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Fuck, people, Matrix Reloaded is absolutely appalling. I don’t mean it’s not as good as the original, which was no great shakes anyway, or it’s disappointing, because I had no expectations, or that it’s just pretty bad. I mean it’s out-and-out, from whichever angle you come at it, laughably atrocious. It’s complete and utter garbage. This is the trilogy to rival the Star Wars prequels? Get out of here before I kick you in the fucking knackers.
There is not a single performance in this movie, just pose after pose after pose. Yes, yes, more sunglasses, whipping leather coats and blah blah – that stuff’s run its course and then some. Thing is, no one looks cool. Keanu Reeves is so wooden he actually forgets to do simple actorly things like move his face, plus he has green stubble. Laurence Fishburne has been eating pies between the last Matrix film and this one. Carrie Ann Moss looks like a cross between Fiona Shaw and a mop. Monica Bellucci, so electrifyingly sexy in Under Suspicion, struggles beneath five pounds of foundation that makes her face look as if it was drawn on the back of a spoon.
Most of the (tedious) fighting is done by obvious CG doubles that are shockingly inept at times, coming way too close to the camera and generally lending every punch-up the visual reality of a video game. The faces are expressionless (okay, so the Keanu Reeves double is a good likeness) and far too smooth, the costumes too simple and the movements jerky. Who gives a shit about a fight between Neo and a hundred Agent Smiths when every shot is so false? Can we really get excited about an extended car chase when it looks like a poor man’s Final Fantasy programmed on an old ZX81? These much-trumpeted set pieces are at best nothing more than all right and at worst boring as piss.
Anyway, the film is at least somewhat bearable during the action scenes, which is more than can be said for any time someone opens their fucking mouth. I’m still reeling from the shock of how truly terrible the dialogue, and I mean just about every line, is in this film. Seriously, the same people who’ve spent the last four years slagging off George Lucas are praising this fucking screenplay, which is quite possibly the worst I’ve ever heard? Christ, it’s fucking hilarious. The po-faced pomposity with which these non-characters spout their meaningless platitudes defies belief. Just how many fortune cookies did the Wachowskis crack open to paste together this unbelievable fart bag of a script? Best scenes: Morpheus’s speech to the citizens of Zion: had me laughing out loud. Neo’s conversation with a key figure in the creation of the Matrix: the Wachowskis clearly got a thesaurus for Christmas. This guy goes on and on and on, all these big words that mean ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING. It’s so fucking laughable. It’s like the worst Chris Carter monologue you can possibly imagine, rewritten by a teenage philosopher. I think they’re trying to ape 2001 here, but they’re ants at the feet of a fucking elephant. Anything that French guy says: man, it’s impossibly bad. The scene with the Oracle: empty, windy farts of trite babble. There’s no depth here, there’s no mystery, there’s no analysing it, there are no layers. It’s all just meaningless shite dressed up with stiff, lifeless performances to make us think it carries any weight. Characters are wise because they say ‘do not’ instead of ‘don’t.’ If you’re older than twelve, then please, please tell me you don’t find any of this guff to be even approaching deep thinking. I really can’t find the words to describe the bottomless awfulness of the dialogue; just go and see the movie, and hear it for yourself. It blew me away. Worst screenplay of all time? I think so.
Oh, man, so much badness. The revelations about the nature of the Matrix are kind of cool, but think about them for more than three seconds once the lights go up and you’ll realise it makes no sense. Actually, the... um, nope, no sense whatsoever. What’s with the dancing in Zion while Neo and Trinity get it on? Why does this scene go on and on and on and on and on and on and on until I was about ready to cry? Seriously, it seems like it’s never going to end. More crucially, why are the few thousand people that make up the last vestiges of humanity fannying about in a disco when their fucking city’s about to be destroyed? Internal logic, never this series’ strong suit, goes completely out the window here: If hacking into the Matrix is so easy, as shown by the scene in which Trinity is plonked on a motorbike right where she needs to be, why all the fuss about finding an exit in the original film and in early scenes here? If Neo is powerful enough to stop hundreds of bullets fired from automatic weapons, why doesn’t he dispense with the tiresome kung fu and send his enemies arse first down a fucking corridor? What possible suspense is there in fight scenes and chase scenes when we know the good guys can do what the hell they want and the agents can appear wherever? How many times can Morpheus fall over and cling with his fingertips to the top of a lorry? About three fucking hundred, apparently. And wasn’t the first Animatrix short, Final Flight of the Osiris, supposed to impact heavily on the series continuity? It makes no fucking difference to the plot since its story is summed up in the first half hour anyway. Wish I hadn’t bothered watching it now.
The score hits the spot and there are one or two moments of visual inventiveness, but it’s not enough. Nothing is, or could be, enough to save this godawful film from sinking beneath the weight of its own ineptitude and unbearable childish philosophising. The dialogue... fucking dire-logue, more like it. How, how, HOW has this inane slice of dogshit pie not been laughed out of the fucking cinema? Why are the Wachowskis feted as if they’re visionaries? The first film was just a pile of borrowed ideas dressed up in shades and leather coats, and it was harmless enough, but I think the levels of craptitude on display here has actually damaged my brain. As for the trailer for The Matrix Revolutions, you must be fucking joking, lads. You must be fucking joking.
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