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Let me circle back to my last column and the initial question I posed: Have there been movies that have been “ruined” by becoming trilogies? Would it be better to have the fond memories of Jack Sparrow’s not-quite-so-grand entrance in Curse of the Black Pearl, and Thomas Anderson’s perfectly pitched “Whoa” in The Matrix without the messiness of what followed? In re-viewing all three films in the Matrix trilogy, what strikes me about the first one is how innocent and goofy it seems, both pre-George W. Bush and pre-9/11, 10 years later. It’s a mash-up of genres, styles, and attitudes but with a keen ability to laugh at its own excess without dipping into self-parody.

The film rushes along breathlessly, barely pausing between fight sequences, plot twists, and declarations of love, yet a lot of key questions remain tantalizingly unanswered. The defining image for me, then as now, occurs about 108 minutes in, as the Wachowski Brothers include a completely gratuitous underbelly shot of scores of spent artillery cartridges raining down from the helicopter that Neo and Trinity are using to rescue Morpheus from the clutches of Mr. Smith. I was far along into my stint as an usher at the Broadway Metroplex in 1999 and I always timed my pop-ins into the auditorium to be sure and catch that shot. The grin that I am sure the Wachowskis counted on eliciting from that excessive moment endeared them to me. The abrupt ending, with Neo taking to the skies, did not. (Indeed, the closing shots of each part of the trilogy rank among the weakest individual elements in the respective films.)

The Matrix Reloaded still holds the record for the largest opening for an R-rated movie: nearly $135 million (or almost half its final gross) over four days. In the weeks that followed, the drops (even with a Memorial Day holiday) were steep and swift. Still, Reloaded finished with $281 million domestic and $460 million foreign, considerably healthy increases from the grosses of the first. It stands at number two on the list of highest-grossing age-restricted films, beaten only by another feature about a Chosen One who must overcome his fears and doubts to secure salvation for his people.

With a combined budget for the sequels ($300 million) of nearly five times the cost of the first one, the Wachowskis were given what seems like free reign to take the story in whatever direction they preferred and come up with whatever mind-blowing action sequences tickled their fancy. Clocking in at nearly 15 minutes, the freeway chase extraordinaire that comes in the final third of Reloaded impresses me more now than it did in 2003. Seven years of CGI overkill since have helped to render it even more physical and dangerous.

It’s telling that instead of trying to top the bullet-time moments from The Matrix, the Wachowskis opted for something with an inherently old-school vibe: motorcycles, cars, semis, and the humans at their wheels all en route to becoming twisted wreckage. It’s also perversely ironic that the character of Neo doesn’t feature in this mini-epic until the closing seconds (and only then simply flying in to save the day.) The key battle scenes featuring him - his first encounter with the legion of Smiths, a battle against a small arsenal of assassins in a baroque mansion foyer, his showdown with Ghost - are exuberantly photographed and exciting in their own way but they suffer from the appearance that Neo now seems all but invincible on a physical plane. The only things that seems capable of dragging him down are his doubts about his true purpose and his desire to uncover the true measure of the Matrix’ strength and limits.

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