Matrix 4: The Search for More Money

I remember liking Reloaded but very much thought it was a segue into the last movie, so the lack of pushing the story forward didn’t bother me.

I saw the 2nd one at the cinema and thought it SUCKED. I remember finding it pretty tedious, with rubbish CGI, overlong fight stuff/chase stuff, and then, oh my god, that stupid rave scene. Sure it took a lot at the box office.... it was an event! and then a whole lot less people went and saw the 3rd one, it would appear. I was certainly one of them who went, yep, I'm done. No retroactively remembering otherwise here - I still haven't seen the 3rd one. Who knows, maybe I'm an outlier, but I can only tell you what happened!

It has been years but I wouldn't recommend bothering. Third one has more interesting (freshman philosophy) ideas in it, imo, but is even more boring in terms of the action with a what I consider a very boring full on Superman vs. Superman cosmic power fight finale. They never got around making fights with or involving agent smith exciting (or even interesting) imo once the first movie resolved.

An under appreciated element of the original is how well visually told the heaps of exposition and philosophy are. Is that air you’re breathing? Middle of a sweet kung fu fight. What are Agents? Woman in the Red Dress on the street. Don’t worry about the vase. The one sit down philosophy discussion of the original between Cypher and Smith still works because it reveals character.

And that just falls apart in the sequels. It’s all just people talking. The Architect speech had a good hook with the screens showing other choices, but the delivery was so flat by both participants.

DarthJoJo wrote: An under appreciated element of the original is how well visually told the heaps of exposition and philosophy are. Is that air you’re breathing? Middle of a sweet kung fu fight. What are Agents? Woman in the Red Dress on the street. Don’t worry about the vase. The one sit down philosophy discussion of the original between Cypher and Smith still works because it reveals character.

And that just falls apart in the sequels. It’s all just people talking. The Architect speech had a good hook with the screens showing other choices, but the delivery was so flat by both participants.

This is a great point; so many sci-fi and fantasy stories are just undone by the need to establish the world and how it’s different from the real one. The irony is that the way it’s different is the least interesting part of a story — what matters is the people, who they are, and why they make the choices they do.

A friend is an aspiring author (or well, he’s been published now) whose fantasy novel had the protagonist go to a religious service, where the liturgy (interspersed with other things going on) recounted the creation myth of the world and set up the basic conflicts between the gods. I thought that was clever.

Just like Raiders, Pirates, Jurassic, Jaws, etc, etc. The Matrix never should have gone past the first movie. Unless James Cameron is directing your sequel just don't do it.

Reloaded was the first time in my life that I got bored from an action scene. It just went on too long for me. Unfortunately that's the part of the movie that was influential. Also, I always thought the vampires were stupid and like one of the Wachowskis was really into vampires and wanted to shoehorn them in. Both sequels were equally disappointing. But admittedly they both had some good stuff too.