Following the events of The Matrix (1999), Neo and the rebel leaders estimate they have 72 hours until 250,000 probes discover Zion and destroy it and its inhabitants. Neo must decide how he can save Trinity from a dark fate in his dreams.
The human city of Zion defends itself against the massive invasion of the machines as Neo fights to end the war at another front while also opposing the rogue Agent Smith.
A cybernetic warrior from a post-apocalyptic future travels back in time to protect a 25-year old drifter and his future wife from a most advanced robotic assassin and to ensure they both survive a nuclear attack.
Director:
Jonathan Mostow
Stars:
Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Nick Stahl,
Kristanna Loken
Two hip detectives protect a witness to a murder while investigating a case of stolen heroin from the evidence storage room from their police precinct.
Jack Hall, paleoclimatologist, must make a daring trek from Washington, D.C. to New York City, to reach his son, trapped in the cross-hairs of a sudden international storm which plunges the planet into a new Ice Age.
Six months after the events depicted in The Matrix, Neo has proved to be a good omen for the free humans, as more and more humans are being freed from the matrix and brought to Zion, the one and only stronghold of the Resistance. Neo himself has discovered his superpowers including super speed, ability to see the codes of the things inside the matrix, and a certain degree of precognition. But a nasty piece of news hits the human resistance: 250,000 machine sentinels are digging to Zion and would reach them in 72 hours. As Zion prepares for the ultimate war, Neo, Morpheus and Trinity are advised by the Oracle to find the Keymaker who would help them reach the Source. Meanwhile Neo's recurrent dreams depicting Trinity's death have got him worried and as if it was not enough, Agent Smith has somehow escaped deletion, has become more powerful than before and has chosen Neo as his next target.Written by
Soumitra
Trinity uses a genuine hack to get into the power stations computers. She uses Nmap version 2.54BETA25 (a real port scanning tool used by both network administrators and hackers alike) to find a vulnerable SSH server, and then proceeds to exploit it using the SSH1 CRC32 exploit from 2001. See more »
Goofs
In the highway chase scene there is a shot of the police cars before they get onto the highway and the cars are Chevrolet Caprices. When they are on the highway chasing Trinity's car, the police cars become brand new Chevrolet Impalas. But when the police cars start to ram her, they become Caprices again. See more »
It's a pity Reloaded looks and feels so much like a bad sequel, to so many. Even to me to begin with even if I kind of enjoyed parts of the ride, a lot. But to me it helps looking at it as a bridge between beginning and end. As a part of a whole. The concept is so promising. I haven't had the chance to see the Animatrix yet, but surely I will. I guess I will spend hours with the game too. In Matrix I just love how interwoven and in balance the storyline is with the way its told. It reached out and grabbed almost everyone. This time around it seems as if there was too much to tell and too many dollars to play with in too short a time. Less balance. Still.. I'm thrilled.
Spoilers ahead. (You might need them) Matrix is so wonderfully mythological. Instead of being ethnocentric it puts the light on eternal religious questions in such a universal way. At the same time it formulates the original reason, philosophical questions. It is about knowledge and faith, belief. Controll through both sense and sensibility. The conflict between gnosticism and Judae-Christianity if we look in the rear mirror.
At the same time it is so biblical to a westerner like me. I won't bore you with all the name symbolism but with Neo himself. His actual name is Tomas Anderson and he is caught in the system (like everyone else in the years leading up to Y2K). In the bible Tomas is the disbeliever, and Tomas also means twin. Anders means man, as in Andros- (android). He is the doubtful son of man who is like the rest of us, who becomes Neo, the new one. At the same time it mirrors the first of Christianity and how it focused on the individual. There is no need for priests or churches (system) for the individual to reach the transcendent, for man to reach God. (And our heroes are individuals in small groups that fight the system, like viruses in a computer. (I just love that Nebukadnessar looks like a bug.)
In the first film we see the creation of (the believing) man. In Reloaded the religious theme takes a step back. Instead it is Free will vs. Determinism which is the main conflict. Thereby the existential perspectives which were planted in the first film can be developed. Here it is amusing to relate to the first existentialists that focused so much on free will and choice, Friedrich Nietsche and Soren Kirkegaard (one atheist and one Christian. The first captain to enroll freely in the final battle is called Soren).
Knowledge and faith remains as a conflict in Reloaded here represented by Lock and Morpheus. John Locke is called the father of The age of enlightenment which is the time of reason in our history. To me it looks like as if the Wachowski brothers are writing a mythological history of ideas for our time. Finally they might embrace even time after the postmodern.
There is a hint of a cycle here. Matrix is about birth, Reloaded about life and Revolutions about death (rebirth). Matrix is the becoming of man. Reloaded is man as a builder of theories and civilizations. Power and control is formed and developed. The Merovingian (400-600) are called the first kings of Europe and are known for their writing and the characters in their written language. (I am sure that you can find parallels to this "code" in the Matrix-code.) Anyway Merovingian is the one who has the 'key master' (the key to power and control?) The middle ages with its mystery and ghosts (lack of reason and empirical method) follows and can be seen in the set design, armor and weapons.
The middle ages were followed by The renaissance with all its use of Greek mythology The wife of Merovingian is Persephone who actually emphasizes on the rebirth theme because she gives our heroes a second chance to get to the 'key master', and as a goddess she is symbolized by a grain that can sprout.
Then comes The age of enlightenment with reason and empirical method which created the necessary conditions for a new conception of the world and industrialism. The living-conditions thereby changed radically for people which resulted in the revolutions of the 19th century and ideologically in the first existentialists, Soren and Friedrich. (Existentialism had a new upsurge when God had left us all alone once again and the world fell apart, during and after WW1 and WW2 during last century. ) The myth can be said to have survived by fleeing into the music and later into film via melodrama. Which leads us to were we and Matrix are right now.
I guess I just had too high expectations when I saw Reloaded the first time. It got better when I saw it a second time and right now it is one of my favorite friends, or bedtime stories. Too bad Reloaded is made in such a way that most people seem to (eventually) enjoy and point out the cinematography at its best. The saga deserves more.
Anyway The Matrix concept is already a classic piece of art, the latest transcription of the bible, a new history of mankind, the steepest roller-coaster and much, much, more.
155 of 244 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
| Report this
*** This comment contains spoilers ***
It's a pity Reloaded looks and feels so much like a bad sequel, to so many. Even to me to begin with even if I kind of enjoyed parts of the ride, a lot. But to me it helps looking at it as a bridge between beginning and end. As a part of a whole. The concept is so promising. I haven't had the chance to see the Animatrix yet, but surely I will. I guess I will spend hours with the game too. In Matrix I just love how interwoven and in balance the storyline is with the way its told. It reached out and grabbed almost everyone. This time around it seems as if there was too much to tell and too many dollars to play with in too short a time. Less balance. Still.. I'm thrilled.
Spoilers ahead. (You might need them) Matrix is so wonderfully mythological. Instead of being ethnocentric it puts the light on eternal religious questions in such a universal way. At the same time it formulates the original reason, philosophical questions. It is about knowledge and faith, belief. Controll through both sense and sensibility. The conflict between gnosticism and Judae-Christianity if we look in the rear mirror.
At the same time it is so biblical to a westerner like me. I won't bore you with all the name symbolism but with Neo himself. His actual name is Tomas Anderson and he is caught in the system (like everyone else in the years leading up to Y2K). In the bible Tomas is the disbeliever, and Tomas also means twin. Anders means man, as in Andros- (android). He is the doubtful son of man who is like the rest of us, who becomes Neo, the new one. At the same time it mirrors the first of Christianity and how it focused on the individual. There is no need for priests or churches (system) for the individual to reach the transcendent, for man to reach God. (And our heroes are individuals in small groups that fight the system, like viruses in a computer. (I just love that Nebukadnessar looks like a bug.)
In the first film we see the creation of (the believing) man. In Reloaded the religious theme takes a step back. Instead it is Free will vs. Determinism which is the main conflict. Thereby the existential perspectives which were planted in the first film can be developed. Here it is amusing to relate to the first existentialists that focused so much on free will and choice, Friedrich Nietsche and Soren Kirkegaard (one atheist and one Christian. The first captain to enroll freely in the final battle is called Soren).
Knowledge and faith remains as a conflict in Reloaded here represented by Lock and Morpheus. John Locke is called the father of The age of enlightenment which is the time of reason in our history. To me it looks like as if the Wachowski brothers are writing a mythological history of ideas for our time. Finally they might embrace even time after the postmodern.
There is a hint of a cycle here. Matrix is about birth, Reloaded about life and Revolutions about death (rebirth). Matrix is the becoming of man. Reloaded is man as a builder of theories and civilizations. Power and control is formed and developed. The Merovingian (400-600) are called the first kings of Europe and are known for their writing and the characters in their written language. (I am sure that you can find parallels to this "code" in the Matrix-code.) Anyway Merovingian is the one who has the 'key master' (the key to power and control?) The middle ages with its mystery and ghosts (lack of reason and empirical method) follows and can be seen in the set design, armor and weapons.
The middle ages were followed by The renaissance with all its use of Greek mythology The wife of Merovingian is Persephone who actually emphasizes on the rebirth theme because she gives our heroes a second chance to get to the 'key master', and as a goddess she is symbolized by a grain that can sprout.
Then comes The age of enlightenment with reason and empirical method which created the necessary conditions for a new conception of the world and industrialism. The living-conditions thereby changed radically for people which resulted in the revolutions of the 19th century and ideologically in the first existentialists, Soren and Friedrich. (Existentialism had a new upsurge when God had left us all alone once again and the world fell apart, during and after WW1 and WW2 during last century. ) The myth can be said to have survived by fleeing into the music and later into film via melodrama. Which leads us to were we and Matrix are right now.
I guess I just had too high expectations when I saw Reloaded the first time. It got better when I saw it a second time and right now it is one of my favorite friends, or bedtime stories. Too bad Reloaded is made in such a way that most people seem to (eventually) enjoy and point out the cinematography at its best. The saga deserves more.
Anyway The Matrix concept is already a classic piece of art, the latest transcription of the bible, a new history of mankind, the steepest roller-coaster and much, much, more.