Director: The Wachowskis
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. After The Matrix (1999) I was pretty excited about it. When I heard the Wachowskis were producing their sequels back-to-back, a la the same process used for Back to the Future - Part II (1989) and Back to the Future - Part III (1990), I got even more excited. It felt like they were doing things right.
Did I Like It: And that excitement sort of evaporated. Instantly. The balance between mythologyesque/adventurey and the more religiousy/allegoryish elements of the original film moved all the way to the religiousy end of the spectrum. That may not be the right criticism for this movie in particular, but the Matrix sequels as a whole certainly landed there. This one seems more like a relentless chase sequence that expands on the original film’s main feature… And that is making a bunch of story promises that the additional movies can’t or wont’ payoff.
Sure, the freeway segment probably doesn’t get enough credit for being a pretty spectacular action sequence, but the extended rave sequence in the city of Zion is such a protracted exercise in self-indulgence that I honestly wonder if Kevin Smith didn’t direct it. It exists merely to be cool and has so little to do with the scraps of a story filling the remaining two and a half hours, that I’m sort of surprised that J.J. Abrams didn’t take over the production at some point.
I suppose that’s probably enough snark to spread around for one movie, but ultimately this feels like a list of cool things (raves, flying sequences, techno vampires) desperately searching for a story. They didn’t have a story to continue, but they jammed just enough philosophy and pyrotechnics into a package to convince some people.