Okay, so here we go. The most anticipated movie of the year. 150
million dollar budget. Special effects three years in the making. Did
it all pay off in the end?
Absolutely positively YES! This is one of greatest sequels to come
along ever. And here's why.
First of all, the Wachowski Brothers, who wrote and directed all
three Matrix movies (Matrix Revolutions comes out in November)
had originally wrote the Matrix as a trilogy right from the start. This
is one of the most important things to note whenever a sequel is
being made. And I might add that with few exceptions has a sequel
ever been good when it wasn't originally planned that way. Oh sure,
they always make money, that's why Hollywood keeps making them,
but except for Indiana Jones, T2, and a couple others I can't think of
right now, they're never as good as the original and rarely come
close.
Secondly, and this is gonna be delicate cause I don't wanna give any
plot away... what I call the "Part 2 Bomb." Any good trilogy has to
have a bomb dropped in the second half of the second movie. And by
bomb, I don't mean explosives. I mean something plotwise that
blows your mind. (Luke, I am your Father!) Matrix Reloaded achieves
this with flying colors. They managed to make my jaw drop and then
I had now choice but to go see it again in a few days just to come to
grips with what happened. The reason this is important is because
without it, you might as well just watch the first one again. Look at
the Austin Powers trilogy. Nothing new ever happens. Oh sure they
expand their world in each new movie like every good sequel should
do, but nothing ever changes. Everything just gets redone with a
little twist, or on a grander scale. That's all well and good but it's
not enough.
Now, it's difficult writing this cause so much of why I loved this
movie is the plot I think it's just damn well written. If you've seen it,
let me know and I'll yak for hours about why it rocks.
Okay well here's something we can talk about. The special effects.
Oh my God.... In the first movie the W. Bros. changed the way
movies are made by filming scenes in ways that nobody had ever
done before. Now it's practically become common. So what do they
do this time around? Push it to the absolute limit, and then bust that
limit wide open. Now, some of my film making friends in LA said
they could totally see to many CG characters in the action
sequences but I've seen it twice, looking for it the second time
around and quite frankly, my eyes are buying everything this movie
is selling. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about,
Reloaded used a lot of computer generated stunt doubles as opposed
to real stunt doubles. I heard that in the already famous Neo vs.
Smiths scene, all but one of the Smiths were computer generated,
although they probably used Hugo Weaving's real face on the
doubles.
And then of course there is the big one. The 101 freeway scene. It's
fourteen minutes long, I'm told, and it's intense from front to back.
Now, what's really cool about this scene is that it took three years
to make! The Wachowski's couldn't rent the 101 (one of the busiest
freeways in LA) so they built a two mile stretch of highway
somewhere in California. Then they digitally added the LA skyline in
post. THEY BUILT A FREAKIN' HIGHWAY! One distraction was that I
couldn't help but notice that every single car in the scene was a GM
vehicle. Although, I'm probably one of a very small group of people
that are geeky enough to spot that. This scene also used digital
doubles for stunts and I'm told that almost all the vehicles were
computer generated as well. Now it all looked real to me but let's
face it. If they make computer generated people look real then
there's really no more limits. Obviously, some parts you just know
are CG cause you know there's no way they could've done that in
real life. But if you know it can't be real, but it still looks real, that's
some damn good film making.
So there's a small review of The Matrix: Reloaded. I could go on for
pages but I don't wanna leave any spoilers. But here's my basic
breakdown. Some of the greatest FX ever with an original plot that
managed to keep me surprised and thirsty for part three. When you
go, don't forget to sit through the credits cause there's a little
reward at the end.
10 / 10
