Yes indeed, saw The Matrix Reloaded Saturday (the 31st), and my short review is: I liked it a lot. Oddly, though, I’ve been seeing some interesting things about this movie: there’s a large portion of people who were big fans of the first movie that hate this movie. My wife seems to be one of them.
As we left the theater, she said: “Was the first movie that stupid?”
Upon further clarification, what she means is that there was too much talking and not enough action (although the action that it does have is great). This seems odd to me, because I remember re-watching The Matrix for the first or second time since I originally saw it, and I was struck by how relatively little action there actually was.
Anyway.
So I’m not entirely sure why people hated this movie; I have yet to find a good answer, other than of the “there was too much talking” variety which people mean to be slow for them: too much unnecessary filler between action scenes, the rave scene was too long and pointless, etc. etc. If anyone can give me a good, coherent answer to why you might have hated this movie, drop me a line.
To each his own, I guess. As I said, I liked it quite a lot. The action was great, and the effects were flawless; as I mentioned in my X2 post, there’s pretty much nothing that can’t be done in movie effects anymore. I enjoyed the story, too, and I think most of it makes sense to me… there’s still a few things I’m mulling over.
I’m thinking I’ll need to see it again before it leaves the theaters; the effects are that good, and it’s definitely a multi-tiered movie that warrants multiple viewings.