I wasn’t surprised to find this time around that, like part 3, this really relies on a lot of the backstory of the whole series. I’d actually intended to watch the first three movies again prior to this but I just didn’t have the time this time of year. As the end credits roll here, I kinda realised that it probably wouldn’t have helped anyway. That this movie might strike a newcomer as being a hash of a mess doesn’t bother me – that’s as it should be, why would you watch this without watching the other three first? But that it strikes someone who’s watched them all that way – if only once and in a semi-interested way – that’s a problem …

These movies (well, the sequels, at least) feel so much like the Architect’s speech at the end of Matrix Reloaded. You know it all makes sense so you nod and smile and look like you’re taking it in; but you really don’t have the energy to follow every nuance of it. It’s like that speech combined with the David Blaine episode of South Park, where Jesus is like, “Okay, now turn around?” when doing the simplest of illusions. When the reveal is made here, it’s certainly presented well and you’d be forgiven for gasping … but if you’re jaded like the rest of us, you’ll find it hard to resist giving the movie a snarky golf-clap for its efforts.

For the record – and I wish I’d written something to this effect in my review of the last installment – if you are the kind of fan who has followed all the intricacies of the plot as religiously as the screenwriter obviously wants you to, you’ll probably be much more satisfied than anybody with how the story continues. For the rest of us, the gore scenes are gorey and the movie’s well shot and edited and acted and everything, and in this genre it’s hard to stay mad at a movie too long when it checks all those boxes.