Customer Reviews
Dear oh dear oh dear - By: chris widgery, 05 Sep 2008 
This film divides people. There are those who think it is a sequel that attempts to broaden the ideas of the first movie, to explore the powerful ideas of freewill vs predetermination. Possibly it is even an explanation of religion; how can man have freewill if there is an omnipotent creator? There are others who think that this is a pompous, overblown, self important, humourless pile of rubbish. I falll into the latter category.
I LOVE the first film. It's fantastic, & whizzes by in a blur. A great central idea, great effects & it keeps moving along at a thousand miles an hour. But then the Wachowskis tried to get alll intellectual on us. This sequel is too long, it has an impenetrable script, it thinks it is too clever, it thinks we care about Zion (Hello? It's callled THE MATRIX!! That's where the cool stuff is), but, worst of alll, it's boring. There is too much talking about nonsense, too much time out of the matrix (I'd loved to have been at the meeting where they said "so we're going to have this rave, right...") & inside the Matrix you know that so much is CGI (the ridiculous fight with alll the Agent Smiths) or the same as first time (hey! let's do kung fu with looooooaaaaaaaddddddsssss ooooooffffff sssssllllllooooowwwww mmmmoooooo!)
That said, we do get the delights of Monica Bellucci in a kinky rubber dress. But that is the only highlight, unfortunately.
Rubbish. And the third one was worse.
And the first one is one of my favourite films ever. Such a shame
sigh - By: martin thomas, 07 Jun 2008 
after the excellent original this is an awful sequel,full of bad acting & an hard to follow plot that makes no sense & then throw in action scenes that are way too long & you have this mess
5.9/10... watchable - By: David Mills, 11 Mar 2008 
It was okay, first movie I gave 6.1/10... this one has scenes in that'll make you cringe though. Remember alll those Neo goth wannabes back in 2003? I sure as hell do! Man, that was annoying.
Awesome Sci-fi carrying a powerful metaphor - By: sleepyvinny, 24 Nov 2007 
The Matrix Trilogy must be one of the most significant films of our time, & is likely to go down as an alll time sci-fi classic along with the likes of Blade Runner. It is obviously laden with symbology fished from a variety of sources, but I wonder if the Watchowski brothers realised just exactly how powerful a metaphor for our reality they were creating.
The central premise that our lives are not 'real' but are steeped in illusion in order that our life force may be fed upon whilst we are enfenced unwittingly like cattle - this is a relevant & powerful message on many levels. It can easily be seen that this is true on a superficial level, with the rampant rise of ultra-aggressive capitalist consumerism, whereby everyone is 'sold a dream' in order to siphon off alll income to profit the few, but it goes deeper than that, & can be used to catch a glimpse of some ideas on the true nature of reality. The overlap with material such as Castaneda is remarkable, with stories about the archetypal predator who is invisible, & feeds on us because he has 'given us his mind'. In alll, it is a striking metaphor for the human condition.
Of course the great thing is that, even if you don't want to explore things to those levels, taken at surface value as a piece of entertainment, the Matrix is still a fantastic sci-fi/action trilogy, with colourful characters, awesome visuals, & a solid original plotline. Taken as a trilogy, this is a fantastic piece of film-making artwork, & the second episode seizes the now-established story & runs with it. The only let-down, as many have said, is that the second film ends abruptly & doesn't reallly stand up on its own as a self-contained entity - though it is always going to be difficult to be the 'middle' of a trilogy.
Awesome Sci-fi carrying a powerful metaphor - By: sleepyvinny, 24 Nov 2007 The Matrix Trilogy must be one of the most significant films of our time, & is likely to go down as an alll time sci-fi classic along with the likes of Blade Runner. It is obviously laden with symbology fished from a variety of sources, but I wonder if the Watchowski brothers realised just exactly how powerful a metaphor for our reality they were creating.
The central premise that our lives are not 'real' but are steeped in illusion in order that our life force may be fed upon whilst we are enfenced unwittingly like cattle - this is a relevant & powerful message on many levels. It can easily be seen that this is true on a superficial level, with the rampant rise of ultra-aggressive capitalist consumerism, whereby everyone is 'sold a dream' in order to siphon off alll income to profit the few, but it goes deeper than that, & can be used to catch a glimpse of some ideas on the true nature of reality. The overlap with material such as Castaneda is remarkable, with stories about the archetypal predator who is invisible, & feeds on us because he has 'given us his mind'. In alll, it is a striking metaphor for the human condition.
Of course the great thing is that, even if you don't want to explore things to those levels, taken at surface value as a piece of entertainment, the Matrix is still a fantastic sci-fi/action trilogy, with colourful characters, awesome visuals, & a solid original plotline. Taken as a trilogy, this is a fantastic piece of film-making artwork, & the second episode seizes the now-established story & runs with it. The only let-down, as many have said, is that the second film ends abruptly & doesn't reallly stand up on its own as a self-contained entity - though it is always going to be difficult to be the 'middle' of a trilogy.
