Review Detail

Very good edit.

It made the sequels watchable for me. It mostly flows seamlessly. Cutting out the Bane subplot does introduce a weird disconnect where it is unclear why only the one ship that our heroes are on can detonate the EMP but I accept it as necessary to streamline the plot without Bane.

I didn't however care for the ending.
The editing is most crude and jarring when Trinity is seen supposedly momentarily alive after the ship crash but then doesn't follow Neo up to the machine God (or whatever that face is meant to be?) and upon collection of Neo's body. I assume that Jerick was wedded to the romance of Trinity collecting her dead lovers’ body and compromised the editing to force the narrative beat. I would have preferred allowing Trinity to die to maintain the smooth editing.

The movie is also now too action heavy for my tastes and I agree with another reviewer who said that the silly CGI in the early Smith fight scene should have been further cut due to how dated and unnecessary it is. Still, it is admirable just how much Jerick has cut and how well the movie still works. Perhaps, cutting more wasn’t feasible. I would have preferred even more of the action trimmed out to reduce the action-heaviness of this edit.

I would happily rewatch this edit again, despite my gripes. The original sequels are unwatchable for me. This edit moves along with a pleasant pace, cuts out most of the cringiness of those original sequels and manages to be mostly narratively coherent while also being mostly smooth from a video editing standpoint. I recommend anyone give this a watch.