the rest of the city has a big party (for some reason). Not that this is so wrong, of course, but the relationship is depicted in a manner so intense as to get rather unnerving.
Then there are the other problems that Reloaded shares with most sequels. There is the desire to up the ante, for one thing. Recent blockbuster sequels have done this with some success, and in the special effects department, Reloaded succeeds - to a point. Truly, there is only so much we can see of Neo fighting off various programs to techno music before it becomes a bit tiresome. Reloaded, as with the first film, attempts to diffuse the action by putting in large chunks of dialogue - but these run on too long and, unlike in The Matrix, seem to add up to very little in the way of actual explanation.
Raising the stakes comes not just in the special effects sector, though. There are also many new characters. The first film had nine crewmembers on the Nebuchadnezzar - Reloaded has just four, with Link (Harold Perrineau) replacing Tank (Marcus Chong, who apparently was replaced due to a conflict over salary), whose character was killed off-screen between the films (as his being "lost" is briefly alluded to in this film by Link's wife, who is apparently Tank and Dozer's sister). But the supporting cast is loaded up. In addition to Agent Smith's return (the explanation for which is apparently waiting until Revolutions, unless we were supposed to pick it up through his doublespeak), Zion introduces numerous new characters, some of whom seem to have more important roles yet to play. There are further various programs introduced throughout the Matrix itself, only one or two of whom seem to end up being even remotely important.
The biggest problem with Reloaded is that it is a lot of special effects amounting to very little. It runs 138 minutes, but it feels nothing so much like it could have been told in 38. The rest of the film is like filler, the visible manifestation of the Wachowskis padding things out with pointless (if neat-looking) fight scenes and characters so that they could make a trilogy without having to come up with too many more ideas. As cool as all the action is, the first film had a pretty good foundation of ideas on which to rest all the fight scenes. Reloaded, for most of its running time, does not, and only a couple of the fights cover much new ground. It's a visual feast for action fans but a snoozer for those who want snazzier effects.
What Reloaded does well is set up the next film. Tremendously unsatisfying for nearly two hours, the film's final twenty to thirty minutes suddenly burst forth with all the ideas the Wachowskis were trying desperately not to waste earlier in the movie. Suddenly the characters are interesting again; suddenly there are plot twists which actually have some meaning. (A couple, I will say without spoiling them, are particularly mind-blowing. It is a refreshing return to the days of the first film when the story actually covered some new and interesting ground.) Those who are not put off by the comparatively dull first 90-plus minutes should be invigorated by these final scenes - naturally, the film hits "To Be Concluded" just as things are really heating up.
As a standalone film, The Matrix Reloaded would be confusing as anything and not especially enjoyable. As a sequel, it does quite a bit wrong. As the middle film of a trilogy, however, it at least succeeds in setting up the final chapter very well, a commendable accomplishment for what is in many other ways something of a train wreck.Despite its faults, Reloaded really whets the appetite for Revolutions, when it could easily have left fans with none whatsoever.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=7505&reviewer=385
originally posted: 10/11/04 18:05:30
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USA
15-May-2003 (R)
DVD: 07-Dec-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
16-May-2003
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