Well, 2003 has been upon us for two months now, and geeks like me have been waiting for this year possibly more than any other. Why? Because some of our favourite things are getting sequels. The Matrix : Reloaded, the sequel to one of my all-time favourite movies, should be with us by summer. Also, the sequel to my undisputed favourite game, Deus Ex, MIGHT come out shortly after that. But who knows. Anyways, I can hardly wait for either of them. Which may be a problem.
You see, The Matrix was good precisely because you didn't know what was going on at the start. It had the whole element of discovery - what is the Matrix, who is Morpheus and so on - and it never properly explains things until the very end. This is quite a different from your usual "12 minutes of plot, followed by 2 hours of fight scenes, explosions and naked women" rubbish that hollywood insists on making.
The real trouble is that the vast majority of people just ignored the plot, and only saw the movie because of the (admittedly breathtaking) special effects and kung-fu fight scenes. I actually had a conversation with one of my friends that went something like this -
Him - "The Matrix sequel is probably not going to be as good. The thing that made the first one so cool was the bullet-time, and they won't be able to do something as original this time around."
Me - "Well, perhaps not, but it'll be interesting to see how the characters develop and so on. I mean, the whole element of discovery in the first film was amazing."
Him - "Eh? The Matrix had a shite plot. The only point of watching it is for the bullet time."
Cue lengthy argument.
It should be noted that I consider "Him" to be a rather intelligent person. However he has definitely got a love of popular american culture, and watches the same TV shows that your "average" American does.
It seems to me that if his opinion is widespread, the Wachowski brothers are going to have a real hard time selling Matrix2. I hope for their, and our sake, that they don't pander to the majority.