The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix is back and ready to kill your body from inside your mind. The Matrix will be hearing from Freddy Krueger's lawyer soon.
Unlike the somewhat-subtle philosophical depth of the original, this installment is bloated with discussion after discussion of the illusion of choice. If Sartre is right when he says that we're "condemned to be free," and we all are able to make our own decisions, why is it that Reloaded was playing on six of my theater's 17 screens? That doesn't sound like I have much of a choice.
So, what about the infamous fight sequences, you ask? They're really not all that many steps ahead of the original's action scenes. The "bullet-time" effect was great in 1999, but now you'll just think you're suffering from a case of Deja Fu. It's overdone and pointless, which classifies it as reality television.
We finally get to see the underground city of Zion, which happens to be the home of hundreds of sophisticated ships but, apparently, not a single washing machine. Morpheus announces to Zion that they're on the verge of extinction, but it's ok, because he's got the newest Daniel Bedingfield dance tracks. Zion then puts on the biggest rave in the history of unplugged-mankind. Too bad glowsticks don't exist outside of The Matrix.
Agent Smith is back and he's complete with all sorts of new improvements. He attempts to fight Neo, but is left frustrated after realizing that Neo needs to buy an upgrade before being able to recognize and run the Agent Smith program. This just confirms what we figured before: The Matrix is run on a PC.
Speaking of multiple versions of The Matrix, we learn that aliens, werewolves, and ghosts are all the unwanted byproduct of older versions of the program. "What about Richard Roeper?" Neo asks of The Oracle.
"He's a virus we inadvertently picked up when R. Kelly downloaded infected files of child pornography," she answers. "And long ago, R. Kelly was installed by Roman Polanski to do his bidding. Polanski was a program that existed in all The Matrix versions 18 and under." The Oracle then tells Neo that he needs to find the Keymaker. "His keys are the only thing that can unlock certain programs in The Matrix," she says. "Of course, we only say that to ease the minds of our stock holders. We all know that anything can be unlocked by 16-year-old hackers with too much free time."
The Oracle tells Neo that The Keymaker is being held by a man named Merovingian. "Merrill Lynchian? But stocks and numbers and math confuse me," worries Neo. His fears are squelched when Merovingian only turns out to be the leader of a group of "exiled" programs from older versions of The Matrix. Rather than fight Neo, Merovingian begins to taunt him with speeches about Marxist theory and existentialism.
Morpheus and Trinity escape with The Keymaker, who says things like, "We are all here to do what we are all here to do." He then adds, "Unless, of course, you're a member of the American government. In that case, you're here to do what you think other people should do." Reloaded ends on a massive cliffhanger, and, even with that, I'm still not looking forward to the third film as much as I was the second. There's no way around it: RELOADED is a much weaker film than the first.
Just like a stupid child taking the SATs, The Matrix: Reloaded leaves a slew of unanswered questions. And just like the test-taker, we only truly understand about half of the answers that are thrown out there. Here's to hoping that the SAT IIs are better.
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Two beers just isn't enough, and more than three would be too hard to sneak into a theater.
The freakish and bizarre rave scene will leave you contemplating the merits of human interaction.
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