MATRIX : Reviewed
"Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live. At least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that...for one chance...just ONE CHANCE to come back here to tell our enemy that they may take out lives, but they will never take OUR FREEDOM!!!" - Morpheus's speech, or was it William Wallaces

I went to see the Matrix Reloaded last night with Daryl.

If I don't write something about Matrix Reloaded now, I never will, so I'm going to ruddy well do it now. Yup now right after this sentence honest.

First off is it worth going to see? Yes. Would I like to get it on DVD and play bits of it over and over and over again? Yes. As I'm sure most of you will of already guessed it's a kung fu extravangza. There is more martial arts scenes then you could wave a point stick or a samari sword or pretty much any other sort of weapon at. Yup there sure as hell is a lot of unbelievable superhero martial arts with and without weapons, which did last for a long time however they didn't seem to drag as the action always seemed to be fast paced. Unfortunately a lot fewer guns than the first one, which had "guns lots of guns". You've probably heard about the "Neo vs hundreds of Agent Smiths" scene (codenamed "the Burly Brawl" according to Wired) - it's astounding.

The effects are similar in style to Matrix 1, just more so - more spinning, rotating, hordes of robots in the tunnels, everything. Which does bring me to the point of Bullet Time. Yeah we do all love it were
time seems to slow down and you can see bullets whizzing through the air, but you know one word, moderation.

Are the characters any better developed? No. Not at all. Possibly less so than the first one. The "humans" are less interesting than the programs. Mind you any film with Keanu Reeves as the protagonist obviously isn't that interested in detailed character acting. But then it's not a film about people.

I’m not sure that the plot is better then the first one, but I think this was mainly because at the more slower "here's the plot see if you can spot it scenes" Daryl kept asking me completely irrelevant questions, but there seemed to be a lot of droning on about choice that didn't seem to go anywhere and is the sort of thing that fourteen year olds would think is deep the rest of us just could give a rats nadgers. The scenes set in Zion, seem to be the worst culprit of this they tended to be just a bit dull and heavy-handed. Refugees, puffs of steam, a Council speaking in cod-Biblical terms... it's Battlestar Galactica, isn't it?
Mind you some definate hummingness towards the end of the film, but I don't want to say to much unless you've seen it.

Music... missed out there, as well. The soundtrack is disappointing, standard movie-orchestral stuff. Not bad as such, but they should definitely have continued the techno and industrial theme from 1. No point buying the CD for this one.

Casualty list? Less than the first one. In the first Matrix, Neo et al happily massacred dozens of innocent tools of the Matrix (see lobby scene - it rocked) and here, they just beat them up. This is not a major point, we're not short of violence and destruction, but it's noticeable.

The bad guys? Well Agent Smith is still his usual menacing self, although the rest of the agents don't seem to be able to carry it off in the same way - and they get beaten up a lot more. The twins that can do that neat trick of making themselves ethereal is cool, there British which also helps in being a bad guy, although I couldn't help myself from trying to remember what the name of the gardening/decorating (same difference) program they were on which probably made them a bit less scary.

Ok summing up time

Okay, why wouldn't you see it?
You hated the first one;
You hate Keanu Reeves;
You really hate kung fu;
You find all action scenes dull;
You're dead;
You're fanatically obsessed with the idea that all characters in films should be realistic, and break out in hives if there's the slightest hint that they aren't.

If you like supercharged kineticism and/or kung fu, you should definitely go see it right now, probably more than once.

Was it better than the first one? Mmmm........ yes probably. I think I'd like to see it again, maybe I've been jaded by repeated viewing of 1 so I'll have to repeatedly view this one as well.

Does it explain why Trinity loves Neo, apart from the fact that, y'know, it's her destiny? No. Does it have lots of shots of her in PVC? Oh yes.

Oh and don't go to the cinema with Daryl.