The Matrix Reloaded

I remember The Matrix Reloaded being released. It was very exciting because the 3rd film was due only a few months later, so it felt like an appetiser for the big finale. But it wasn't. As it turned out The Matrix Reloaded was much better than The Matrix Revolutions ... which was, well, a bit rubbish really.

Not to say the Reloaded is great. It is OK. The original Matrix was so good (in my all time top 10) and innovative that the sequels were always going to struggle to have the same impact.

So Reloaded does what all sequels to great films do: more of the same. A lot more. Which is a problem. The film is too long. The fight scenes are mostly too long (some are just right) and too similar.

There are innovations. The replicating Agent Smith is great; but again we get too much of that and not enough of the great dialog which made Hugo Weaving such a hit in the original. All the best lines are saved for Laurence Fishburne's Morpheus.

There are also some stunning lapses of imagination: we already had The Oracle, but now we also get The Keymaker, The Twins and The Architect ... compensated somewhat by the epic Lambert Wilson as The Merovingian.

Ultimately Reloaded is memorable for the fantastic set-up it gives the last film. Right at the end we see Neo interact with Sentinels outside the Matrix. What? How can that be? There is no physical mechanism by which he can interact with Sentinels at a distance outside the Matrix... unless he really isn't outside the Matrix!

When I heard that the final movie was titled The Matrix Revolutions I was convinced that the twist was that it was revolutions as in cycles, rather than uprisings, and that we would discover that the Zionistas had never actually left the Matrix at all.

It would make sense; all the minds troubled by being in the Matrix get fed a scenario where they seem to escape and fight the evil machines.

But we didn't get anything like that... Neo is just magic or something.