Nothing happens in this movie. You could run a loop of Carl saying "It don't matter. None a this matters" for 2 and a half hours and it would be the same thing. I kept waiting for this movie to start and it did not start until like an hour and forty five minutes in. Neo as a game designer blah blah blah that shit was HORRIBLE and BORING. The new human city Io that shit was BORING and pointless except to introduce characters that could have been introduced another better way
None of the conflicts are resolved, none of the bad guys are defeated, can you make it any more obvious that there are going to be MOAR SEQUELS in the dumbest way. The Matrix ended with excitement, Neo has his powers, the Agents are defeated, a new day is dawning. No one gets defeated in this movie, you never feel there are any stakes, incredibly boring for long stretches. There is no excitement at the end
It isn't a soft reboot, it's a literal remake of The Matrix with extra and longer steps and worse action
We don't get any meaningful exposition until like almost two hours in when Neil Patrick Harris does his moustache twirling villain speech
There is no reason for Smith to be in this movie except SMITH IS BACK HIM AN NEO ARE GONNA FITE MORE IN MATRIX 5 AND 6
Whoever the actor is that plays Smith looks like a young, not manlet Tom Cruise on roids. Not saying it's bad it just struck me
The action in this movie SUCKS. The character shields are set to overload. Bad guys with automatic rifles unload from a range of 30-50 feet on the good guys multiple times and even when Neo isn't stopping the bullets midair, none of them come even close to being hit. When thousands of zombies I mean Purgers I mean bots are swarming the good guys... none of them die. NOT ONE OF THE GOOD GUYS DIES IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE. The kung fu stuff suffers from weird, bad camera angles and distances, just bad cinematography in general for the action scenes
There are multiple little details that make no sense like one of the reasons the bots are allegedly superior to Agents because their appearance doesn't change when they take over people's avatars in the Matrix. Ummm so what? Agents take over an avatar and minmax all stats in like 1 second. You could kill them but it was super-difficult and they'd take over another avatar close by and be on your ass again in like 10 seconds. All these bots are is cannon fodder for the heroes
Neo's apartment from The Matrix was apparently a loft? No I remember it was in some concrete basement that looked like something you'd see underneath an industrial wasteland or something. It wasn't airy and light wtf
Oooh, the Suits. The robots who run the Machine Empire! Who gives a fuck? ANOTHER group of bad guys? We got the Merovingian's hobo programs, we got Neil Patrick Harris as the front man for the Machines, but his robot bosses aren't happy with him, we got Smith... that's three definite and four potential bad guy forces. That's about two too many
The red pill is exactly the same, there is no philosophy expounded here that rejects "the red pill" as the avenue to truth, to choice, to freedom. The Indian girl from reloaded and revolutions all grown up says it isn't necessary to use the red pill to free a character at the end, but that's because she says she can achieve the same results using a different method because she's a super cool program
Now there are some very nice looking shots in the big chase scene at the end but overall the movie is just visually uninteresting. and most of those good looking shots aren't action shots
This chase scene that is the climax of the movie is so far inferior to the freeway chase in Reloaded that it's sad
There are too many characters
The pacing is bad
The music is meh
The action is bad except for one fight scene and that fight scene is not some amazing blow you away thing. it's good but that's it. Look all these old people can't move like they could 20, 22 years ago. Stop making these movies where they have to do all this action. Neo has his powers back for like half the movie, CGI that shit up with him throwing people around, collapsing walls on them, whatever, with his matrix powers. we do not need every damn fight in this movie to involve kung fu at some point
The merovingian has some super based madlad things to say
Overall I give it a 5/10 and about 4 of that is the merovingian making me laugh and 1 is nostalgia
I will not comment on the very big amazing wonderful thing that happens in this movie
I had lost the capacity to feel anything by then