The Matrix Reloaded (2003) Retrospective / Review 

Even if this movie has a mixed reaction, I will always dig that freeway chase with that soundtrack.

I can't believe this movie is nearly 20 years old, I remember the hype of this film as a kid.

Reloaded had some amazing action and the score and Hugo Weaving he steals the show everytime he appears

I'm absolutely baffled how this channel does not have more subscribers, I've been watching for many years now and I must say these retrospectives are my favourite thing to watch.

Reloaded was the best cinema experience I've seen as a kid.

Even though the dialogue is sometimes overwhelming with its pomposity, I really like Reloaded and the new characters, especially The Merovingian. I felt there was a story on it, a bit too pretentious, yes, but an interesting story with many moments and good visuals to remember. Revolutions on the other hand felt like two hours of gunfire with little story on it, and I really just remember the giant baby head full of spikes, the Power Loader copied from Aliens, and a sunset getting collored in the ending.

When I first saw that they height of Zion's social interaction was cavorting at a rave inside a cave I was so underwhelmed.

I think both Reloaded and Revolutions and the footage from the game could be re-cut into one really good, coherent 2:30 hour movie. The hardest part would be deciding which action scenes get cut out.

The sequels took away the brutality of the fights from the 1st movie and turned them into comic book fights. Hated that but it does have one hell of an action set piece with the highway chase and the chateau fight

Some of the better action scenes of the 2000s, the highway chase is still one of the more memorable moments from any film of the last 25 years. It's kinda like the star wars prequels, rough dialog, about a half hour too long, but the action keeps me coming back for repeat viewings

My main issue with it was that Neo is so powerful there is 0 tension. The main reason the highway fight is so good is because Neo isn’t there.

You've become pretty incredible at cutting together the trailers. The way you cut the fight scenes it's so juicy you can't tell the actors aren't good fighters, unlike in actual matrix movies

I enjoyed Reloaded a lot. The CGI during the Smith fight in the park didn't bother me. I just figured it's a computer program. 😉 Now regarding the Architect, I thought his speech was supposed to sound like a data dump. Is it just me?

2003? Man, I can't believe it's been that long. So not ready for my Reloaded to be 20 years old!

I bought Enter the Matrix on release for full price. I will never forget how the wheels on the cars were literally squares. Max Payne still holds up today and was released two years prior to EtM

I love the sequels. I love the direction they went in. The formula to all of this is each film constantly interrogates the previous film in the franchise. The goal seems to be to change your perspective on the story, which is really refreshing. The sequels are by no means perfect as you pointed out. The pacing is blocky, the cinematography isn't great outside of action scenes (Bill Pope is still amazing though), but I appreciate that everyone involved tried something different. I don't begrudge anyone that doesn't like these movies though.

Jet Li was supposed to do extensive mo-cap work for the CGI fight scenes on top of playing Seraph. He didn't sign the contract because the producers wanted to keep all the rights to the mo-cap data and could've used what he considered his intellectual property in future projects.

The movie is a nice mix of "i'm going to dump so much exposition that you will have diabetes in the end of the day " to "Forget jumping the Shark, the Shark will jump on you"

The path of neo is the matrix game you want. It's amazing and really needs a re-release

The Matrix Reloaded is my favorite of the two sequels and the entire franchise. Has a lot of fun moments and the dialogue is still good despite some iffy dialogue there. I love the score, performances are great and my favorite action scene in the film is the Burly Brawl but I also love the freeway chase. Soundtrack is really great too and the after credits trailer for Revolutions was very surprising when I first watched it.

YES! We love you Oliver! Youre the best!

i totally LOVE your stuff oliver, keep it going brother!

Fantastic video Oliver - really enjoyed

I love your retrospectives. I'm a total film geek myself and a huge 80s fan. It's the level of detail you have that i like.

Still can't get over the awesomeness of that whole chase sequence. One of the greatest...of all time.

The intro and outro trailers were top notch. Well done, Harper

Well done Oliver. A triumph as always. 👍

Revolutions please!! Great post as per. In a mad mad world! Your a breath of fresh air! Keep up the good work!

Always love your retrospective series, greetings from Indonesia!

The editing on your super cut was badass.

This one is my favorite of the Matrix sequels. The highway chase fight, the Ghost twins, and hallway sequence are awesome. I even got my theater movie poster signed by Hugo Weaving himself when I was a locations assistant on his film "The Key Man."

after all this years,i feel this movie works perfect, and is miles ahead from the poor 2021 matrix

Great review bruh 😎👍

Been waiting for this one for a while

This was uploaded the day I turned 21. Thanks for the birthday present Oliver

Carrie-Anne Moss somehow aged faster than her costars between the first film and the sequels, like Margot Kidder between Superman I & II.

This is a GREAT retro-review Oliver-WELL DONE.I remember watching Reloaded in the cinema when it came out.Didn't like it or Revolutions.The first Matrix is my favorite film from the trilogy-EASILY.I liked all the main characters and cared what happened to them,when they died or got killed in the film you could hear collective groans from the audience.

Good job oliver

This is one of those movies that in hindsight was nowhere near as clean and well put together as the first. That said, when you watch it for the first time it's a great experience. I just had a massive grin plastered on my face while watching it because it was so over the top

A lot of the characters can be a bit dull and the cinematography during dialog scenes very static like you said. But I do love the story they were telling and I don't think it gets lost in its own ideas. I like the non-traditional approach they took instead of the usual hero's journey. How even that was just another level of control and the prophesy being a lie. That is seriously cool. Took me years to understand it but its really interesting when you figure it out

Always looking forward to your opening stinger 👌👌👌

So Thorough, another Masterpiece

This will do nicely over this spot of cardio. No doubt this will be a damn fine video! 🍿

He's back baby

Interesting fact: One of my teachers in middle school actually played one of the background red pills in the scene where Niobe informs all the crew members that the machines are digging. During the scene, I believe Morpheus said a line of dialogue that was supposed to get a big reaction out of the other crew members. However the extra's kept messing up over and over again (most likely due to them just being excited to be in a Matrix movie) and none could leave until the shoot was done. According to my teacher, Laurence Fishburne surprisingly kept his cool on set, and seamlessly slipped back in to character with each take.

Connery turned down both LOTR and The Matrix, because he didn't get the scripts. Imagine that alternate history, eh. "Youuu... shall not... pash!" "Hello Neo, I am the architect, I created the matricsh"

The dialogue was what could be considered a purple prose, so wordy that it loses some of its impact. However, if you take the time to cut through the wordiness and kind of understand exactly what they were trying to do with it it's quite compelling and original.

Best movie content on YT

Personally I love Enter the Matrix, even more than Path of Neo which came later. The fighting and focus system is just so fun to play around with and you're very free to approach the game many different ways, and the difficulty is just where I like it. The controls are weird, but once you get used to them, you actually have a ton of fine control over your character at every second, and intelligent use of focus becomes essential later in the game dealing with large groups of enemies. But it's always fun to disarm guards and blow them away with their own guns and spin slowly through the air shooting multiple targets in one long twisting dive. I plan to get the PC version and play it again, I all but wore out my console copies.

25:46 I forgot all about the "reveal" that this is the 6th time Neo reaches the Architect. Honestly, I never believed his BS, the Oracle even saying he (the Architect) can't see past any choice. You could remove that character entirely and it wouldn't make much of a difference.

Matrix Reloaded was my fav film of 2003, then BINGO, it was released on disk and was literally in my DVD player for months, I watched it every night x

Yes!

Crazy that Enter the Matrix are from the same developers who made Earthworm Jim and Wild 9.

Awesome

You made the retrospective on the first move a long time ago, but it feels like it was yesyerday! Can't wait for this one. I do not understand why people do not love sequels, they are great movies, and absolutely crucial in understanding the Matrix psylosophy and depth. Matrix trilogy is one of the smartest out there, but requires real in depth knowledge to understand it as a whole.

Very insightful. There's one filmaker choice that I do NOT understand: Neo's ability to use his abilities in the "real" world. It makes no sense. At all. I was utterly convinced after first watch that Revolutions would reveal that the real world was just the 2nd level of the Matrix, provided only to give the illusion of choice, thus fulfilling the Architect's formula. Nope. Turned out it was "just 'cuz". For having so many other great ideas and refusing to talk down to the audience, this was just insulting me as a viewer.

The Matrix Resurrections did not receive "largely negative reviews". It sits at 63 % at Rotten Tomatoes, with a 6.2 avg rating. That's much higher than Revolutions.

this has always been my fave of the films

Man I remember the night this opened. I had seen The Matrix in '99, first on my own, then with every friend group I could drag to a theater. Good goods, 1998 was a great year for movies and 1999 was EVEN BETTER! The line for Reloaded was over a quarter mile long ... for a *midnight* show. Aaaaaaand then we got to watch it. And wonder what the hell we were watching. It was the same as the shift from Star Wars to The Phantom Menace ... a shift from a personal scale, hero's call that's easy to identify with, to a large sprawling drama on a massive scale. There's just no "in" for the audience.

I saw this film in theatres back in 2003. It was a good sequel and I enjoyed it. I eventually got it on DVD for Christmas 2003.

I think what they did with the two movies were on point. Yes we couldn’t understand them that well during that time but we knew that they were part of a very large story. If I was a director with this idea, my focus wouldn’t be creating sequels with individual outcomes, but on expanding this complex story the best way I can, by dividing it into 3 parts, which is what they did. When I heard the architect, I found it difficult to comprehend what he was saying at the time, but in hindsight it makes sense, he is a source program, built from a multitude of complex numerical algorithms… it’s like a machine suddenly speaking to you in code. I applaud their effort and vision, and having the guts to trust the process.

I loved seeing this movie with my dad and brother ! It was this one, Hulk and Lotr 2 towers

The script simply needed more work. It feels like they filmed a first draft -- great ideas, weak execution. With the original movie, the Wachowskis wrote over a dozen drafts. That's why everything feels so perfect. I still enjoy re-watching clips of Reloaded, but not the whole thing.

I loved the Wraith-Agents myself! They're awesome!

Oh man i can feel Bill Pope's pain in the line "The Wachowski's had red that damn book about stanley kubrick where it said 'actors don't give a natural performance, until you wear them out'." How i wish Wachowski's had taken a note from Clint Eastwood or especially William Friedkin at the time, who rarely does more than one take of the scene, specifically to keep the performances natural and spontaneous. Perhaps they wanted unnatural performances instead? They certainly are all monotone and flat in the movie.

That Mona Lisa overdrive track is so sick

It was an exciting time back in the early 2000s, all those trilogies... Reloaded has great action but my big issue is simply that the actors, except Smith, turned into robots.

Great retrospective, will we be seeing one of revolutions?

For me the first Matrix movie was lightning in a bottle. I will admit I was heavily hyped for Reloaded and absolutely loved it on first viewing in the cinema. It was when I rewatched it on dvd I found myself a tad bored and just wanted to get to the action scenes. The part with the architect though has always been pompous drivel for me, I will fast forward through that part everytime now. And Revolutions.. well ... probably one of the most disappointing films ever. I can honestly say the sequels are the reason I am in no rush to see the new Matrix film, think I'll just wait till its free on streaming that one lol

Good review. The real problem with the sequel is it wasn't needed. Too much information on the backstory essentially spoils the magic and wonder of the first. With that said, the highway sequence is kick-ass!

6:16... This made me smile.😏 Finally.

I really enjoyed Reloaded. Have to say I never thought they should have made any sequel at all to the matrix, but Reloaded is a ripper. Fun story, one of my friends took a girl out on a first date to go see Reloaded and she had not seen the first one.

Saw these movies as a 13 year old on DVD and i understood the sequels. People at the time disliked them but I loved and appreciated the sequels. I wanted more spin offs

Hugo Weaving was fantastic at Agent Smith.

Can someone explain to me why there is a convoluted and impossible-to-perform task of getting neo to the architect (for the 6th time) when the architect needs him there to reboot the matrix? It seems like a million to one odds, and out of 6 tries almost none would have been successful, but all of them were. WAT?!?

21:35 When Ollie says the songs that "didn't make the cut but were inspired by Reloaded" I don't know if this is true. I assume this means the artists were inspired by the film? The songs that didn't make the final film are by Marilyn Manson, Deftones, Team Sleep, Unloco. If all those tracks were inspired by the film, that's news to me! This would mean the bands recorded their songs with the film's soundtrack in mind.

I was the same where I walked away from this in theaters disappointed. The game was also just kind of "meh", despite being extremely impressive upon release. Over time Reloaded would eventually grow on me along with Revolutions. As an adult I enjoy the philosophical aspects. When I watch them these days, I generally have to make it a multi-day thing and watch both Reloaded and Revolutions back to back. Each falls flat on its own, but together they make for an interesting story. I will say, one great thing that came of all this is the Animatrix. The way they flesh out the world there and the way they handle many of the stories in the dark manner they do is just excellent, and I still rock that soundtrack in my car to this day, haha.

The acting in the prequels was intentional. The dialogue was in inspired and trying to be Shakespeare. George wanted to go back to doing experimental films but not everyone likes those.

I was so bored I fell asleep soon after the highway sequence. Thats when I knew I was done with this franchise.

It’s funny, this is the only movie in this franchise that I actually saw in theaters. I was too young to see the first one on the big screen, and I had no real interest in going to a theater to watch Revolutions or Resurrections. 😅

Niobi had an entanglement with Morpheus

Love this movie

Monica Bellucci, the only thing worth remembering

This is the best movie ever! I love it! 👍

Hoping we finally get Revolutions look to wrap up the trilogy.

I was wondering who was to blame for the idea that you had to play video games and watch media other than the movies themselves to get what was going on.

I generally agree. I remember leaving the theater for the first movie pumped and excited. I left the theater for the sequel a bit underwhelmed.

PLEASE do a retrospective on Passion of the Christ!!!

Worked with someone who was on the Matrix VFX team. They were doing miracles back then, especially on the 1st part, where money was tight. Without Keanu's financial help, things might've not been finished. I don't know who got rich off part 2 and 3, but it was definitely not the VFX team. The best they got was a thing on their resume that could get them any other job. Back then people worked on movies, just to have an extra line on the resume.

I remember how hyped up I was for this movie as an 11 year old kid. I had that limited edition Powerade and was leaping and running down the sidewalk thinking I was in the Matrix, lol. And I had Enter the Matrix for Christmas that year. It (Reloaded) didn't live up to the first movie and neither did Revolutions but I'll take those both over Resurrections.

This flick dropped so low in quality lol. I've never rewatched it ever since the first time.

You didn't mention that they added the confusing element of Neo being able to affect machines outside the Matrix, seemingly by magic or telepathy, and then doing that put in a coma. That was a stange addition that I don't think they satisfactorily explained. Neo's power in the Matrix made sense (and the pretentious Architect dialogue added a firmer understanding of how he gained his power over the Matrix), but it all suggested that outside the Matrix he was just another man...who could apparently use his psychic powers to short circuit machines from a distance? I am surprized to hear people now like the sequels. I don't know any of those people. I think I like more than most because I like various parts of the sequels, but taken all together I think they don't work. If the Matrix had never had sequels it would be legendary today and even more beloved than it already is...people would universarilly say what a shame it is that this perfect movie never had sequels, blissfully unaware of the dangers of getting what you wish for.

I recently considered that with all the ideas the Wachowski’s had for the sequels along with the subplots, new characters and a larger world to build than the first film… if the Matrix sequels where made again today they would undoubtedly be a tv series on stream like on HBO. With 10ish episode they really could have just taken their time to focus on not just the main cast and what they’re doing but also develop Zion for an episode or the other key characters in other episodes and have them all working on similar goals to free people from the matrix and find out more about the Mechines and their plans to invide Zion. Heck even have episodes that deal with a new philosophical idea because clearly the Wachowski’s didn’t want to settle on just one idea (like choice vs free will, control and destiny etc.) and make sure it connects to each character they may follow in each episode. Maybe if they continued with the idea as he describes in the video of Neo freeing people from the Matrix each new characters to be freed would have Neo deal with new philosophical idea or conundrum that is keeping the characters plugged in and not wanting to take the red pill. All continuing and sharing the same journey of self discovery like Neo did in the first film only to have the rugged pulled out from under to be reveal by the Architect this is what the mechines wanted for Neo. The Matrix sequels to me are the perfect example of filmmakers trying to bit off more than they can chew with ambitions that where not even enough to fit in 2 movies and would continue in video games and animated shorts that many average films goers wouldn’t experience anyways. I mean with a tv series they wouldn’t really have the money for the highway sequence but a better continuation would still be satifying.

Worthy sequel to The Matrix, and one of the best action movies ever made. Sadly, fans had unrealistic expectations with this movie, it was never going to be as good as the first one, same thing that happened years later with movies like The Dark Knight Rises (to name one example). But almost 20 years later, the movie is finally getting the praise it deserves, and is not nostalgia, Revolutions is still as bad as it was in 2003, maybe even worse. And Resurrections...well, I think the BO numbers already said all that was needed to be said.

One of the best sequels ever made.( no I'm not joking).

I always liked it.

The Architect is my matrix spirit animal.

Honestly my favorite of the trilogy!

You can say this movie helped moviegoers like me, that can get through these tough couple of years. Think about that.

Watched this last night for the 1st time in a very long time. It is a solid 3 star sequel with some big time highs and some obvious lows. The middle section really grinds down to a halt with all the wordy exposition and very little action. The freeway chase and finale basically saves it from being a total disappointment.