... which is roughly what occurred to me when he stopped those sentinels outside The Matrix. Pity they didn't play up how impossible this is supposed to be; IMO Trinity should not have been quite that unflappable.

I can understand why people didn't like it. Compared to the first one, the fighty bits were more intense, more numerous and longer and the talky bits were more opaque and longer. The increased contrast was obvious and I suspect a lot of people who saw it were simply not prepared for a cerebral action movie. The Wachowski brothers pulled it off successfully with the first one where if you didn't grok the thinking stuff it didn't really matter. But if you didn't, then the learning curve was a lot steeper with number two, because you not only needed to know how the first worked but you had to be able to mostly keep up during the second!

Thinking back about to what the Architect told Neo, I get the impression that if they architected Neo's personality as much as he hinted they did, then they might have erred in engendering a love in him for a particular person. The Architect certainly didn't want Neo to exit through the door he did, though he said he knew they could cope if he did. Also, a subtle point my friends didn't catch: Zion hasn't been destroyed! The Matrix Reloaded ended before that question had been answered.

I also wanted to see Morpheus' reaction when Neo told him that he was the sixth One! Maybe we'll see that in Revolutions...

Wade, who actually like it, but thought the first was slightly better.