Plagued by strange memories, Neo's life takes an unexpected turn when he finds himself back inside the Matrix.
On one side the soundtracks, the special effects and the action are subpar compared to the original, and I want to give it 2 stars But on the other side I really love the script, and the movie as a whole is a fun meta commentary on the whole idea of IP and franchises. I really dig that, and I want to give it 5 stars... And then I get confused. Is it supposed to give me these conflicting feelings? If so its damn clever, and im really impressed.
When the final act started I realized that I genuinely didn't care about anyone. Even worse, I was bored. Bored during a Matrix movie. There are no stakes, the new characters have no depth, the action scenes are slow and uninteresting and there are virtually no new ideas. People will try to justify and rationalize the film as some kind of comment on modern Hollywood and the cash grab sequels and remakes. But just because you are self aware about your film being a cash grab does not change the fact that it is one. This is an uninspired, soulless, dull mess of a film that didn't need to be made. And I kinda wish it wasn't. One star for the human bombs though.
As a fan of the original matrix, and to some lesser extent a casual enjoyer of the subsequent 2 movies, this was barely watchable. A high level storyline with intriguing elements is completely ruined by everything else. The directing, editing, sound mixing, screenplay, all play a part in this disappointing return. In essence it feels fully different from the other matrix movies. Clean, meta, feel-good, quirky - it’s all wrong; with sudden all-out brawls you can barely identify visually, suddenly jump cuts, nothing is given time to breathe, no characters are developed beyond a couple of one-liners, no moments given time to have meaning. Smith, now a guy who should be called Chad, shoots point blank at Neo, and Neo dodges with his famous bullet-time. This alone could have been a big moment, where Neo displays his ability - if it was given time, but half a second later a brawl breaks out between extras and that’s the end of the moment. I can’t be bothered saying more about this, forge
