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The Genre: Science Fiction

The Format: Cinema

The plot: Neo, Trinity and Morpheus lead a revolt against the Machine Army as it attacks Zion. Their aim is to fight against the forces of repression and exploitation in an attempt to save the human race. Zion is the last human city on Earth and in their quest they gain more information on the workings of the Matrix.

It’s one of those movie-events-of-the-decade jobs, but was it actually any good?

Well, yes and no. Whilst I did enjoy it a great deal, it fell short in quite a few areas.

The special effects were simply amazing and the set pieces were mind-blowing as a result, with my personal favourite being the whole bike chase. The fight against multiple agent smiths seen extensively on the trailers was another highlight and was both convincing and kinda funny all at the same time. Getting to actually see Zion was also great, as it wasn’t how I’d pictured it at all, failing to use all of the clichés I’d imagine.

However, this analysis emphasises one of the ways in which the movie falls short. Many of these clever bits aren’t particularly well presented. The above point probably didn’t occur to many of the people watching the film. Which wasn’t because they were stupid or that it wasn’t there, it just wasn’t made very clear.

What makes things worse though, is the amount of time given over to the not-so clever bits. For example, early on in the film Neo has what is meant to be a big philosophical discussion with Councillor thingy. But thing is, it’s not particularly revealing, or insightful, or philosophically great or anything. It’s just a bit flat.

This sets up an expectation that all of the talky cod-philosophy bits aren’t really worth paying attention to. So when they happen, you’re pretty much not expecting to hear anything interesting, and in some cases you also get assaulted by a barrage of pointlessly big words, giving you the feel of somebody writing the script going “Look at me, I’m so clever, I can use big words”. You therefore switch off and don’t really appreciate the neat points that are made in some of these conversations.

Another problem is the whole thing with the new pilot for the Nebuchaneser. To be brutally honest, I really didn’t care about him, despite all of the effort that was put into trying to make me. I’m sure a lot of this was actually left over from the whole debacle over the guy who played Tak being dumped. What they should have done instead, was to have toned this bit down or maybe even gotten rid of it altogether. It really didn’t play particularly well, and besides, we’ve already got a main group who we care about, we don’t need anyone else.

These are all fairly minor things though, and I guess repeated viewings would refocus your attention. The real flaw in the movie is that it doesn’t have a proper hero (or, indeed, a proper villain). In the first movie you have the classic situation were Neo is the hero and you see everything through his eyes. You therefore identify with Neo, and in some ways you are Neo. In the second movie they missed this trick altogether. I personally reckon it should have been Morphius' movie and the focus should have been properly on him. You should have been Morphius. (The last one should be agent smiths movie :D).

Neo should have still been there of course, doing his natty party tricks, but this should have been less of a focus. Morphius should have been his boss. This did appear to be attempted at several points (sticking Neo over in Tibet, for example) but they then seem to have given in to the perceived demands of the audience. I.e. “we want more Neo!”.

On the villain side of things, this time around there is no central villain. Agent smith is there, but he’s become disconnected from the matrix and is just after vengeance against Neo. Other agents virtually don’t appear in the film, and whilst they’ve apparently been upgraded, the non-neo characters can now kick there arses, and they’ve lost the ability to shoot straight. In addition the tunnelling operation that is supposedly the motivation for everything that happens felt like it was tucked away and ignored.

So yeah, there was lots of potential that was missed, and the cool bits got slipped in in such a way that you wouldn’t notice. But as I say, I still enjoyed the film a great deal. If you switch off your brain you can enjoy the movie just as much as if you go looking for all the neat little bits and pieces. Which I reckon is a fairly good way to do a movie.

Those of you who have watched the Animatrix cartoons will get a few kicks out of spotting all the little bits and pieces that crop up. Though I’m not sure that making the plot of this film dependent on these was a good idea, it certainly adds a lot to the experience if you’ve seen them. Indeed, the anime influences are generally much more apparent this time, and they’re all done in a very nice way.

There are also some nice little foreshadowing elements, both for bits in this movie and for stuff that is presumably coming up in the concluding part. Similarly, there were some nice repeated themes, with plenty of the visual and stylistic touches seen in the first film re-appearing to good effect in this one. Like trinity kicking cop arse in the first and security guard arse in the second, or the exploding lift door in the first that becomes a flying neo in the second.

Good old gun play rears it’s ever-popular head again, but this time we’ve got plenty of swords and other weird and wonderful weapons cropping up as well. As for the orgasm cake, well what can I say? “I’ll have 2 portions please” maybe? We also get some red hot normal sex action so things are much more rounded, some lovey-dovey stuff (for the ladies :P) and there’s even a bit of ad-hoc surgery, for people interested in that sort of thing.

As mentioned, agent smith makes a welcome return, and does a pretty good job of stealing all the scenes he’s in (“Agent smith will do”). And for those that stayed to the end of the credits (and boy were there a lot of credits :/) there was even a cool looking trailer for the next film. So most definitely not all bad then.

The Summary: Reasonable sequal, if a bit of a missed opportunity.

The Score: 3/5

The Pictures:

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