Matrix: Resurrections (2021)

[Flack]

When I first saw The Matrix back in 1999, it blew my mind. The idea of living in a simulation and moving between realms wasn't entirely original (Ghost in the Shell and Neuromancer heavily influenced the film), but The Matrix brought those concepts to the big screen and the general public. It was a cool story with groundbreaking special effects and amazing audio, all of which made the DVD everyone's go to "home theater demo disc" for many years. And then we got two sequels which took the original through some weird twists and turns, moved the action underground, and in the end, killed its two lead characters. The end?

Nope. That brings us to Matrix: Resurrections, a follow-up to the original trilogy that isn't a reboot or a remake and yet seems very familiar. Once again (In one of many intentional parallels), we find Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) in the "real" world working behind a computer. Anderson is a famous game developer who developed a series of games called, what else, The Matrix. Anderson's psychiatrist (Neil Patrick Harris) has convinced Anderson that his "memories" of the Matrix are all in his mind, and regularly prescribes him blue pills (nudge nudge, wink wink) to keep him in check.

It isn't long before a new generation of cyberpunks come looking for "The One" to bust him out of his goo-pod, and soon we're right back to the first film, sort of. Like any good superhero movie, the film explains away the deaths and resurrections of Neo and Trinity while explaining why the new Morpheus and Agent Smith don't look like the old Morpheus and Agent Smith. And there's a new bad guy in town, someone who needs Neo and Trinity to remain alive and close, but not too close. There's a lot (a lot) of explaining about what has changed and who's fighting who, but eventually people will fight in the real world and people will fight in the simulated world and it'll all look very exciting.

Maybe I'm dumb, but I felt like 2/3 of the film's plot made no sense and things were being thrown in off the cuff just to prolong the film. In one scene toward the end, Trinity becomes more powerful than Neo. Why? How? Girl power, I guess. There's a lot of "if only we could get person x to location y then we could..." going on. Fortunately the disproportionally long middle act contains plen-ty of exposition.

The original Matrix was a great film, and the two movies that followed it were largely critiqued for taking the story in a new direction. Matrix: Resurrections does the opposite by taking us back to the beginning and throwing in reference after reference to the original (the psychiatrist's black cat's name is Deja Vu) in an attempt to feel nostalgic toward the original. It worked -- I'd rather re-watch the original than sit through this 2 1/2 hour homage to it.

[AArdvark]

This, I believe, is another nostalgia filled moneygrab. Did the movie have anything groundbreaking or paradigm shifting like the first movie did? Is it even possible to make a new movie anymore that doesn't bank on existing names?

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I haven't seen it but

ITS
PANTS

[Flack]

This, I believe, is another nostalgia filled moneygrab. Did the movie have anything groundbreaking or paradigm shifting like the first movie did? Is it even possible to make a new movie anymore that doesn't bank on existing names?

The movie itself is very meta and constantly referencing the first film. Thomas Anderson has Matrix toys on his desk. In the opening act, Anderson is informed that he is to stop work on his latest creation and create a fourth Matrix game against his will, otherwise Warner Brothers will move forward and create one without his input. In real life, the Wachowski sisters (formerly the Wachowski brothers) were contacted by Warner Brothers and informed that they would be making a new Matrix film with or without their input. Anyway, in the film, a brainstorming session takes place with one guy yelling "we need a new bullet time!" And then of course later in the film there /is/ a new bullet time... the difference being, in 1999 that effect was so revolutionary that the DVD came with a bonus feature explaining how that effect was done. In 2021, everything is possible with CGI. The actors' heads could open up and reveal a village on top of their brains and people would just shrug.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Jesus. I get not wanting your baby to be stolen from you. But man, that is a terrible, amateur idea for a plot.

Like, if they are FORCING you to do it, go for a personal story on a small scale and create a cult classic. It will be an amazing movie, it won't make a dime and you'll be respected as an artist and if it fails to make money back WB will leave you alone. DURR WHAT IF WE'RE INNNNN THE MOVIES HURRRR

[Flack]

[SPOILER WARNING]

I only saw the second film once or twice and definitely only saw the third one once, so it's possible I missed something. But there was a kid in the third film who's all grown up in the fourth, who casually says "oh yeah my dad built resurrection pods and brought Neo and Trinity back to life." I was like, what? Then it is revealed that the bad guy can get more "power" to run the Matrix by having Neo and Trinity near one another, but not actually interacting. I think they tried to explain this but my brain was numb by then. By the end of the movie, we discover that Neo still has some powers, but is not as strong as he once was -- he can no longer fly, but Trinity can. If there was an explanation for this, I completely missed it.

I can't remember if it was the first or second Transformers movie, but I remember watching one of them and thinking how nice it looked and really wishing I had some idea of what was going on. That's how I felt through most of this movie. It was like watching an action movie while suffering from a concussion. You know things are supposed to make sense but it hurts too much to try to figure it out.

[Casual Observer]

Best part of this whole movie is the final credits playing Brass Against's version of RATM's "Wake Up".