Although Matrix Reloaded is breaking all kinds of box office records, some viewers are not as shocked and awed as they expected to be. For example, here's a discussion I had recently with my colleague Michael Black about this eagerly awaited sequel.  

DIANA:  Okay Michael, I admit it, this super-hyped movie is not my cup of tea. I barely made it through the first one, so had hoped for something a little more this time. Instead, we have the same listless characters -- Neo (Keanu Reeves), Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), a story extremely hard to follow and those fight scenes that go on and on and on.

MICHAEL:  Well, Diana, I agree with you on story complexity. If you're not an original fan of the first one, you might as well watch a film in Swedish without subtitles. I've seen the original many times over, and even I became somewhat confused by this storyline.

DIANA:  Mike, you have to admit the chemistry between Neo and Trinity is about as exciting as that between a fire hydrant and a dog. In fact Reeves could be the poster boy for fire hydrants, no emotion at all and rather draining. The only characters I even found remotely interesting were the Keymaker (Randall Duk Kim) and Link (Harold Perrineau).

MICHAEL: Right again, Diana. It seems that everyone in Matrix Reloaded are sad individuals with no hope of expression except for the newer crewmember, Link (Harold Perrineau Jr.) -- the only character of the entire movie allowed to cheer and smile.

DIANA:  And Mike, what's up with this prophecy stuff by the Oracle (Gloria Foster). I laughed at the note in the press kit that states, "Perhaps part of what makes the Matrix films so intriguing is that their density inspires limitless interpretation." Oh really? I believe the interpretations are so different because only a few people really know what's going on. And the dialogue is less understandable than listening to a two-year-old with a mouth full of cereal.

MICHAEL: Well, I'm glad to see Oracle back in the sequel, but unless you're a hardcore computer geek, you might as well bring a translator to the movie to explain to you what she is saying. Some see the dialogue as witty, but at times it's extremely confusing. What I interpreted Oracle as saying, is that she is an old rogue computer program inside the Matrix, and has seen this scenario of Neo fighting the machines several times, exactly how many is unknown. He is given a choice every 100 years to either save the human race or destroy it. The Oracle calls it a prophecy only because it has happened before, but in this timeline, Neo makes a different choice, a choice of love for Trinity who didn't exist in previous versions. You're also right about the dialogue. That five-minute sequence with the architect? I had no clue what he said.

DIANA:  Okay, thanks. You're comments helped me grasp what I didn't get in two hours of watching the movie. But do people really understand this "real world versus virtual" story? I think it's just a video game on the big screen with the same old ballet special effects. They aren't better, just longer.

MICHAEL: Diana, this movie is defiantly over the top with special effects. "Bullet-Time," which was a style breakthrough in the first one, is duplicated in the sequel 10-fold with every action sequence the directors could think of. What made Matrix fun to watch was the fight scenes. Now, I have to agree with you, they are a bit too long. After awhile, my brain started to short circuit due to an overload of visual candy, giving me a slight headache and a yearning for aspirin.

DIANA:  Finally Mike, my bottom line is, if that horrible junkie world is Zion, who wants to go there anyway? There are no surprises in Matrix Reloaded, and that ending! It's like throwing a bowling ball full force and having a wall pop up two feet away from you with a note that reads, "Thank you for watching today - but come back in six months to see the end. In the meantime buy the DVD of this one and the other 20 spin-offs, including the new anima version." What a money bucket!

MICHAEL: The special effects are definitely worth watching, Diana, and according to box office figures -- that bucket you mentioned is overflowing!