The Matrix Reloaded

The following is a post about the new Matrix movie. It contains spoilers, so if you haven't seen it, you've been warned.

First off, it's a good movie. Technically stunning, enjoyable, good stuff. I'm not going to rave about the good stuff, because you all have probably heard about it. Freeway scene, the twins, Neo fighting 100 Smiths with a pole, etc. It's all amazing. It will blow your mind, the technical shit they pull off.

However, it also had some problems that really annoyed me.

The pacing was awful in some parts. There was a COMPLETELY pointless five minute long Zion rave/soft core porn scene that had me fidgeting with boredom. They had this problem where they would go on these really long dialogue diatribes, and then switch to a really long fight sequence, as opposed to the quicker pacing of the first movie. That got on my nerves.

Secondly, the plot and editing seemed patchy. You get to the end of the movie without knowing what happened to half the characters. I can mostly forgive this because it's obviously just a really long movie that was cut into two pieces. I suppose we'll find out what happened in the next one.

The Matrix "philosophy" seems a bit dodgy to me. The Matrix "architect" needs "the one" to decide the fate of humanity? Why? If he's in charge, why does he need someone else deciding these things? I also had some serious issues with him needing to repopulate Zion, but the more that I think about it, the more that it seems that even Zion and all the people that think they're outside of the Matrix are actually still inside of it. That would mean that they might "need" Zion to create the constant conflict that humans need to be good slaves. That's the ONLY acceptable excuse for Neo being able to stop those sentinels at the end of the movie, the real world HAS to be "inside" the matrix. If they give him some bullshit mumbo-jumbo powers in the real world, I'll be disgusted with the whole franchise.

Honestly, though, these are pretty minor nits, in the large scope of things. I think they will clean up all the plot issues that I have in the third movie, leaving only this issue of strange pacing and pointless rave/porn scenes. I can live with that, but I wish they'd clean up their editing for the next one, and intersperse fighting and boring a little bit more seamlessly.