The Matrix Reloaded

Unfortunately for fans of the original the quote over there is true. And, also unfortunately, no one can be told how The Matrix Reloaded was…until I tell them about some previews.

FREDDY VS. JASON-The meeting we’ve all been waiting for!!

Ok. Maybe not. But they did get a cool director (Ronnie Yu, who seems to be making his rounds of all of the horror franchises) and, erm, well, I’m sure they got a lot of good talent from the WB, too, but I have no clue who the hell any of these people are. But who cares? It’s a Freddy AND a Jason movie all rolled into one. What has ever come of these flicks except Kevin Bacon, Johnny Depp and hours and hours of cheeseball entertainment?

I’m in line already.

LEGALLY BLONDE 2: RED, WHITE AND BLONDE-Still haven’t seen the first one, but I do actually want to. I love Reese. I have ever since Fear. And then I respected her after Pleasantville and (especially) Election. (Didn’t seen Man On The Moon until well after I saw Fear. Sorry. I’m a poser.)

Not so sure that they should have sequelized this one, though. Did they really need to? I’m not really caring at this point.

TERMINATOR 3: THE RISE OF THE MACHINES-Ok, I’ll see it. This preview made it at least look like a LOT of fun with lots and lots of stuff blowing up and cool digital robots running around. And this time Der Ahnold keeps flipping back and forth between good and evil.

And Claire Danes is in it.

I’m there.

But none of this explains how Edward Furlong turned into Nick Stahl.

THE LAST SAMURAI–I always thought that my audience of one in Japan was going to be the last samurai, but apparently Tom Cruise is.

I really have no clue what this movie is about. I haven’t hear word one about it, but I’m apparently in the minority here. Everyone else I’ve talked to has heard about it and said that it’s been hyped for about a year now. But now that it’s about to come out we just see a really quick preview with no real plot points revealed. I’m sure it’ll be alright. Director Edward Zwick has yet to put out a truly bad movie and Tom has good taste (unfortunately). But, who knows? Maybe it’ll be Vanilla Sky all over again.

2 FAST 2 FURIOUS-Are they serious? Well, I know they are because I’ve known about this since the end of the last one. But this just looks kind of bad. I have heard, though, that John Singleton wanted to use real cars instead of CGI for most of it, so maybe it’ll be good in that sense this time. The last one had too many shots of a fake car with Vin Diesel’s face plastered into it. At least we don’t have to look at him this time.

Maybe a rental, but no more.

Surprisingly, that’s really about all the new previews they had on this one. Why is that? Um, I don’t know. Because Warner Bros. is fucking stupid? I can’t believe that. They knew this would be one of the biggest premieres ever. Why not put some big flicks on here?

Oh well. On to the imaginary pixels on a blank slate.

Once upon a time there was a man known as The One. He was sent to the human race to save them from the machines that had somehow taken over the world. Soon he found out that his entire world as he knew it was only a program written by the machines in order to control the humans. There was a master of all of the programs that controlled it all and there were rogue programs that either helped or hindered the humans.

But enough about Tron. I’m here to talk about The Matrix Relaoded.

Neo (Keanu Reeves) is The One. He’s supposed to lead the Zionists to salvation away from the machines. But John Connor, er, Neo isn’t alone. He still has his best girl, Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss) and his boss, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburn) along for the ride.

But things have changed. Now, instead of just fighting the machines one at a time, they have to boogie. They have exactly 72 hours (give or take…how ever long it takes the machines to dig to Zion) to save the human race from a fate worse than death. Or they’ll just be killed. Either way, the fate of mankind hinges on Neo and who he loves more, mankind or Trinity. And, since he’s having some pretty nasty death dreams about Trinity, he knows that she’s in danger.

And he’s got a few more friends. Niobe (Jada Pinkett-Smith) is a former flame of Morpheus’ and the current girl of the commander of the Zion fleet. Big sparks there. And Link (Harold Perrineau, Jr from Romeo + Juliet) is the new pilot of the Nebedcanazzar and boyfriend to Zee (Nona Gaye-this is the role originally filled by Aaliyah, now filled by daughter of R&B legend Marvin Gaye, whose song Aaliyah once sang…coincidence? I think not.), sister of Tank and Dozer from the first movie.

(What happened to Dozer, you might ask. He was killed off sometime between the first and second movie by the Greed Machine. They didn’t offer him enough money.)

The continuation of the saga of Neo and his crew is, well, not quite up to snuff. Yes, it looks great. Ok, it looks FUCKING AMAZING! The action scenes are, of course, very well done. The fights are cool as hell. That car chase pumps about as much adrenaline as an adrenaline pump in an adrenaline factory. The camera work is fucking death-defying. (Or it would be if those trucks that went over the camera had been real.) And Zion itself is, um, well, kinda disappointing. It looks like the kids from Fame set up camp on the set of Road Warrior. But some of it looks pretty fucking amazing.

So, where’s the problem? Well, it seems like it was just special effects. The story kind of took a back seat to them. In the original we got a super-smart story (although it wasn’t as original as everyone else thought it was) full of interesting philosophies and techno-babble that only a geek could love. This time we got special effects with some interesting philosophy thrown in because that’s something that the critics liked last time. And even some of the effects showed seams this time out. Check out the fight scene between Neo and the 100 Agent Smiths (Hugo Weaving reprising his anything but dead character). How many times in that scene did Neo look like an action figure with no real details on his face? (This happened during some of his flying scenes, too.) And how many times did Smith look like Quentin Tarantino with a forehead bigger than my entire head?

(This sequence actually got a little ridiculous by the end. Flying Agent Smiths are just funny, not menacing.)

And, just to show that they care more about fighting than they do plot, there’s a fight scene that was specially written to show Neo fight with Jet Li. Unfortunately they couldn’t get Jet, but they kept the scene. It’s pretty damn stupid. Yeah, good fight, but stupid scene.

And what’s up with the sex scene? Did we need to see Neo and Trinity have sex while thousands of Zionists danced around half naked in some weird-ass tribal ritual rave? Since we didn’t see any nipple, no! We didn’t! Yeah, guys, we know that you directed Bound, but at least that had some eroticism to it. This was just a couple of bodies banging together for no real purpose….unless she ends up being pregnant. Then, of course, we had to see the conception, right?

Whatever. (Actually, there was a lot of sex stuff going on this time. Are the boys not getting laid lately?)

One more thing: how the hell are we supposed to feel about Morpheus? He’s the Obi-Wan character, right? Why is it that about half of Zion hates him? He’s preaching about The Oracle and The One and most of the Zionists don’t believe in them. And Morpheus follows blindly while expecting people to follow him blindly. That pretty much makes him a religious zealot who will do anything to make sure that his will is done. And by the end we’re wondering if he’s sane or not.

After three years of hype I guess we were all expecting a lot more. Since I had heard so much bad stuff about it I didn’t have any preconceived expectations, so I didn’t hate it like a buddy of mine did. He thought it was a fetid, festering pile of steaming donkey poo with a few bright spots where the donkey swallowed some gold. I liked the action scenes a LOT. But whenever anyone was talking, walking or just kind of hanging out, I was a little disappointed. Especially some of those scenes where they action came to a SCREECHING HALT so that the boys could bring us up to date on what’s going on in the Jesus Plot. (Neo is even MORE like Jesus in this one. He even resurrects the dead!) They fell prey to the same disease the Kevin Smith did with Dogma. Too many Scooby-Doo moments where they explain stuff with ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING GOING ON!!!

But the Oracle (the late, great Gloria Foster) maintained some dignity, even if her keeper (the Asian guy who wasn’t Jet Li) didn’t. And she has some secrets of her own.

I liked the film overall, but just don’t expect some new piece of cinematic genius. It’s just a sci-fi flick with a little brains attached to it. Just not nearly as much as the first one. Hopefully the third one makes me (and the rest of us fanboys) like this one better and wraps everything up. Not necessarily with a nice, neat ribbon, but at least with a loose, dangly one that I can grab onto and try to tighten myself.