You know a movie is bad when one of the highlights is the part where the antagonist and the protagonist impotently hit each other for five minutes and then one leaves.
Nicely put. I liked the action sequences in the first movie; they were fresh and new, and they integrated well with Neo’s discovery of his abilities. In the second movie, they just go on forever, and since they are not bound by physical laws, there are never any consequences and hence no recognizable danger. Someone might get knocked off the top of a moving truck, but all that means is that they will now be standing on the side of the truck. The fighting continues until some arbitrary point where one person wins for some reason.
That’s actually typical of all the fight scenes in that movie - lack of plot significance. Consider the first film and its three major fight scenes:
Morpheus vs. Neo (the dojo scene): Explains some of the nature of the bendable reality of the Matrix, shows Neo starting to adapt to it, though not completely since he fails the jump test.
Morpheus vs. Smith: Morpheus sacrifices himself to give the others, including Neo, a chance to escape.
Neo vs. Smith: Neo recognizes his destiny, becomes The One.
All of these, in addition to being eye-candy, actually move the plot forward. Now consider Matrix Reloaded:
[spoiler]Neo vs. Three Agents - he knocks them around for a while, then gets bored and flies away.
Neo vs. Seraph - Futile dance number in which neither lands a punch (“It’s cool, I was just testing you.”)
Neo vs. MultiSmiths - Cool, but at the end, Neo gets bored and flies off… again.
Neo vs. Merovingian’s goons - Mildly amusing but raises the question of why Neo, who can bend the reality of the Matrix to his will, bothers to get into these vulgar brawls in the first place. He can make weapons fly from the wall into his hands. Hey, Neo, here’s a thought - make all the weapons on this side of the room fly over to that side of the room and have them reduce the goons to Swiss cheese in the process (…mmmmm… processed Swiss cheese…)
Freeway chase - cool, I admit, including Morpheus vs. the White Rastas and Morpheus vs. the Agent (Jackson, I think), but ultimately pointless. The rebels start the sequence with the Keymaster and at end they still have the Keymaster, and the Keymaster himself is little more than a walking, talking MacGuffin anyway (who dies as soon as his scripted purpose is fulfilled) and why the Agents are so hot to eliminate him (even to the point of ignoring Morpheus and Trinity) is unclear, except as a means to keep the action going. I could understand the Merovigian’s want for the Keymaster’s skills, if (like the redpills) he’s running his own rebellion (albeit more covertly) against the Matrix with the goal of taking power over it, but this promising plotline about the machines engaging in their own rebellions goes nowhere.
And as for the overall framing device that motivates Neo - Trinity’s losing fight vs. Agent Thompson… well, she dies, but she gets better. Somehow Neo choosing to save her is going to crash the Matrix, though… say, whatever happened about that, anyway?[/spoiler]
So, yeah… Matrix Reloaded is a pointless film and Matrix Revolutions doesn’t rescue the effort.
Parts of the ride sure are pretty, though.
Some fantastic action sequences, and the Merovingian and Persephone are incredibly charismatic, but the plot sucks.