For Neo, Morpheus and Trinity, the Matrix is a dangerous place where programs in the form of the fearsome Agents hunt them relentlessly.
But a much greater danger exists; chocolate cake that can give you an orgasm. If it’s true, we’re likely to lose the entire female half of the race to it.
In the memorable scene from the Wachowski brothers’ follow up to 1999’s runaway sci-fi smash, the philosophy-spouting Merovingian (Lambert Wilson) demonstrates the Matrix’s power by sending a woman across a restaurant a special dessert that makes her squirm in her seat with pleasure in more ways than one.
And seated as he is next to the mouth-watering Monica Bellucci, who plays his wife, most of the guys there wouldn’t have even needed the cake.
Morpheus, Neo and Trinity square off against the Merovingian in the first of the two-part conclusion of The Matrix: Reloaded.
Like another sci-fi blockbuster around at the moment, Reloaded is the result of an enormously pleasant surprise for the studio that funded it and getting the kind of money the saga deserves lavished on every department.
The sets, special effects, fight sequences, action and navel gazing in the original were only an entree. Reloaded serves it up tenfold.
Having come into his own as The One, Neo races the clock trying to fulfil his destiny in the Matrix by ending the war with the machines. Meanwhile, an army of sentinel robots are boring through the Earth on their way to Zion — the last city of free humans — to destroy it once and for all. Spurred by his love for Trinity and doubt of himself, Neo searches for the truth while the bullets and fists fly.
New characters, awesome sets, the iconic special effects you loved from the original (only ten times bigger and better) and its own mythology of increasing complexity make Matrix: Reloaded a near faultless triumph.
But the faults are there. If you’re an action fan, long discussions about the nature of choice and reality will have you waiting for the next outbreak of energy. If you’re a philosophy professor, the action/adventure themes with be just another Hollywood blockbuster.
Even if you love both, they’re each slightly overexplored separately from each other, and Reloaded seems almost to hang in halves at times.
But this is Hollywood-packaged existentialism, so don’t expect Descartes or Plato (unless they looked this good in black leather somersaulting over an attacking Agent), just sit back and enjoy the spectacle.