The Matrix Reloaded

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie Ann Moss, Hugo Weaving, Daniel Bernhardt, Monica Bellucci, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and Anthony Wong

Written and Directed by: Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski
It’s always difficult to match a blockbuster. This is especially true for the Matrix due to the fact that a big part of the enjoyment was discovering the universe that the film resided in. With Reloaded the sense of discovery is missing. That’s not to say there aren’t surprises or avenues of exploration to journey down, but it does feel as if something is missing from the overall mixture.

Six months after the first film, Neo awakens from a nightmare where he watched Trinity fall to her death after being shot by an Agent.

Soon after Captain Niobe (Pinkett-Smith) calls a meeting of Zion’s hovercraft fleet. There is new information that 250,000 sentinels are now digging their way towards Zion. Commander Lock, in charge of Zion’s defense forces orders all ships to return to Zion to prepare her defenses.

Morpheus convinces one ship to stay behind so they can contact the Oracle. The Caduceus and the Nebuchadnezzar stay behind to allow Neo his opportunity. Bane, a crew member of the Cadueceus encounters the reborn (Now not an Agent) Smith who takes over Bane’s body before Bane jumped back to reality.

Back in Zion, it should be a wonderful reveal of the last bastion of humanity, but it falls short somehow. We realize quickly that Lock and Morpheus don’t get along, mainly because of Niobe, but also that in general there is disagreement over the prophecy and the upcoming invasion. Morpheus is given the freedom to announce the invasion to the general public and does so in a speech that is meant to be stirring, patriotic, and emotional. Through no fault of Laurence Fishburne’s it comes off second rate, cheap, tawdry, and just too long.

What’s worse is that this is followed by a long ritualistic tribal dance rave by the people of Zion while Neo and Trinity get down to business. It seems long, overindulgent, and completely unnecessary. It only serves to show Neo having the nightmare again.

Also on Zion we are treated to Dozer and Tank’s sister Zee, whose husband, Link is the new operator on the Nebuchadnezzar. The family squabble over how much time he’s been away looks to make the Zionists seem more human, I believe, but it does little except get in the way of the larger story. It’s not bad as subplots go, but I could have done without.

Neo receives a message from the Oracle and goes to her. He first has to pass her firewall, Seraph who utters the memorable line,

You do not truly know someone until you fight them.

Realizing that the Oracle is yet another of the programs in the Matrix, Neo asks how he can trust her. She admits that there is no concrete reason he should. He has to make the choice. This is the central theme of the entire movie. Choice. And more importantly, the choices Neo has to make. The Oracle informs Neo that he must find the Keymaster who will be able to lead him to the Source.

The Oracle leaves and is replaced on the scene by Smith who explains that after his defeat he should have gone to the source to be deleted, but he chose to stay which freed him. He now was no longer duty bound to remove threats from the Matrix. He also is able to duplicate himself leaving a fight between Neo and a hundred Smiths whom eventually overwhelm Neo, who has to fly off and escape.

Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus direct themselves to meet with the Merovingian who holds the Keymaster. Some people dislike this scene and one later for being pompous and pseudo-philosophical but I found it engaging. In fact it recaptures some of that discovery I mentioned earlier. The discovery of the Merovingian’s role in the Matrix.

The Merovingian rejects Neo’s request and walks away, but his wife Persephone, tired of his infidelity and attitude betrays him and leads them to the Keymaster.

This leads to the biggest action sequence of the movie and one of the longest action sequences in the history of films. First Neo takes on the Merovingian’s guards while Morpheus and Trinity try to take the Keymaker away. Followed by the Merovingian’s ghostly, albino henchmen, they make it to the highway. The Twins, as they are known, represent ghosts, as one of the Merovingian’s provinces are the exiles from the Matrix system.

The Merovingian makes it so that Neo is miles away from the action, and he has to hurry.

The car chase sequence is one of the better every filmed, given that there is no need to follow reality’s rules. It is visually stunning, although it is somewhat long. Morpheus is able to destroy the Twins’ car and then is saved in turn by a flying Neo.

Neo learns of the Source Door that is at a building in the Matrix. In order to successfully enter the door, a power station needs to be destroyed, as well as a back up station, which will give Neo about 5 minutes to enter the door without sounding the alarm.

The crew of the Logos, lead by Niobe dispatches the power station. The crew of the Vigilant enter to dispatch the back up, but when a sentinel discovers the ship, it is destroyed along with its crew.

Trinity, who had promised Neo she’d stay out of the Matrix, breaks her oath, by entering the Matrix herself to destroy the back up. She is successful, although she is soon interrupted by the Agent from Neo’s dreams.

While this is going on, Smith shows up in the building and attacks Morpheus and Neo who tries to protect the Keymaker. Eventually the Keymaker opens the door and Neo and Morpheus fly through, but the Keymaker is killed.

Neo is led to the door that only he can go through while Morpheus returns to reality.

This leads to the most polarizing scene in the film. Neo meets the self described Architect. It is here that in a very grandiose style, the Architect reveals that it is he who created the Matrix and was its father. While the Oracle was its mother. He goes on to reveal that this was not the first Matrix. The first attempt at a Matrix was utopic in nature, but it was an absolute failure because humanity was unable to accept such a world as a reality.

The Architect then redesigned the Matrix to reflect human history and culture, but it still failed. It was the Oracle who added the key component. She offered a version of the Matrix that would give humans the unconscious choice of accepting it or not, thus the theme of choice becomes all important again. . This version was accepted by nearly 99% of all test subjects. However, the downside was that the small percentage of humans that did not accept the Matrix would inevitably increase and become a threat to the machine world. With the proper control, it was deemed an inevitability and the Architect believed they could keep disaster from happening.

We then learn that this has been an ongoing cycle. Neo is the sixth version of The One. By the time The One reached this stage of his cycle, the machine army is built up to destroy Zion. The One has a choice. He can can choose to return to the Source, where Zion would be destroyed, but he could choose 23 humans to restart Zion, and continue the cycle, or he could choose to return to the Matrix which would eventually cause a fatal system error, and destroy all the humans that are plugged into the Matrix, while the machines destroy Zion, making humanity extinct.

Neo is offered the same choice his five predecessors were given. All five times in the past, The One returned to the Source. The difference in this One, was that Neo’s tie to humanity, which was programmed into him as a means to orchestrate his eventual meeting with the Architect, was a more specific tie — Trinity.

Neo rejected the Architect’s offer and chose to re-enter the Matrix, supposedly dooming mankind, in an effort to save Trinity.

Now I know most people hate this scene and fast forward it, but I found it fascinating. It explained so much, but in such a vague fashion that there were several branches of thought to break off from. I will explore these more in later essays, but needless to say, I enjoyed this portion of the film greatly.

Trinity is shot and killed as in Neo’s dream, but Neo is able to catch her while she is falling, bringing her to a building top.

Unwilling to let her go, Neo manipulates the Matrix and enters her chest, removing the bullet. He proceeds to massage and give a jolt to her heart re-starting it and saving her life.

Back in reality, Neo is forced to reveal his findings to the crew, shocking Morpheus by claiming that the Prophecy was truly a lie. It was all a means to reboot the Matrix. Suddenly, the sentinels attack and amazingly Neo can feel them in reality as well. he lifts his hand and is able to stop them, leaving a great question open — how does Neo affect them in the real world?

Neo falls unconscious, but the crew is all saved by the Hammer. It turns out there was a slaughter of ships in the real world when an EMP went off from the Caduceus rendering the ships helpless before the attack. The only survivor is Bane…and thus ends Reloaded, leading into the finale, Revolutions.

When the credits hit, I was jarred by the loud guitars of Rage Against the Machine and I must say I realized then immediately, that that was one of the major differences between the first and second films…to the second film’s detriment.

The second film chose to not have a raw industrial rock soundtrack, instead opting for a more programmed techno feel. It is too generated and not in tune with the humanity of the resistance movement. It could have been a concscious choice, but I feel it might have been better served to cut it in half. The humans could be scored with the raw industrial rock, while the programs could receive the more computerized music.

The film is overall a fun ride, but is too overindulgent to capture the magic of the first one. It does make some great strides in exploring the world a bit further, and answering a few questions while sprouting off enough to make you think about others.

There are too many passages that drag the film down and hold it back, but there are also a ton of highlights that make the film worth watching and not skip during trilogy nights.

C+