Six months after the events of The Matrix, Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) are a couple. Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) hears from Captain Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) of the Logos that all ships should meet in Zion. The last transmission from the Osiris was that an army of Sentinel machines will reach Zion in 72 hours. Commander Lock (Harry Lennix) orders all ships in, but Morpheus suggests one ship stay outside to contact the Oracle (Gloria Foster). One of the Caduceus crew, Bane (Ian Bliss) encounters Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) who claims now to be a rogue program. He takes over Bane’s body and enters the real world.
In Zion, Morpheus announces the imminent attack. The Nebuchadnezzar enters the Matrix, where Neo meets Seraph (Collin Chou), who leads him to the Oracle. She tells him to contact the Keymaker (Randall Duk Kim) to reach the Source of the Matrix. Smith appears to him and demonstrates his ability to clone himself using others as hosts. He fails to absorb Neo and Neo defends himself against an army of Smiths.
Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity visit the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), who has imprisoned the Keymaker, but his wife Persephone (Monica Belluci) gets her revenge on him by leading the trio to the Keymaker. The others flee while Neo holds off attackers. Morpheus and Trinity are pursued by the Twins (Neil and Adrian Rayment). After an amazing chase, Trinity escapes, Morpheus defeats the Twins, and Neo saves Morpheus and the Keymaker from Agent Johnson (Daniel Bernhardt).
The crews of the Nebuchadnezzar, Vigilant, and Logos help Neo and the Keymaker to reach the Source. The Logos must destroy a power station to prevent security from being triggered, so Neo can open the door to the Source. Neo has premonitions of Trinity’s death and asks her to stay behind. The Logos succeeds and the Vigilant is destroyed with all hands. Trinity replaces the Vigilant crew and completes their mission, but Agent Thompson attacks her. Neo, Morpheus, and the Keymaker are attacked by many Smiths. They shoot the Keymaker dead as he opens the door.
Neo meets the Architect (Helmet Bakaitis), creator of the Matrix, who tells Neo that he, The One, is part of the Matrix design. This is the sixth Matrix. Neo must stop the Matrix’s system crash, either by returning to the Source and rebooting to repopulate the destroyed Zion or refuse and cause the Matrix to crash and kill everyone, bringing about humanity’s extinction. Learning of Trinity’s imminent demise, he decides to save her instead.
Trinity is shot as she and Agent Thompson fall off a building. Neo flies down and catches her, then removes the bullet from her chest and revives her heart. They return to the real world and are attacked by Sentinels. Nebuchadnezzar is destroyed, but the crew survives. Neo disables the machines with his mind and falls into a coma. The Hammer picks up the crew. Many of Zion’s ships were wiped out by an EMP and only one survivor is found--Bane, possessed by Agent Smith.
The film, sequel to the Matrix, was written and directed by the Wachowskis. It was generally well-received, though not as well as the original. The special effects were amazing, such as the highway chase, which took three months to shoot and destroyed 300 cars, and what they called the Burly Brawl, in which Neo fights a hundred Smiths, which took 27 days to shoot and required a whole new technology to be invented. It was nine minutes on the screen and more than three years in post-production. Don Davis returned for the musical score. Songs were added by Rob Zombie, Rage Against the Machine, Marilyn Manson, and Linkin Park. The Wachowskis’ contract stated that they did not have to do media interviews, I imagine because they felt all the questions would be about their sex-change instead of the movie.
Sean Connery was asked to play the Architect, but he said he did not understand any of the film. It took Carrie-Anne Moss six months to learn the Scorpion Kick. She, Laurence Fishburne, and Hugo Weaving were all injured. Altogether, eight months was spent on martial arts training. It took a year to shoot just the opening camera pan. Helmut Bakaitis based the Architect’s voice on Orson Welles. There are 1943 names in the credits, mostly technical artists. The film boasts the distinction of what was voted the worst line ever delivered in a feature film: “Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent in the programming of the Matrix.”