Watched this yesterday. The first Matrix film is one of the best films ever made and I don’t mind the sequels that much either so was looking forward to this, and while the idea and concepts were interesting I do think the film failed. It was simultaneously too long, and not long enough to cram in all of the concepts and the story it was trying to unload on the viewer. As a result, I found it a little incoherent. The pacing is bad. There are long stretches of the worst kind of tropes the Matrix films are known for: barely coherent, psychobabble jargon about free will, choice, fate, etc. The thing is, I find these concepts and ideas extremely interesting, but they’re written here in such a meandering, verbose kind of way that you’re nodding off halfway through.
The original movie discusses these themes, obviously, but they are fresh. It was something new and exciting. That movie also had an urgency about it and was paced exceptionally well that it never got bogged down in all this jargon for long stretches (unlike the infamous architect scene in Reloaded). The way this film relies on nostalgia is also to its detriment. So many flashbacks to the original movies do it no favours, as all it does is make you want to sit in the cinema and watch the first Matrix film on the cinema screen. All I could keep thinking about was “wow, I wish I was watching that film instead"
I got to say though, the thing that surprised me more than anything in this film was how poor the action was. Considering how groundbreaking and original the first film was (and the sequels to a certain extent) I was shocked at how bad it was here. So many of the action scenes were incredibly stilted, poorly choreographed, and terribly filmed. They were just so unoriginal and mundane. There was a point where I genuinely thought there was a problem with the cinema screen I was watching it on. The camera was so close to the action at points, it never allowed the scene to breathe and for you to actually see what was going on. I was just waiting for it to take off. Like all this other stuff was just a preamble to something truly exciting that, no matter how bad you thought the movie was, it would have “that” scene. But no. Nothing. It had all the bad aspects of the Marvel movies, where you have these incredibly strong beings throwing each other through buildings and walls, getting shot, beating seven shades of shit out of each other with no consequences or any sense of weight to their actions.
There were some nice visuals in the film, though. And it did begin in a way that I thought was going to be interesting. Oh well.
Still, the trailer was an absolute banger.