Need to talk about the Matrix: Reloaded – and I’ve got a bunch of related links. But if you’re like me, and don’t like spoilers of any sort, you might want to skip the next paragraph. I’m not really going to go into details, but even if I slip in a minor spoiler, there’s people (ie. me) who would rather not hear it at all, and go into it perfectly fresh.

So it was good. Given a second chance, I would watch it again. Sure, they could have done without the sex scene, and the Neo vs. a billion Agents fight was a bust – but I felt they had more than enough to cancel those out. It’s got two, count ’em two, prominent and more importantly – cool Chinese characters. We got better representation than the French, that’s for sure. Add on the best (and longest) car chase scene in all of history, and this movie’s not exactly bad. As a general action movie? Quite possibly the best I’ve seen. As one of my favourite movies? One of my bottom-tier ones. As a Matrix movie? Falls horribly short. Bottom line – very enjoyable, just don’t think about it. The last movie where I used that line to describe it? Cradle 2 The Grave.

But that’s that. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, remember that there’s an exclusive trailer for Matrix: Revolutions after the credits are all done. But keep in mind that the credits seem to include not only every single person who worked on the movie, but also every single person who ever worked on the movie, who will, and who wanted to. So these are damn long credits. Like I was telling Sheep, I had originally downloaded a trailer for Revolutions prior to watching the movie, but I chose to watch it up on the big screen first. So when I came home (1:30?), first thing I do is start it up. But it’s different. My guess is that it’s another sort of exclusive trailer from the game, something you get upon completing it. Someone will have to confirm, but at this point in time it feels like a solid guess. Check it out here.

The crazy chinese guy is one Collin Chou. I vaguely remembered him, so I did some Googling, and it turns out he’s actually been doing films over in China (Hong Kong?) since 1986. I recognized him (vaguely) from two movies – Bodyguard From Bejing (with Jet Li – terrible, terrible movie) and God Of Gamblers 3 (which are always kick ass). Both are chinese movies, so if you’ve never heard of them – that’s the reason. Reloaded and Revolutions seem to be his first North American bits – and the guy already seems to have at least a Jet Li level of english going for him, so that can’t be bad.

And I thought this little article was kind of interesting. I enjoyed it, at least. We got two guys from the Matrix – Joel Silver (producer) and John Gaeta (head of visual effects) saying that Keanu Reeves can now take Jet Li. I don’t really need to particularly mention that they’re both white…but I just did it anyway. Then we got Yuen Chueng-Yam (co-choreographer) who says that no…martial arts in movies are a tiny bit different than in real life. Which ultimately brings us to the issue of Keanu Reeves vs. Jet Li. Keanu’s got…three martial arts movies to his credit (the Matrix trilogy, in case you’re asleep). Jet Li’s got…a billion. And prior to his movies, won numerous martial arts championships. In China – where’s there’s a billion of kids just like him. Hurm.

Lastly, if you’ve seen the movie, and (like the rest of the human race) did not understand a damned thing that Architect guy said – here’s a pretty good transcript of the conversation. But after reading it…I still have no idea what happened. In fact, I seriously think I’m more confused now.

So suck it up, you shades and trenchcoat decked Matrix fanboys! X2 is the true ownage of 2003. …until Hulk, the League, Lord of the Rings, and Revolutions come out at least.