wildyams

See for me, you shouldn't have to have Cliff notes to watch a movie. Like literature, a story should operate on several levels for the deeper meanings and allegories they were going for. According to this review it just becomes a patch work of ripped-off references that in the end seems condescending to their audience while neither not very imaginative nor comprehensible. It really makes you wonder if they even understood the references they were using.

I agree, a movie shouldn't have to have "Cliff's Notes" accompaniment; however, I do think that if a movie makes references to things I haven't studied, then it's nice to know that they were referencing something and that you can find a deeper meaning in a movie because of that through analysis like that. I don't fault a filmmaker for making a complicated or complex movie or something that has a lot of subtle references to various things. However, considering how the movies played out, I am very suspicious that either the Warchowskis weren't fully aware of the things they were referenceing, weren't sure what they were trying to convey with these references, or (most likely) didn't really know what they wanted to say in general.

Despite what I've heard, I still contend that they made the first movie and that was going to be it, but couldn't turn down the cash to make more movies. And since the ending of the first movie does not lend itself to continuing the story in the matrix at all, and thus without Agant Smith, I feel like the Warchowskis were no doubt hindered by trying to come up with a story that involved those two elements to appease the studio. Either that, or they themselves figured that any viable sequel would have to be in the matrix if it's going to be called a Matrix movie. I dunno, I just think generally a sequel is extremely hard to write because you have constraints like that. They should have just made the first one and left well enough alone.

I totally agree. It should have ended with the first one, or come up with something that followed the original installment. However, I think were afraid there wasn't anywhere else to go with the twists and philosophy so they forced all these other issues, and subplots on us for the following two sequels. It almost seemed that if they threw enough at us they would keep us preoccupied and maybe not notice they didn't know what to do.

They did kill Agent Smith and maybe should have come up with a better upgrade of him for the latter. They still could have used the same actor, but the overall threat still should have been the Matrix. As we are told, and don't find out, the threat becomes Agent Smith and he threatens both the humans somehow, and the Matrix -- although we never see how he threatens the Matrix.

Just keep it simple so we can keep score and then string your cyberbabble around that. The first one did it. That's why it will stand on it's own.