The Matrix Reloaded

Released 2003
Stars Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Ann Moss, Hugo Weaving, Jada Pinkett Smith, Monica Bellucci, Lambert Wilson, Harold Perrineau Jr., Harry J. Lennix
Directed by Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
Reviewed May 18, 2003

The Matrix Reloaded is a big departure from The Matrix. The first story was a small personal one about Neo (Keanu Reeves) hooking up with Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and his crew, but The Matrix Reloaded is bigger in scope. It takes us out of the world of the Matrix and plops us into the enormous underground city of Zion (I'm guessing the writers aren't Arabs). My biggest problem with this transition is with the character of Morpheus, who was bigger than life in the first movie but becomes an average, almost pathetic character in Reloaded. Laurence Fishburne, who has apparently been eating at the buffets in between movies, plays Morpheus with the vocal intonations of James Earl Jones playing Othello, and he spouts his cryptic mumbo jumbo about "The One" and the prophecy as if he were delivering Shakespeare. That worked beautifully in the first movie because we thought Morpheus was "the man." In Reloaded, we learn he's just another captain in Zion's military, and there are a lot of people who actually think he's crazy. He comes across as ridiculous in this new context, because he's grounded in the reality of Zion instead of the virtual reality of The Matrix.

The tones of the movies are also different. The first one was cool, creepy, suspenseful and explorative as we learned more and more about the Matrix, and it occasionally exploded into some of the best action I've ever seen. I was worried that Reloaded was going to be a series of loosely connected action scenes, but it's really the other way around. It's an endless series of mundane characters engaging in ridiculously shallow and pretentious speeches/discussions about free will with some action scenes tacked on. The movie's saving grace is the action scenes are spectacular, but I never felt like they were part of the story. They also lacked tension due to everyone being able to control the Matrix so well now. Neo is nearly invincible, and you never feel like he's in danger. The other main characters aren't invincible, but they can now stand up to the agents. I never felt any of them would die since the third part of the trilogy is coming in the fall. There was genuine tension in the first movie where all of the minor characters on the Nebuchannazar were killed, and it looked like Morpheus and Trinity could have been killed at any time as well.

One of the first differences I noticed between the two movies was the casting. If the title The Minority Report hadn't already been used, they could have easily used it here due to the African-American laden cast in Reloaded. My expected image of Zion was of a race of survivors who were as lily white as Kate Moss due to their living underground for centuries and the fact that the sky had been scorched (ala Highlander 2), so it was odd to see 90% of the underground people were black. I'm guessing this is because black actors work for less money, and they were trying to recoup the $100 million Keanu Reeves is supposed to get for the two sequels.

The ending left me scratching my head. The hard part of watching a movie in the theater instead of on DVD is you can't back up, and I missed the part with two doors and the choices Neo was given by the architect. I'm not sure what that was all about, but there was no doubt Neo was going to return to save Trinity.

In the end, is this movie worth seeing? I say yes for the action scenes. Although they lack any sense of urgency, they are balletic, poetic, and a lot of fun. Especially when they go to slow motion and the camera changes angles--those shots are the definition of poetry in motion. Then there's the car chase, which normally puts me to sleep, but the fight on the top of the semi-truck was fresh and exciting. The series is starting to move into cartoonish areas, however, with the twin ghosts, Agent Smith able to replicate himself at will, and Neo flying around like Superman. Will the third movie become even more absurd, or will it come back to some semblance of reality?

Reviewed by Bill Alward
May 18, 2003
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