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Woo! go no sleep tonight! Oh well, it was worth it....anywho, here are my thoughts:
Special Effects: Really cool. I'm sure you've all read the reviews of them having that character-doubling effect that's supposed to "blow bullet-time away." It was impressive - the fight scene was nice and smooth, and they were right: you can't tell the difference between the real one and the CGI ones. However, I can't really say it was as innovative as bullet-time. When you first see bullet-time, it's something that just completely blows you away... the new effects were cool, but not as innovative as the origional.
Fight Scenes: Kung Fu. And lots of it. Oh, and did I mention lots of kung fu? Imagine a gansta movie like Boondock Saints meets Crouching Tiger. Wasn't any of that cheezy fighting either. My only complain is that some scenes they were just completely pulled up by strings. Of course, the strings were erased, but the result was sometimes the action seemed COMPLETELY unrealistic. In the first one, Morpheus said something to the effect that you can't break the rules, you can only bend them. Sometimes they completely broke gravity rather than bending it, and that took away from some parts.
Religion: The movie was jam-packed with religous symbolism. Not specific to any real-world religion, though. You know how Star Trek created Klingon to have real grammer, syntax, and vocabulary, and you know how now some people speak fluent Klingon? Well, it's something like that. It was a much more primeval religion. Because of constant martial arts, the religion was also similair to buddhism and meditation-type beliefs. Overall, it gave the movie that mystical spiritual feel and added depth to the movie.
Story: eh, I dunno about this one. I came into this movie skeptical; with a few exceptions, sequels are usually cheesy knock-off's of existing successful money-making brands. This was true to some extent, but don't worry - there was plenty to keep you wondering. Overall, this movie had a more philosophical feel to it than the first one (i.e. the religion part). However, looking back, I get the feeling that the story was rather dry. One thing happened, so they had to go do this, and the way it turned out led them to do this. No, it wasn't predictable, but, well, I don't know how to explain it completely. What made the first Matrix so amazing was the character development - Neo, a computer hacker sees that the world over his eyes was a lie and it leads him to see a new world with the eventual rebirth theme at the end. In this one, he's just The One, and he takes full advantage of that. Yeah, he's exposed to some secrets, but there's no real development - no real change; at the end of the movie, he's the same character with the same feelings that he was at the begining. Yes, there is that one WTF at the very end, but it's just that - a momentary thing completely out of nowhere then the credits roll (for those who saw it, you know what it is). If they would have done some more development on this, perhaps some foreshadowing, it would have created some character development. It's also VERY similair to what happened in the first one, so it's almost as if they're reusing ideas.
The development of knowledge of the Matrix was pretty interesting. They definately put new things about the Matrix in there. However, that was probably the only redeeming thing about the story. Otherwise, it's everything that you could have guessed from the first one. I dunno - I'm sounding like the story was really bad. It was interesting and good, but I just get the feeling that it was a relatively simple story made to look better than it really was by throwing in special effects and philosophical mumbo-jumbo. That's my opinion, though. Even so, I'm going to see it again sometime, and I recommend all of you do too.
[edit]The Frenchie.... oh man... best ever!!! ;-)[/edit]
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