So I’m in my office right now, and I’m finally getting to watch the copy of Reloaded that I picked up on Tuesday (because the middle of my week is always a busy time), and I’m at the freeway chase right now. In all honesty, I will tell you this:
The freeway chase in Reloaded is, in my opinion, the finest piece of action filmmaking I think I have ever seen. Ever. It is absolutely, 100 per cent, imaginative, tense, and ridiculously exciting. I have never seen anything like it before in my life, and I certainly never even dreamed that action filmmaking would have advanced to this point, with the advent of computer-enhanced imagry, where they can perform breathtaking camera moves and scene perspectives of the kind seen in Reloaded.
So this is my second viewing of the movie, and I’m not exactly sure what I think about it yet. Surely, The Matrix was an inspired piece of filmmaking, but I think it was that not entirely for the reasons that most people think it was a very good movie. The philosophical angle of the first movie was, I think, just a nice icing on the cake. The true underpinning reason that The Matrix was a good movie was because of a distinct mixture of very interesting filmmaking techniques, and several style influences which are just now beginning to come into their own: the mixture of “wire-fu” technique, anime-inspired flair, computer-generated camera trickery, and a score that was a very interesting mix of avant-garde composition and electronica/rock flavor. Like Star Wars, the writing was uninspired and the story was simply a retelling of the oldest story alive: the story of the lone hero against the odds. The dialogue was not really the greatest, and to be truthful, the philosophical underpinning is mostly just meaningless doubletalk and dialogue meant to simply reflect the thoughts of the time and intended to make something that is really very straightforward seem like it is much deeper than it really is.
As a philosophical statement, The Matrix (and Star Wars, for that matter) is lacking.
As an action movie and for its entertainment value, The Matrix is unrivaled in this generation.
Colonel Sanders just showed up, btw.
Interesting to note that Reloaded ends on a similar revelation of power as The Matrix did. It’ll be really interesting to see where they manage to go from here; they’ve done a really, really good job of painting the story right into a very exciting corner. Now that I’ve finished my second viewing, I do think Reloaded was a much better movie than most people gave it credit for - everyone said that they were waiting for some kind of grand follow-up to the first one, and that they were let down by what they found. I would submit that they were merely looking in the wrong places - and there were, of course, people who were just looking for a reason not to like the movie, I think.
For me, the next half-month really can’t pass by quickly enough - I’m very interested to see the conclusion of this story and to know where they plan to take it. From what I’ve deduced myself, I think people as a whole might be very disappointed with where it’s going, because I don’t think the whole of it is going to end on a very definite note. I think that a lot of questions will go unanswered, personally.