| The Matrix: Reloaded | |
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Twins Promotional film poster |
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| Directed by | Andy Wachowski Larry Wachowski |
| Produced by | Joel Silver (Producer) Andy Wachowski Larry Wachowski Grant Hill (Executive Producers) |
| Written by | Andy Wachowski Larry Wachowski |
| Narrated by | Gloria Foster (Only Matrix and Matrix Reloaded) |
| Starring | Keanu Reeves Laurence Fishburne Carrie-Anne Moss Hugo Weaving Harold Perrineau Randall Duk Kim Jada Pinkett Smith |
| Music by | Don Davis |
| Cinematography | Bill Pope |
| Editing by | Zach Staenberg |
| Studio | Village Roadshow Pictures Silver Pictures |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | May 15, 2003 |
| Running time | 138 minutes |
| Country | United States Australia |
| Language | English French |
| Budget | $150 million[1] |
| Gross revenue | $742,128,461[2] |
| Preceded by | The Matrix (1999) |
| Followed by | The Matrix Revolutions (2003) |
The Matrix: Reloaded is a 2003 American science fiction film and the second installment in The Matrix trilogy, written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. It premiered on May 7, 2003, in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, and went on general release by Warner Bros. in North American theaters on May 15, 2003, and around the world during the latter half of that month. It was also screened out of competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.[3] The video game Enter the Matrix, which was released on May 15, and a collection of nine animated shorts, the Animatrix, which was released on June 3, supported and expanded the storyline of the movie. The Matrix Revolutions, which completes the story, was released six months after Reloaded, in November 2003.
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Neo wakes from a nightmare in which Trinity is shot by an agent of the Matrix while falling from a building. Morpheus receives a message from Captain Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) of the Logos calling an emergency meeting of all of Zion's hovercraft. Zion has confirmed the last transmission of the Osiris: an army of Sentinels is tunneling towards Zion and will reach it within 72 hours. Commander Lock, the ranking military officer of Zion, orders all ships to return to Zion to prepare for the onslaught. Morpheus asks a ship to remain in order to contact the Oracle, in defiance of Commander Locke's orders. The Caduceus receives a message from the Oracle, and the Nebuchadnezzar ventures out so Neo can contact her. One of the Caduceus' crew, Bane, encounters Agent Smith, who takes over Bane's avatar. Smith then leaves the Matrix, gaining control of Bane's real body.
In Zion's temple, Morpheus announces the news of the advancing machines to the people. Neo receives a message from the Oracle and returns to the Matrix, meeting her. After realizing that the Oracle is part of the Matrix, Neo asks how he can trust her; she replies that it is his decision. The Oracle explains that she is an exiled program and instructs Neo to reach the Source of the Matrix by finding the Keymaker, a prisoner in the home of the Merovingian. The Keymaker makes keys that can open portals hidden within the Matrix. As the Oracle departs, Smith appears, telling Neo that after being defeated, he knew he was supposed to return to the Source to be deleted, but refused, and is now not bound to remove threats from the Matrix. He demonstrates his ability to clone himself using other people in the Matrix as hosts. He then tries to absorb Neo as a host, but fails, prompting a fight between Neo and Smith's clones. Neo tries to put up a fight, but Smith's clones keep coming in until eventually, overwhelmingly outnumbered, Neo flees.
Neo, Morpheus and Trinity visit the Merovingian and ask for the Keymaker, but the Merovingian refuses. His mistress Persephone, tired of her lover's attitude, betrays him and leads the trio to the Keymaker, allowing one of the Merovingian's henchmen to escape and notify him of it. The Merovingian soon appears and, while Morpheus, Trinity, and the Keymaker escape, Neo fights the Merovingian's henchmen and ends up in an unknown mountain range. He then heads for town, where Morpheus and Trinity are trying to escape with the Keymaker on the highway, facing several Agents and The Twins. Ultimately, the Twins are destroyed, and Neo saves Morpheus and the Keymaker.
Zion's remaining ships prepare to battle the machines. Within the Matrix, the crews of the Nebuchadnezzar, Vigilant and Logos help the Keymaker and Neo reach the door to the Source. The crew of the Logos must destroy a power plant in order to prevent a security system from being triggered by the Keymaker's keys, and the crew of the Vigilant must destroy a back-up power station. The Vigilant is bombed by a Sentinel, killing everyone on board. Although Neo requested that Trinity remain on the Nebuchadnezzar, she destroys the back-up station. However, her escape is compromised by an agent, and they fight. As Neo, Morpheus and the Keymaker reach the Source through a hallway of shortcuts to other doors in the Matrix, the 'Smiths' appear and try to kill them. The Keymaker unlocks the door to the Source, allowing Neo and Morpheus to escape the 'Smiths', but the Keymaker is killed.
Neo meets an anthropomorphic program called the Architect, the Matrix's creator. The Architect tells Neo that there have been multiple versions of the Matrix and multiple versions of the One, a computer anomaly used as a means of control. As humanity rejected the "perfect" Matrix as well as the dystopian Matrix, the machines realized that humanity needed to be offered the power of choice in order for them to accept it. The current Matrix is flawed and remains an unbalanced equation. The One is the sum of the remainder of that flaw. The One's purpose is to return to the Source, resetting the Matrix to its prime program. Afterwards, he will choose sixteen females and seven males to repopulate Zion and provide another round of humans for the "rebellion". Otherwise, the unresolved error will spiral out of control, destroying the humans connected to the Matrix, which coupled with the battle at Zion, will result in the extinction of the human race. Neo retorts that the machines need humans to survive and will not allow this; the Architect replies that, "there are levels of survival we are prepared to accept".
The Architect gives Neo a choice of two exits from the room: one door leads to the Source and the resetting of the Matrix, the other will lead to the Matrix's failure and humanity's destruction. Neo notices Trinity's battle with the agent on the viewscreens and returns to the Matrix to save her. Neo's love for Trinity is revealed as a new variable in the repetition of the Matrix – while the previous Ones had no reason to choose humanity's destruction over accepting their function, Neo chooses to save Trinity at the cost of mankind's survival, despite the near certainty that she will die anyway after Zion's destruction.
Neo races to save Trinity, who is shot by an agent as they fall from a building but is caught by Neo before hitting the ground. He refuses to accept her death, removing the bullet and reviving her. On board the Nebuchadnezzar, Neo reveals that the prophecy is false and Zion will be destroyed in twenty-four hours. Sentinels destroy the ship, whereupon Neo saves his friends by using a previously unknown power to disable the Sentinels with an EMP-like shockwave, then falls unconscious. The crew is rescued by the hovercraft Mjolnir (also known as the Hammer), whose crew explains that they were leading a pre-emptive attack on the Sentinels advancing on Zion. The strategy was to use the ships' EMPs and stay out of each other's range, but an EMP was detonated by the Caduceus before the ships were in position. Multiple ships were left without power, with only a handful of survivors escaping, the Sentinels having destroyed any ship that could not escape. Once the machines returned to digging, the Mjolnir looked for survivors and found only one: the Smith-controlled Bane.
Zee was originally to be played by Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash on August 25, 2001, before filming was complete.[4][5]
The Matrix Reloaded was largely filmed at Fox Studios in Australia, concurrently with filming of the sequel, Revolutions. The freeway chase scene was filmed at the decommissioned Naval Air Station Alameda in Alameda, California. The producers constructed a 1.5-mile freeway on the old runways specifically for the film. Some portions of the chase were also filmed in Oakland, California, and the tunnel shown briefly is the Webster Tube, which connects Oakland and Alameda. Some post-production editing was also done in old aircraft hangars on the base as well.
The city of Akron, Ohio was willing to give full access to Route 59, the stretch of freeway known as the "Innerbelt", for filming of the freeway chase when it was under consideration. However, producers decided against this as "the time to reset all the cars in their start position would take too long".[6] MythBusters would later reuse the Alameda location in order to explore the effects of a head-on collision between two semi trucks, and to perform various other experiments.
Around 97% of the materials from the sets of the film were recycled after production was completed; for example, tons of wood were sent to Mexico to build low-income housing.[7]
Some scenes from the film Baraka by Ron Fricke were selected to represent the real world shown by the wallmonitors in the Architect's room.[8]
Sound editing on the Matrix Trilogy was completed by Danetracks in West Hollywood, California.
Don Davis, who composed the music for The Matrix, returned to score Reloaded. For many of the pivotal action sequences, such as the "Burly Brawl", he collaborated with Juno Reactor. Some of the collaborative cues by Davis and Juno Reactor are extensions of material by Juno Reactor; for example, a version of "Komit" featuring Davis' strings is used during a flying sequence, and "Burly Brawl" is essentially a combination of Davis' unused "Multiple Replication" and a piece similar to Juno Reactor's "Masters of the Universe". One of the collaborations, "Mona Lisa Overdrive", is titled in reference to the cyberpunk novel of the same name by William Gibson, a major influence on the directors. Leitmotifs established in The Matrix return - such as the Matrix main theme, Neo and Trinity's love theme, the Sentinel's theme, Neo's flying theme, and a more frequent use of the four-note Agent Smith theme - and others used in Revolutions are established.
As with its predecessor, many tracks by external musicians are featured in the movie, its closing credits, and the soundtrack album, some of which were written for the film. Many of the musicians featured, for example Rob Zombie, Rage Against the Machine and Marilyn Manson, had also appeared on the soundtrack for The Matrix. Rob Dougan also re-contributed, licensing the instrumental version of his eponymous "Furious Angels", as well as being commissioned to provide an original track, ultimately scoring the battle in the Merovingian's chateau. A remixed version of "Slap It" by electronic artist Fluke - listed on the soundtrack as "Zion" - was used during the rave scene.
Linkin Park contributed their instrumental song "Session" to the film as well, athough it did not appear during the course of the film. P.O.D. composed a song called "Sleeping Awake", with a music video which focused heavily on Neo, as well as many images that were part of the film.
The film earned an estimated $5 million during Wednesday night previews in North America. The Matrix Reloaded grossed $37,508,303 on its Thursday opening day in North America from 3,603 theaters, which was the second highest opening day after Spider Man's $39.4 millon and highest for a Thursday. It earned an additional $91,774,413 from its Friday to Sunday run while in 3,603 theaters. which was the second highest at the time after Spider Man's $114.8 million. Although the film exceeded box office records during its first week, it fell to the number two spot on the box-office totals the following week, when it was beaten by Jim Carrey's Bruce Almighty. Ultimately, the film grossed $281.5 million in the US, and $742.1 million worldwide.[2] It is currently the 43rd highest grossing film in history in the US, and the highest grossing R-rated film of all time.
Reloaded had positive critical reception from most critics, with a Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of 73%.[9] The film's average critic score on Metacritic is 63/100.[10] However, Entertainment Weekly named it as one of "The 25 Worst Sequels Ever Made".[11]
Some positive comments from critics included commendation for the quality and intensity of its action sequences,[12] and its intelligence.[13] Tony Toscano of Talking Pictures had high praise for the film, saying that "its character development and writing...is so crisp it crackles on the screen" and that "Matrix Reloaded re-establishes the genre and even raises the bar a notch or two" above the first film, The Matrix.[14]
On the other hand, negative comments included the sentiment that the plot was alienating,[15][16] with some critics regarding the focus on the action as a detriment to the film's human elements.[17][18] Some critics thought that the amount of scenes with expository dialog worked against the film,[19] and the many unresolved subplots, as well as the cliffhanger ending, were also criticized.[20]
The film was initially banned in Egypt, because of the violent content, and because it put into question issues about human creation "linked to the three monotheistic religions that we respect and which we believe in".[21] The Egyptian media claimed the film promoted Zionism, as it talks about Zion and the dark forces that wish to destroy it. However, it was eventually allowed to be shown in theatres, and was later released on VHS and DVD.
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