The Matrix Reloaded (Widescreen Edition)
by Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
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Actor: Carrie-anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Keanu Reeves, Laurence FishburneDirector: Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
Brand: Matrix
Writer: Andy Wachowski
Writer: Larry Wachowski
Producer: Joel Silver
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Published), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 138 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-10-14
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: 28648
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- 2003 - Matrix Reloaded - Widescreen Edition
- Keanu Reeves, Carrie-anne Moss, Hugo Weaving
- 2-Disc DVD Set - 138 Minutes - Rated R
- Bonus Features - Warner Bros. -
- Collectible - New
DVD Reviews of The Matrix Reloaded (Widescreen Edition)
DVD Review: Flawed, wasted opportunity (spoilers)
Summary: 3 Stars
The Matrix Reloaded isn't a bad film. It's a very watchable, fun film. But the real disappointment is that there was the potential for it to be as fabulous as the first Matrix. It's a squandered opportunity. Sometimes when someone writes a novel that becomes a smash hit, the next isn't edited properly, because the publishing company are eager to keep their cash cow happy. That feels very much what happened here. It feels like nobody kept an eye on what the Wachowskis were doing, nobody tried to keep them focused, nobody steered them towards the story rather than the whizz-bang. And it's a crying shame, because the ideas they had for these films are completely brilliant.
The core of the second movie is the discovery that the entire premise of the first was a lie. The Prophecy is just another layer of control. The machines created Zion, selected the One, and set him up to start the cycle, just to keep people pacified; the naturally rebellious would have an outlet for their energies that could never threaten the status quo at all. Zion and the human resistance are no more nor less than a machine-created pressure valve for the Matrix itself. That idea is brilliantly clever; breathtakingly so. If the movie had been made with that at its heart, with everything else there just to serve the story, you'd have a movie that excelled the first, and could stand alone. But that wasn't what happened. And the failure of that story means that the last movie failed too, because its own story was equally muddled and equally squandered, and that compounded the problems. If the first movie had stuck to its story, and the second had lucidly set out that the machines are just as much sinned against as sinning, and can co-exist with humanity if only the hawks on both sides will allow them to do so, you'd have a brilliant series. But that isn't what happened, and saying "people didn't get the movies" just isn't good enough. It isn't a lack of intelligence that caused that problem. It's a lack of coherent, skilled story-telling. The first film was beautifully made and tight, taut narrative drove the plot. The second and third were muddled and self-indulgent, despite fantastic ideas and stunning set-pieces.
The first Matrix movie had budgetary constraints that meant all the action had to be justified by the plot. Here, the action is as out there as they can possibly make it. There's no sense of it being purely to further the story; it's an end in itself. The famous "burly brawl" (Neo v hundreds of Smiths) looks fake a lot of the time and goes on too long, and the real shame of it is that half the length and a lot less CGI and it could have worked. The point of that scene is that there is someone new in the mix whose power threatens even Neo, but that gets very lost. Similarly, the freeway chase scene is amazing, but too long. It dislocates the movie and makes the real heart of it - the final mission - feel squashed and an oversight. The focus on set pieces such as these makes for a choppy, episodic feel, and it's a real shame, especially as when they work the fight scenes are extraordinary - the Chateau scene is balletic in gracefulness and looked breathtaking on the big screen, and Neo's brief initial fight with agents sent the adrenaline in the cinema rocketing. But the sloppy editing and pacing of the movie really doesn't do it any favours.
Similarly, there are too many scenes that simply don't need to be there. The conflict between Morpheus and the Zion military command is dull, dull, dull. I can't imagine anyone cares. Link is a brand new character, and while the actor is light-years better than the appallingly hammy one who played Tank in M1, I can't imagine anyone investing in his marital problems after a two scene acquaintance. Most of the Zion scenes are redundant, though I'm possibly in an Anglo-Saxon minority in not thinking the sex scene is one. I don't see what the issue is in showing characters supposedly madly in love having sex, especially given the weight the movies place on that relationship later. The scene was framed to make it about intimacy and profound connection rather than explicit nudity - as you'd expect from the directors of Bound - though the Zion rave scenes it was cut with were a trifle annoying, looking as they did like an X rated Pepsi commercial.
Another problem is the wordiness and the heavily sign-posted symbolism. A good script shouldn't need to beat you over the head, yet here a lot of ink is spilt saying very little. The restaurant scene with the Merovingian is brilliant - well written and wonderfully performed - but as the character really hasn't been given enough to do, it's also redundant. This is especially unfortunate when the Merovingian says, with complete accuracy, that Neo is just doing what he's told and has no idea what his role really is. That salient observation is lost in all the waffle. This is a problem throughout; something may look good, it may sound good, but if it doesn't matter to the plot, it needs to go. The Architect scene is one that really does need to be there, and the for once the wordiness worked for me. It highlighted the difference between human and machine really well. But that was an exception. The constant talk of Purpose and Causality and Choice and Meaning is the paradigm of telling rather than showing, and if that's problematic in a book, it's a disaster in a film; particularly one so reliant on special effects. The effects and the wordiness and the heavy symbolism compete and counter one another, cancelling one another out and overloading the movie. Oddly enough in a film that prides itself on taxing audience intelligence, the philosophical and religious symbolism is laid on with a trowel at best, and beaten into your head with a baseball bat at worst. Those themes would be a lot more interesting if they were more subtly woven and didn't get in the way of the story. Exposition that detracts from the actual plot might be interesting in an art house film, but in this one it just doesn't do anything but diminish returns.
There's another big issue with a movie that throws so many words and so many explosions and fights into the mix: suspension of disbelief. When Neo stops sentinels with his mind, you need to be engaged enough with the plot to care. He can do this because he's been to the Source - the machine main frame - and presumably has enough of the machine code in his cranial hardware to do so, but it seems so out of left-field that you just think - huh?! The brilliance of the first film was the immediacy and plausibility of it. How *do* we know what is real? How can we be certain that life is as it seems? And the hyper-reality of the fighting freed and the Agents worked well juxtaposed to the broad mass of the rest of us. But in the sequels, there is no broad mass. We see programmes who are as stylised and skilled as the rebels, and you lose sight of the link to reality. Zion is a movie fantasy, too. I can't help suspecting that by losing the real world as we know it when portraying the Matrix, you lose some of the urgency. You also lose a connection to the audience. There's far less to identify with - to make this war and this battle feel relevant to audience lives. It's harder to care about the characters. This dislocation increases as the sequels progress and I found the eventual deaths - even of Neo and Trinity, characters I'd loved - muted and less than tragic. I think that is a pretty telling indictment.
The acting is mixed. I did feel Fishbourne phoned it in, to an extent. He obviously loved the character and that made him, for my money, a little self-indulgent. He sounds wonderful and looks fabulous, but there isn't the charisma and warmth he had in spades in the first film. Carrie Anne Moss is a fantastic actress, completely different in every movie I've seen her in and very convincing in all, but the oddity for me was that she was a different character in this movie to the Trinity in the first. You could argue that the character is now in love, but she still seems a completely different character, even in scenes where she isn't speaking. It doesn't matter hugely as both are likeable and engagingly intelligent portrayals, but if you watch the films together, it's noticeable, and I do wonder if the actress didn't just find a new portrayal after the break instead of rediscovering the old. In a sense it's a compliment to her that there is so little of her own personality in her acting - someone essentially playing themselves wouldn't have the problem. I also found her fight scenes rather less impressive in the sequels, to the point I wondered if the actress had been injured? She did far better in the car/bike chase elements. I thought Keanu Reeves was great as Neo; the change here is every bit as enormous but makes far more sense in terms of the plot. A lonely computer geek is now pretty much God with a wicked-hot girlfriend, so you'd expect him to be a tad more assured. People say Reeves is a terrible actor, but actually I disagree. I've seen him interviewed and was amazed to find he was very bright - and then realised that I'd thought he was Ted. Most of the world thought he was Ted. Now most people think he's Neo. Given the gulf between those characters, that's quite some achievement. He has a stillness and an innocence - a goodness, really - that worked really well here and he looks amazing in the fight scenes. I don't think he has huge range as an actor, but in his own parameters I think he's fantastic and the role suits him brilliantly. I also loved the actor who played the Merovingian; the Keymaker is also excellent; the Architect was genuinely chilling; and Hugo Weaving seems temperamentally incapable of ever turning in anything but a superb performance, no matter what he does. Jon Voight was also good in a cameo role (though it would have served the film better if his cameo had been single scene - only Star Trek fans could have enjoyed the Zion Council scenes).
The real failure of this film is that between the endless talking and the endless fighting you end up feeling like hardly anything important happened - that it's light on plot. And nothing, actually, could be further from the truth. A film with a brilliantly clever plot, some wonderful characters, and some fabulous action scenes ended up being a bit of a confusingly episodic mess. A hugely enjoyable, fun, action-packed mess, but a mess just the same. The action and speech disguised rather than revealed the plot, and it's such a shame. This movie is a real lost opportunity. I'd buy it anyway, expecially in Blu Ray and especially if I had a very large screen! But I can't help feeling sad that they didn't have someone from Warner keeping their eye on the ball. They killed their own franchise and didn't really realise their vision, I don't think.
Description of The Matrix Reloaded (Widescreen Edition)
In the second chapter of the Matrix trilogy, Neo (Keanu Reeves), Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) continue to lead the revolt against the Machine Army. In their quest to save the human race from extinction, they gain greater insight into the construct of The Matrix and Neo's pivotal role in the fate of mankind.DVD Features:
DVD ROM Features:Web links to the official Matrix website
Documentaries:PRELOAD: Go behind the scenes with the cast and crew THE FREEWAY CHASE: Anatomy of the mind-blowing scene ENTER THE MATRIX: Making of the ground-breaking video game WHAT IS THE ANIMATRIX? THE MATRIX UNFOLDS: A look at the Matrix phenomenon GET ME AN EXIT: Matrix-inspired design advertising
Other:THE MTV MOVIE AWARDS RELOADED
Considering the lofty expectations that preceded it, The Matrix Reloaded triumphs where most sequels fail. It would be impossible to match the fresh audacity that made The Matrix a global phenomenon in 1999, but in continuing the exploits of rebellious Neo (Keanu Reeves), Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) as they struggle to save the human sanctuary of Zion from invading machines, the codirecting Wachowski brothers have their priorities well in order. They offer the obligatory bigger and better highlights (including the impressive "Burly Brawl" and freeway chase sequences) while remaining focused on cleverly plotting the middle of a brain-teasing trilogy that ends with The Matrix Revolutions. The metaphysical underpinnings can be dismissed or scrutinized, and choosing the latter course (this is, after all, an epic about choice and free will) leads to astonishing repercussions that made Reloaded an explosive hit with critics and hardcore fans alike. As the centerpiece of a multimedia franchise, this dynamic sequel ends with a cliffhanger that virtually guarantees a mind-blowing conclusion. --Jeff Shannon
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