The praise I see for this movie always seems so odd. Many of them admit that the action is bad, it leans really hard into nostalgia especially early on, the dramatic tone and plot shifts it feels like a few different movies crammed together, and the rough pacing. But then still say it’s a good movie. That the meta commentary and the themes redeem it. It’s really weird. I feel like people like the ideas of the movie enough that they ignore the execution, or latch onto certain parts so much that they ignore the rest. Like recommending a mediocre restaurant because the salad on the side was good.
i personally was incredibly disappointed in the movie. It was just a slog to get through. Some stuff was really interesting, particularly the alliance between humans and machines, but the movie felt like it just introduced the idea then dropped it. A whole movie could have been made about the machines having a civil war in and out of the matrix and humanity having to make choices but instead it was just slight world building. Instead the movie revolves around the romance of two characters who’s relationship in the prior movies was one of the least interesting parts. Most egregious of all was the action. Before the movie came out I figured that even if the plot was bad the action might be cool. I was excited to see what crazy shit they would come up with using modern effects and a big budget. But god what the fuck happened? There were a few cool shots in the opening but fuck me the rest was so bland. Closeups and force pushing, that’s all they had. The dojo scene was stands out as awful. It was blatantly clear that the hits were not connecting. I recently watched the first matrix and the action is still fantastic. The dojo fight in that one is so much fun. This one was just awful. They even set up the doors leading to other areas in the first scene, something that could have been used for all kinds of stunts and perspective changes, and they just dropped it.
The original movie just did so much better. The action scenes were amazing. There are so many iconic shots and scenes. Even the exposition was handled well. They found ways to make it interesting even when it was just characters explaining the rules of the world. In this new one there was none of that. Exposition was just characters talking at each other, or leaning on the original to do the heavy lifting. All the cuts to the first movie just made me want to stop watching the sequel and watch that one. This wasn’t the worst movie I’ve seen but fuck as someone who fell in love with the matrix when I was young it was so disappointing
