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I've been reading a lot of posts here and they just seem to get dragged down by people bitching about others opinions. If anybody is going to reply to this, keep it calm. I just want to discuss the movie.
Im gonna go see it again, because I know a lot of the points im gonna make are multiplied by the fact that I was exhausted and had to sit in the front row to watch it.
That said, most of the points Im going to make backs up the idea that it felt like a movie cut in half and then padded out to make two movies. More than likely, there was too much for one movie. Bear in mind that some of the below are things setiously wrong with the movie and some are just small things (like the CGI stuntmen)
Lets face it, the movie was boring for the first 30 minutes. Too much time taken up on unimportant details.
The rave has wish fulfilment written all over it. It just strikes me that the Wachowski brothers wished they were cool enough to go to hardcore raves. Dont get me wrong, Im a geek in the exact same way they seem to be in interviews, but not fitting with popular scenes genuinely doesnt bother me. That shit isnt really about beiing cool anyway.
The introduction of sex to the movie was unnecessary in both cases. The mention of sex can stop a lot of movies right in its tracks. In a movies which belnds kung fu/anime type action with a hell of a lot of philosophy, it was a bad idea for the Neo/trinity scene to be so long and the orgasmic chocolate cake to even be there.
The fight scene between Neo and the guy who watches over the oracle was pretty good, but really did seem to have been thrown in for no good reason. Making sure neo was the one? Horseshit. More padding. Considering the smith fight was next (I will not call it the burly brawl, whose great fucking idea was that?) it was unneeded.
Remember how cool Darth Maul was? Remember how his face was part of the star wars logo for pretty much all the episode 1 merchandise? Remember how disappointed we were when, cool as he genuinely was, he was only in the movie for a few minutes? How many new matrix characters felt the same way?
Ah yes. The CGI stuntmen. That has not progressed at all since Spawn. But they were smart enough to keep the camera moving quickly to disguise it. The only place where I felt it failed was where the agent jumped onto the car bonnet on the freeway. Slow motion there killed the effect. Bit of a shame that one, cos in theory its really cool.
Speaking of the freeway, Morpheus' fight suffered from him fighting off the agent but nearly getting knocked off the truck too many times. Talk about killing it.
Its a shame that that was one of the few things that Morpheus really got to do. In the first movie, after morpheus gets rescued and the three are together, it feels like they can do anything together. In movie 2, they cant do shit without Neo saving them. But thats OK cos he is all powerful in the matrix now. I mean, he can fly! But he isnt all powerful. Then he is again. Back and forth man. That inconsistency is a killer. During the first agent fight, Neo realises that the agents have been upgraded. Then later he sees and fights agent smith and clones. He eventually flies away. Why didnt he just do that in the first place?
Reloaded really made me realise that the matrix didnt really need a sequel. Accepting that starship troopers is a vastly inferior movie to matrix or reloaded, it ends the same way. The idea of "we have now made our first major victory, now we can build on this to eventually win" is not a bad way to end a movie. It seemed lazy in starship troopers, but it made the matrix a genuinely perfect movie. No sappy happy ending, but a sign that things were turning around for the better.
One great thing about the original was that there was all that philosophy and ideas that were ripped off from most major religions and ways of thinking. You could ignore it if you wanted and the film did not suffer in the least. Not so this time.
Finally, making the story incomplete without getting the animatrix and the video game is fucking shameful. Getting other perspectives from them would have been OK, but this is not. This may be the greatest reason why reloaded is inferior. The first movie wouldnt have screwed you over like this, because nobody knew it was a money machine yet.
I ended up not bothering getting into the good points cos we can all see what they were. Im gonna go see it on wednesday and see how a good nights sleep and not having a sore neck when watching the movie contribute to the experience.
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