The Matrix Reloaded 2003

[8.0/10] The Matrix Reloaded is weird, particularly by tentpole blockbuster standards. It’s awash in magical doors and characters mulling over the finer points of determinism and a bevy of truly horny characters. It features an infamous rave scene in a shadowy cavern, a dogpile of doppelgangers who act as one, and a climax where an erudite Colonel Standard spouts early aughts aphorisms against a wall of T.V.s.

But that's also what makes it great. The Matrix Reloaded doesn’t feel like any other movie, even its 1999 predecessor. It doubles down on the elements suggested by that groundbreaking first entry in the series: a richer look at the last remaining human city, bigger and louder set pieces and fight scenes, a more robust technological prison where a wider array of superpowered moves are possible, and a deeper attempt at navel-gazing philosophy.

The escalation doesn’t just recapitulate what people liked from the first Matrix movie on a grander scale. It expands the ideas, the sequences, the hints at a wider world and deeper conflict this film’s predecessor laid down. With proven success under their belt, the Wachowskis had the clout to follow their sci-fi-infused, philosophically-minded, trippy storytelling id wherever it took them. And it gives their follow-up an even more distinctive flavor and engrossing texture than their first code-crunched outing.

And what distinctive texture! You could fairly accuse Reloaded of being indulgent. The aforementioned dance party goes on too long. Major action set pieces build and build and build. There are no end to big, ponderous speeches about the nature of choice or control. Yet, there’s so much character in all of these things.

The rave, while adding to the patently thirsty nature of the whole movie, drives home that there are living, vibrant people that Neo and Trinity and Morpheus are out there fighting for. Those major sequences are ambitious as all hell, bending and breaking the limits of what combat could look like in a world where the rules of reality are a mere suggestion. Those big speeches -- whether they come from playful but knowing oracles, scene-chewing European mob bosses, or stilted, condescending architects -- each come with their own tone and style. Nothing here is generic.

That extends to the whole vibe of the film. Reloaded is alternatingly explosive and meditative, equally invested in wowing the audience with incredible fireworks and stretching their minds with (oft-superficial) discussions of fate and freedom. In all of it, the film remains profoundly cool.

The dark outfits, constant sunglasses, and stoic demeanors amid incredible situations is still an impossibly striking aesthetic. Even in the real world, the multicultural collection of enthused or enraptured individuals in vibrant earth tones has an inviting quality. The greenish color grading and clean, elegant sets mark the look of the piece in every frame. And a thumping industrial soundtrack makes the most mainstream of blockbusters feel just a hint dangerous and underground. Even when the lore or the plot or the characters start to buckle in the face of such a unique approach to telling a chosen one story, the atmosphere of the thing keeps it afloat and engrossing throughout.

That's good, because it is a film that break’s a lot of the traditional rules of cinema. Partly it’s because this is half a movie. If you squint,you can see how it works as a complete unit, but in hindsight, it’s even more clear how it’s built as part of a duology with Revolutions needing to pay off several ideas initiated here.

Even so, the film skips some of the usual infrastructure moviegoers have come to expect. There’s less a plot than a series of quests that vaguely stack on one another, directed by prophecy or instruction rather than driven by any of the main characters. (That choice dovetails nicely with the movie’s thematic aims.) Neo in particular doesn’t really want anything here except to protect Trinity. Everyone else wants to save Zion, but there’s few clear means of doing so, and many of the options presented to our heroes seem arbitrary. Nobody has much of an arc in Reloaded alone, beyond newcomer (and secondary character) Link learning to trust the team of the Nebuchadrezzar.

What Reloaded lacks in traditional plot progression, though, it makes up for in a unifying theme of predestination, liberation, and whether our choices matter. Every character of note speaks in poetic terms about whether these events are preordained, or whether they have the agency to shift them, or whether seeing or hearing a glimpse of the future means the path to it is already set. They ask whether we discover our purpose or choose it. The questions asked aren’t groundbreaking, but they infuse the movie with a unity of its own purpose, building the set pieces and conversations around an idea as much as it builds them around a larger story.

Sometimes it feels more like a thought stew than a clear point, but that's to the film’s mind-bending benefit. With so much debate over free will vs. destiny, the in-universe answer comes when Neo overcomes all the threats and obstacles and meets The Architect, a godlike figure who designed The Matrix. He suggests that the universe most humans experience is a deterministic one, where even the existence of a powerful chosen one is a known remainder that can be accounted for in a predictable equation. It has happened before and will again. The only catch is that there’s a modicum of choice involved, just a dash, to keep most docile and avoid something catastrophic.

The concept has layers, admirably not falling squarely down into either the “fate is real” or “agency is real” camp. To the point, from the very beginning of the movie, Neo has visions of Trinity’s death, a seeming fate that cannot be avoided despite him asking her not to come on the fateful mission. But when it does, he saves her from the big splat, and even brings her back to life using his superheroic hand as a defibrillator, a nice echo of her words reviving him in the first film.

You might see it as Neo fighting fate. He believes in this vision, much as Morpheus believes in the prophecy of The One ending the war with the machine. But in the end, he refuses to accept it, and in fact changes the ostensible fate of the person he loves. And in the end, he tells Morpheus that the prophecy was wrong. Neo went to “The Source” and Zion still fell; the war continues, so no fate, right? Except the Architect seemed to know what choice Neo would make, predicting the deed and speaking of how the machines destroying Zion is something they’ve done time and again, as part of this cycle. It’s fair to argue whether this is genuine complexity or simple incoherence in a contemplative milieu, but the willingness to delve into these issues, and dramatize them with science fiction inventiveness, sets Reloaded apart from the first superpowered jump.

Those leaps and strikes and explosions remain jaw-dropping. A blacktop fight with a veritable swarm of Agent Smiths shows of the virtuosic fight prowess of Neo after his full ascendance in the first film, and the new challenge of his antagonist as a liberated, multi-modal organism, who can achieve in numbers whatever he lacks in commensurate combat ability. A battle between the Chosen One and the Merovingian’s goons has a clarity to the action and flow to the choreography missing in so many modern doses of filmic fisticuffs. And the biggest set piece -- a highway chase to protect the keymaker from a pair of ghostly twins and a host of agents -- wows as a singular achievement. The pursuit is an exercise in awe-inspired escalation, a symphony of martial arts and twisted metal that gets the blood pumping and holds the audience in suspense for minute after minute. Beyond the famed bullet time advancements the 1999 movie made famous, the Wachowskis use the film as a grander canvas for their most wild wire fu ambitions, and make good on almost every effort.

They also expand on the possibilities of a virtual world. We meet more types of programs here: designers, keymakers, even vampires. There’s a room full of “backdoors”, alternate ways in and through the world. The advent of the walking MacGuffin of the keymaker means any door can be a gateway to another part of the world. Neo’s mental separation from the fiction of this world means he can stop blades with the back of his hand, fly through the cityscape at blinding speed, reach through the code to remove bullets from his partner. Part of the allure of The Matrix was the world of possibilities it presents, and Reloaded sets out to realize even more of them.

The same can be said for the film as a whole. If The Matrix is a proof of concept, its sequel is a chance for the Wachowkis to go wild, injecting their visual, philosophical, and narrative sensibilities without compunction or inhibition. The results are confounding at times, and certainly unusual, with clunky dialogue and peculiar rhythms. But there is a voice and a vision here that comes through in every frame.

True to the film’s themes, no creative decision here is accidental, no part of the movie seems anything but deliberate, no scene feels pulled from some other movie. The Matrix Reloaded is a product of strong choices, to tell this story in this way, which is unique and, despite scads of imitators, unrivaled in its distinctiveness. I don’t love every second of this movie. But I love how weird and unique it feels, a soaring middle chapter with style, thrills, and a particular approach that, like Neo himself, elevates it high above so many other attempts to do the same.

Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision.

WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME CORNEL WEST SHOWS UP IN THIS WTF

I must've been sleepy or something my first watch, because I didn't remember nearly any of this movie, when it's probably just as good as the first one!

Reloaded, despite being a much more blockbuster approach in terms of visuals and action, goes into even meatier territory than its predecessor. The first film almost created its own weird fusion of Christ and Buddha, the eventual creation of someone who has reached enlightenment past the system, now a possible guiding force for the revolution that will change the world as it is known. A messiah. But the film almost immediately criticizes this view, similar to Dune. If an eternal anomaly always exists, it could be used as a puppet to control a population. It's bright in that it points out that a seemingly "perfect" top-down system of control will always have resistance, but the resistance is possibly a controlling factor.

The Architect sequence is just bold, I swear there's nothing else like the Wachowskis in this industry. All the TVs representing different realities of the same meet-up, the Architect basically showing off how calculating and cold he is. Just an immediate flip from the blockbuster direction to something more similar to the reveal of the first movie, cold and revealing, in a white void... but not quite. The idea that free will is something controllable, the whole creation of Neo as the One a manufactured symbol, even as far as his love interest. As the quote says, he is to balance out an equation, a false savior in its 6th cycle that will continue looping seemingly forever... what do you even say to that? The Architect is wrong, though. Despite his belief that he knows how everything is working, choice as a quandary surpasses him. Neo, with his improved knowledge of the system that requires him to have fake powers to be controlled, makes those powers real, this time even apparently in the real world. The choices that make humans human surpass the systems.

Of course, not everything is answered in this film, and to be honest it's tough to gauge this on its own since it is entirely tied into its sequel, with even the HBO MAX release literally having a trailer and "To be continued" at the end of it.

There are some other philosophical explorations here. Determinism? Get the fuck out of here. I love how the French guy who I forgot the name of goes on and on about cause and effect, how we're all actually at the whims of impulses, but he is immediately proven wrong just a scene later as a pompous prick, who can't even understand what his own effects are. For someone who believes he is above it all... he's not.

I had a problem with the romance in the first film, which still sticks around here as being frankly unbelievable with no chemistry (Keanu actually not the problem, actually showing some cool acting chops in the alternate realities), but I do like what it symbolizes, love as a controlling force, engineered to have Neo make the seemingly "wrong" decision at the end, the one that removes Zion and humanity as a whole. It makes sense for her to lose agency, probably one of the only times the "Hollywood badass women with no agency" is justified, but in an industry that still has a lot of those, I still find it a bit frustrating.

I wasn't big on the pacing of the first act, which seemingly grinds to a halt, with the weird separation between action and exposition, but I do like the ideas it creates too. The rivalry in belief, with the pious vs. the non-believer. The restrictions of the Matrix getting carnal freedom, an orgy a celebration of what is now available to them, as opposed to the claustrophobic and controlling nature of the Matrix (a nice parallel to the fake French guy's manipulative idea of lust). Neo, despite being above the system at the start, being restricted by his fate and role and others rely on him, that he has to be the One.

Visually, the film reinvents itself from the get-go. It still has its Hong Kong influences, but the grunge has left, instead fully blockbuster, for better or worse. It's a downgrade for scenes like the highway, where the fights on the trucks are well executed, but the motion of the cars just not very complex and as visually stimulating as other directors like Bay. However, it's a flat out upgrade for scenes like the group fight between the Smiths and Neo, the cleanest action I've EVER seen of a group fight. Is there any group fight with choreography like that? Even at a baseline level. Films like the live action Batman struggle, with stuntmen having to fill dead air with some kind of action (or getting hit by nothing)... this has none of that problem. I like how the fight scene against the mooks before the freeway have the camera always show what the hit people are doing, justifying every movement and understanding exactly when they come back in and why. If there's an American blockbuster that has action like this, I want to know about it.

Speaking of the Smith fight, I like the role he fills for this go-around. Neo understands there is no spoon, but Smith, despite being freed, believes there is still a spoon, that there is still a system. His belief that a machine still needs a purpose means that he has one, he is freed but because of his own concept of reality is not freed. And thus his belief that he is still trapped has one resolution: destruction and greed. He will supposedly end the system by being everything. Hugo Weaving also does a terrific job at making his lines also very quotable, like "me, me, me". Charismatic as hell.

Don't understand the hate on the CG for this film! Sure, it looks unrealistic, but I am unmoving that it had terrific direction in terms of editing and framing. The sequence where Neo is moving as fast as light to save Trinity near the end is fantastic, just visual creativity at its finest. I like how its "constraints" look more like the product of the Matrix's controlled physics, just like the first movie, while shots of Zion at night look gorgeous.

Wasn't quite as huge on the score this time around, unfortunately. Not sure if the Wachowskis became unbased or if it's a home release issue, as every time the score was present, it was drowned just as fast as it was introduced. The soundtrack is a direct improvement, not necessarily being better picks as much as there are less bad ones though. Rage Against the Machine in the credits is fantastic, although Session by Linking Park time traveled me into the mid-2000s... love it. Deftones and Juno Reactor also great picks throughout.

While the film has had lower lows than the previous film, it had higher highs, sometimes even better ideas than the first. I think it's smarter about its big concepts, and still doing a good job walking the many ideas. I can't wait to see how it does the landing. But regardless, what here is just as good the first one, if not better.