I'm pretty sure that at this point, everyone who wanted to see it has seen it, and developed their own opinion. Rather than a full-scale review, I thought I'd just toss out a few thoughts on the overall impression I got between the screaming kids in front of me and the sarcastic (but not in a funny way) teenagers behind me.

And those of you who are sitting there thinking, "She's cheesing out on the review because she went away for the weekend and then forgot to write it" are absolutely correct. So, then, without further ado…

• Movies teach us things. Horror movies teach us that you won't survive if you smoke, drink, or have sex. Sci-fi movies teach us that the future is always either horrendously dirty, or immaculately clean. But as someone who can see thirty on the horizon, I'll take Zion over Logan's Run.
  
  
• Morpheus has style, man. A three-piece suit with shirt garters! It's nice to see a man kick ass on top of a truck and still look that great.
  
  
• Waiting through a hundred million dollars' worth of animation and CGI credits is murder when you drank a whole, trough-sized soda during the movie. The trailer was worth it, though. Even my bladder agreed.
  
  
• They may be the last free humans on earth and facing imminent destruction, but those Zion people know how to party, man. I've never seen a ruckus like that except for the Limelight on a Saturday night.
  
  
• Who cares if he can't act? Keanu Reeves + black trenchcoat + butt-whoopin' + a sword = a movie I want to see again and again.
  
  
• Sadly, Gloria Foster (the Oracle) passed away before she could film any of her scenes for Revolutions. I have heard that there will be an Oracle in the third film, and the trailer even features a voice-over that's supposed to be her (although it didn't sound like her, to me), so I'm very interested to see how they'll do that. But given the fact that the filmmakers are pretty much inventing the technology they need as they need it, I get the feeling they'll manage somehow.
  
  
• Amazingly enough, the Wachowski Brothers foresaw one of America's latest brouhahas and created an insufferable, unprincipled, thoroughly annoying character that has something Neo desperately needs. And a French accent.
  
  
• I'm not trying to give anything away here, and feel free to skip this paragraph if you haven't seen the movie yet, but… if anybody knows exactly why Neo suddenly became Black Vulcan, post it to the discussion board!
  
  
• I've heard several people carp on how there's no plot to this film. I thoroughly disagree. The sections of the movie that weren't unbridled whoop-ass were vacuum-packed with plot, in my opinion. Much more than I expected, actually. There were some unnecessary scenes (such as the Zion party), and a whole lot of hyperbole about philosophy and choice that did more to confuse me than anything else, but the movie certainly went somewhere. The problem I had with all that philosophy was simply that I got it the first time, when we heard it from the Oracle. But then the annoying French guy repeated it. And so did the Architect. And someone else, probably; I'm sure I lost track. All that repetition made me wonder if I really did get it in the first place, after all..
  
  
• Most people will agree that this movie is very much the middle of a trilogy, that in-between place where things sometimes just don't fit, and you keep feeling that a lot of it is just marking time. When about 65% of a two and a half hour movie is fight scenes, that's definitely marking time. But Empire is my favorite Star Wars movie, Royal Assassin is my favorite Farseer book, and I see nothing wrong with marking time. Most of my life is marking time, and I don't even get the added spice of beating up 50 copies of the same guy.
  
  

In total, the fighting parts get four and a half doors (a half-door penalty for being obviously animated in spots), the plot stuff gets three doors (might have been more if they hadn't kept confusing me), and Keanu Reeves naked earns one more door. Average 'em out, and I give The Matrix Reloaded a total of 2.83 doors, which I can't expect my editor to actually have the graphics for—so let's round it up to three. Yeah, three doors. That's my rating, and I'm sticking to it. [N.B. Your editor thanks you.]