Please watch The Matrix: Reloaded again

Every time I watch The Matrix: Reloaded, I like it more. It doesn’t mean much (and I know I use that phrasing a lot), because after seeing it for the first time in theatres I spent weeks putting my head around microwave ovens trying to erase it from my brain, but I think, with time, I learned to appreciate it for what it is. There’s also the fact that, at first, I had to compare it to the first Matrix movie, and now I compare it to The Matrix: Revolutions.

Which I did not learn to like. It will forever blow goats.

But Reloaded is enjoyable, just not on the same level as its predecessor. Which is a bit weird, because it’s basically the same movie, but with every dial turned up to 11. All the nice action scenes are there, and even more grandiose and over-the-top. The cyber-goth (or whatever…) aesthetics are there, and this time the Watchowskis had a costume budget so the trenchcoats and sunglasses look nice (to be fair, the sunglasses did look nice in the original as well). The dystopian cyberpunk future was still there, and this time we even got to see the fabled Zion. Why, then, is it not as good as the original?

For the same reasons, though not to the same extent, that the Star Wars prequels suck.

For one, The Matrix became a whole universe. Ironic, because one of the strong points of the first movie was that, while being self-contained, it created an amazing, rich and vivid world. But we didn’t know much about it; the movie didn’t have time to go into too many details, so we had to imagine most of it, and it made the movie reach deeper inside the viewer. We had just enough information to make an educated guess, so we felt smart, and the movie seemed smarter for it. By the time Reloaded came rolling, we had (or were about to have) the Animatrix shorts and the Enter the Matrix video game, and the universe was then set firmly it its own history, and all we could do was nitpick at the inconsistencies, the outright mistakes, and what we just plain didn’t like.

It really didn’t help that most of what the Watchowskis came up with wasn’t as good as what we had imagined (something that will reoccur between Reloaded and Revolutions, but I digress…). “The One” being a cyclical thing, the oracle being a program, the architect having planned the entire thing, vampires and ghosts being glitches from older versions of the matrix… some of it was inoffensive, but  most of it felt… off. Like midichlorians, just not on the same George-Lucas-forgot-his-medicine level of retarded. The philosophical undertones of the original also became very heavy-handed in the sequel, which, in my opinion, made the entire thing sound pompous, though (again) not as badly as in Revolutions.

So, it’s not a life-changing experience like the first one was (hyperbole…), but it’s still a cool wire-fu flick. And I’m not saying to lower your expectations, you should never do that, but judge it as a dumb (and I mean DUMB) kung-fu movie, and in this regard, it’s pretty good. It’s a pretty good, dumb kung-fu movie.

It’s nice what they did with Neo; usually, when writers are stuck with an all-powerful character, in order to make them vulnerable, they either make them less powerful with a shitty plot twist (i.e. TV’s Heroes) or introduce equally-powerful antagonists (i.e. Dragonball), making the whole thing pointless. Instead, the Watchowskis decided to focus on Neo’s shortcomings, and the support characters, to build tension. They did “upgrade” the agents, but they’re still no threat to Neo, so it gets a pass (It’s still kinda weird that Morpheus can keep up with them…).

And I don’t care if it makes me sound like a 13 year-old, but, damn, that highway scene is, I think, my all-time favourite action scene (maybe second to Ip Man‘s karate scene). Yes, the cars behave like they’re made of styrofoam blocks held together with happy thoughts, but it looked cool. And the twins looked cool. And the million-Smiths-brawl looked cool. And Morpheus’ katana + glock w/ extended mag looked cool. If they’d laid off the CGI a bit and relied more on wires, it would have been a great action flick with a shitty sequel.

Revolutions is beyond salvation though. Fuck did it suck…