Welcome back to another edition of Adam's Reviews!!
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Tonight's movie flick is The Matrix Reloaded (2003), the sci-fi sequel to the phenomenon The Matrix (1999). Obviously after the success of the original Matrix, the head honchos of Warners gave a large amount of cash to the Wachowski's and asked for more and guess what? That's exactly what they did, with this new entry in the world of Matrix, the mainstream film goers finally got what they just wanted to see - Neo, Trinity and Morpheus back in action and for that, boy did the film deliver.
The Matrix Reloaded starts with Trinity riding a motorcycle into a building guard shack, then being chased by an agent around inside the building before jumping out of a skyscraper window where we get to see bullet-time aka slow-mo treatment of Trinity firing her pistols as she falls. In the middle of the flick, we get to see Neo take on a vast array of replicated Smiths where we get to see non stop martial arts action which is heavily influenced by Japanese Anime and old school Hong Kong action flicks. We also get to see an underground cave city of Zion and the wild rave parties that take place there, which begins to turn into a pulsating orgy. We see Neo and Trinity escape to a bedroom where they have sex to the tempo of the wildly beating drums. Glimpses of rear and side nudity accompany their movements where barely-clothed bodies sway and leap, rub and thrust as the torch-lit mob gives themselves to the tribal stomp- style rhythms.
The movie has a number of complicated dialogue and monologues from new and current characters that end up making you feel confused of what they have said and trying to keep up with the rules of this wonderful universe. The film does allow viewers to go deeper into the rabbit hole, but this is the first time as a movie enthusiast that I felt uncertain about where this hole was heading. The explanation of the universe is over complicated such as rogue programmers, yet the story overall is simple, an army of sentinels is set to invade Zion and kill the remaining rebel humans.
The story however isn't as appealing to the original. To be honest this story feels like you are playing a video game, which isn't bad. At each stage, heroes fight off attackers in order to finish that level and proceed to the next one. First, Neo must reach the Oracle. She tells him to find the Key Maker and get the key that opens a secret door. To secure the Key Maker, Neo must get through the Merovingian and his henchmen. To reach the secret door, the rebel Zion crew must disable the security alarms...or it's game over.
The acting suffers from the same problems as the plot - it is all too heavy and this can be demonstrated with a key character Morpheus (played by the great Laurence Fishburne) who in the original played a very dynamic character - from waking Neo up to The Matrix, talking like a prophet and having a mix of playful wit and serious touches when they were needed. In this sequel, his character seems to be mistaken that he is playing a political leader for example him speaking to the crowds at Zion before the rave party. Even his fight scenes, in the first film his face-off with Smith you could see the vulnerability however in this film he is more like a rock and less fun and mentoring.
New characters such as Persephone who bares quite a bit of cleavage and her partner the programmer Merovingian both feel unimportant in this film. Why bring in a character who can manipulate the Matrix code in a way that compels a woman to give him oral pleasures and provide them satisfaction when eating a desert? The transparent twins also were wasted in this film.
Overall, it was always going to be hard to follow up the first film. There are reversal call backs to the original where you saw Trinity bringing Neo back to life with a kiss in the first film. In this sequel it is Neo who returns the favour by resuscitating Trinity by reaching inside her digitized body and "healing" the computer code that's been disrupted by a bullet. Did you get that? Yeh complicated right? The epic car chase is awesome where we see fight scenes that do not involve Neo, we see Morpheus kicking butt and Trinity driving through a highway where we see enough vehicles crashing and burning to make the creators of The Fast and the Furious drool with envy. However the overall plot loses its simple touch by diving too deep into the computer language world. One thing that the movie didn't squander was upping the ante with fetish style leather costumes. 7/10.
**queue intro music**
Tonight's movie flick is The Matrix Reloaded (2003), the sci-fi sequel to the phenomenon The Matrix (1999). Obviously after the success of the original Matrix, the head honchos of Warners gave a large amount of cash to the Wachowski's and asked for more and guess what? That's exactly what they did, with this new entry in the world of Matrix, the mainstream film goers finally got what they just wanted to see - Neo, Trinity and Morpheus back in action and for that, boy did the film deliver.
The Matrix Reloaded starts with Trinity riding a motorcycle into a building guard shack, then being chased by an agent around inside the building before jumping out of a skyscraper window where we get to see bullet-time aka slow-mo treatment of Trinity firing her pistols as she falls. In the middle of the flick, we get to see Neo take on a vast array of replicated Smiths where we get to see non stop martial arts action which is heavily influenced by Japanese Anime and old school Hong Kong action flicks. We also get to see an underground cave city of Zion and the wild rave parties that take place there, which begins to turn into a pulsating orgy. We see Neo and Trinity escape to a bedroom where they have sex to the tempo of the wildly beating drums. Glimpses of rear and side nudity accompany their movements where barely-clothed bodies sway and leap, rub and thrust as the torch-lit mob gives themselves to the tribal stomp- style rhythms.
The movie has a number of complicated dialogue and monologues from new and current characters that end up making you feel confused of what they have said and trying to keep up with the rules of this wonderful universe. The film does allow viewers to go deeper into the rabbit hole, but this is the first time as a movie enthusiast that I felt uncertain about where this hole was heading. The explanation of the universe is over complicated such as rogue programmers, yet the story overall is simple, an army of sentinels is set to invade Zion and kill the remaining rebel humans.
The story however isn't as appealing to the original. To be honest this story feels like you are playing a video game, which isn't bad. At each stage, heroes fight off attackers in order to finish that level and proceed to the next one. First, Neo must reach the Oracle. She tells him to find the Key Maker and get the key that opens a secret door. To secure the Key Maker, Neo must get through the Merovingian and his henchmen. To reach the secret door, the rebel Zion crew must disable the security alarms...or it's game over.
The acting suffers from the same problems as the plot - it is all too heavy and this can be demonstrated with a key character Morpheus (played by the great Laurence Fishburne) who in the original played a very dynamic character - from waking Neo up to The Matrix, talking like a prophet and having a mix of playful wit and serious touches when they were needed. In this sequel, his character seems to be mistaken that he is playing a political leader for example him speaking to the crowds at Zion before the rave party. Even his fight scenes, in the first film his face-off with Smith you could see the vulnerability however in this film he is more like a rock and less fun and mentoring.
New characters such as Persephone who bares quite a bit of cleavage and her partner the programmer Merovingian both feel unimportant in this film. Why bring in a character who can manipulate the Matrix code in a way that compels a woman to give him oral pleasures and provide them satisfaction when eating a desert? The transparent twins also were wasted in this film.
Overall, it was always going to be hard to follow up the first film. There are reversal call backs to the original where you saw Trinity bringing Neo back to life with a kiss in the first film. In this sequel it is Neo who returns the favour by resuscitating Trinity by reaching inside her digitized body and "healing" the computer code that's been disrupted by a bullet. Did you get that? Yeh complicated right? The epic car chase is awesome where we see fight scenes that do not involve Neo, we see Morpheus kicking butt and Trinity driving through a highway where we see enough vehicles crashing and burning to make the creators of The Fast and the Furious drool with envy. However the overall plot loses its simple touch by diving too deep into the computer language world. One thing that the movie didn't squander was upping the ante with fetish style leather costumes. 7/10.