Stefanie

Absolutely unoriginal and boring. Incredible special effects.

None of the new characters have enough time or backstory for us to care about them, but they're also not throw away characters - the writers seemed to think we would be too triggered if a single good guy died. In fact, nobody died the entire movie - 100% of the enemies are bots. There aren't even meaningful interactions with agents outside of the ones Neo simulates.

The entire thing was just a big callback to what they did in the original trilogy. Lots of allusion and direct rips. All with killer special effects, but no substance. They think they're being meta and hip by acknowledging it, but that doesn't make it better; their horrible post credits scene about "just needing to elicit an emotional response" and "uploading the catrix" makes it a lot worse.

Nothing in the movie has any deeper meaning. There are zero stakes. The new human city isn't at risk. The Matrix isn't at risk. Literally the entire movie is about Neo and Trinity needing to wake up and get out of the Matrix - if they don't, they will continue living, just inside the Matrix.

None of Smith's motives were clear. He went from being a very strong and interesting character in the original trilogy to a very weak and aimless character here.

Cheapening the power of the One is really detrimental to the film. The Analyst's idea that "Neo was nothing special by himself, he needed Trinity" is ridiculous. It's rather as the Architect said "Neo's attachment to humanity was very intimate." He was still the One with or without Trinity, and his powers were unique to that position. So the idea that the machines can somehow use Neo and Trinity to enhance power generation of the Matrix by keeping them close is both fundamentally flawed on top of being ridiculous. And then letting Trinity be the one to fly them out of danger at the end just steals everything from Neo.

Despite everyone assuring Neo that his fight mattered, it seems that the world is almost identical to where it was at the start of the original Matrix movie. The Matrix is a prison. The humans are hiding in a city to keep back the hostile machines. It doesn't seem like they're freeing many minds. The only difference is that now some machines are on their side - something that's never really explained. This new alliance has yielded the incredible result of.. fruit. Neo's entire fight gave humanity fruit. That's it.

The Analyst and the machines seemed incompetent and weak. The machine on machine violence was very interesting and could have been instrumental in explaining the resurgence in war and restoration of the Matrix as a prison - so naturally it was only mentioned once offhand.

The world wasn't setup clearly or interestingly in a way to support a story existing within it. There is no substance, no stakes, and no point.

Overall it's a huge disappointment. The fact that the Reloaded and Revolutions were better movies that were more coherent and added more substance to the universe is testament to the extreme failure of this move.