Well, what to say? You know already. You’ve seen it in Attack of the Clones and in the Two Towers. Sequels, more to the point, second-of-trilogy films, are a disappointment.

The Matrix exploded on to the screen. There was a buzz for ages and amongst people who don’t go for buzz easily. It raised the SFX bar (though not as much as Joel Silver likes to think) and it combined a neat plot idea and a neat film-making innovation nicely. Reloaded didn’t. Like so many sequels before it, it barely nudged it’s head over the bar. It’s a lot better than Towers though, which was downright dull.

Of course the fights were really good. However, the much touted burly brawl demonstrated how far CGI has yet to go, particularly in animation. The first film worked wonderfully because they stretched live action to the limit. They haven’t been able to improve on that and CGI can’t yet offer them the level of realism such that I can’t spot it and tut. It proved a flexible tool and they worked it real good, but it was obvious and still clunky.

There were some neat plot twists and I am interested to see where it goes from here. Much more so than the other two trilogies. Reloaded expanded the world far beyond what I had expected although remained inside the boundaries set for them by the Animé they’re aping. However, there were some very slow parts, where the plot was doled out hamfistedly. There were also some downright cringeworthy bits. Most notably, the scenes in Zion really should have been left on the virtual cutting room floor.

Overall I’m tempted to put this film down to people with one good idea trying to flog it one time too many (two times too many - Revolutions), but it was slightly better than that. If they’d managed to keep the pace a bit more constant, livened up and decheesed the plot and made the fight scenes fit in a bit more smoothly, it could have been incredible.