*THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM THE MATRIX: RESURRECTIONS*
Like most people who grew up on sci-fi movies, we can all acknowledge the level of epicness The Matrix holds whenever it’s mentioned. With that being said, I was one of the people who were excited to hear that there was going to be a sequel to this mind-bending trilogy, and like most fans who watched The Matrix: Resurrections, I was left with a weird feeling of contempt. Many people have decreed this movie as a dumpster fire and it should be erased from existence (sounds like a job for Thanos), but I don’t think the movie was really THAT bad. This movie had a LOT of issues, but there was some silver lining to it. Let me explain….
The Plot
The plot felt very reminiscent of the first Matrix film, hell the first 15 minutes was a direct callback to the famous Trinity introduction. The whole gist of it is that Neo is still alive after the end of The Matrix: Revolutions, but he was reinserted into the Matrix with a new life as a video game developer, who is famous for creating a game trilogy called “The Matrix”, which he unknowingly based off his life. Neo also believes that his flashbacks to his old life are actually episodes of a psychotic break, as noted by his therapist, and he is prescribed pills, which are blue, to take the edge off. He eventually meets the new Morpheus and the human resistance, and they are able to free him from the Matrix once again, just with one minor problem. Trinity is alive, and she was also reinserted back into the Matrix.
The rest of the movie was mainly about Neo and his new batch of friends trying to help him save Trinity because he loves her, and apparently she holds a lot of power within the Matrix, which is the reason why both Neo and Trinity were “resurrected”by the machines. Just like how the Matrix trilogy had “The Architect” controlling everything going on inside the digital world, this new version of The Matrix was controlled by a program called “The Analyst”, who just so happens to be Neo’s therapist. He explained that source code that Neo has within him is what creates stability in the Matrix, but the code grows more powerful when Trinity’s code is factored in. Simply put, their desire to be reunited with each other fills the entire Matrix with dread, and more dread equals more power created by the people trapped inside.
One intense final fight scene later, Trinity is freed from the Matrix, and it is revealed that she now has the same “Chosen One” abilities Neo has. They both confront The Analyst together, threatening him that they will stop him and shut down his Matrix by giving people hope, and they both literally fly off into the sunset. The whole scene was meant to act as a build-up to the next movie, but that may not happen judging by the box office and fan reactions.
Overall this movie felt like a generic action-flick that tried too hard to have meta-commentary. I would give the movie a 5/10 because I enjoyed both Keanu’s and Carrie’s performances as Neo and Trinity, and I liked three new ideas that this movie introduced.
Agent Morpheus
I’m happy that the new Morpheus was established as his own character apart from Lawrence Fishburn’s Morpheus, and what made new Morpheus interesting is that he was an “Agent”. The original Morpheus died in the video game The Matrix Online, but Neo, as game dev Mr. Anderson, resurrected him as a program for a little modal experiment. I’m pretty sure this was meant to symbolize Neo’s unconscious desire to break free from the Matrix after he was reinserted. What made things a little confusing for a moment was that in the modal, Morpheus was reffered to by the other agents as “Agent Smith”. One could interpret this as Neo associating the two indivduals as major opposing influences on his life throughtout the movies, but unfortunatley that is forgotten about shortly after Morpheus is freed.
Actually, the whole thing about Morpheus being an agent is thrown out the window. It would have been interesting to see Morpheus fight with “agent abilities”, such as the super-speed dodging and the “agent assmulation” move.
Also we don’t see a lot of traditional agents in this movie, but rather we see upgraded models of them.
Bots
The new agents are called “Bots”, and the idea here is that the Matrix can now make agents look like ordinary people that can instantly become combat-crazy zombies when human freedom fighters are found. I found this both intriguing and hilarious because bots are an actual issue on social media when they masquerade as a person’s followers, or when they disguise themselves as profiles to promote brand labels on social media and DM people ads. The idea of agents hiding amongst a normal crowd could have been terrifying, but unfortunately this was downplayed since none of the heroes died in the movie, ergo eliminating the danger of the whole plot.
There was one terrifying scene during the final battle when the Matrix activated bots to jump off buildings to strikedown a retreating Neo and Trinity, but that’s about it. These bots were treated like low-level mobs in an RPG, whereas the original agents were terrifying boss-level enemies.
Machine Civil War/Machines Helping Humans
It was revealed that the time gap between the third and fourth movies was 60 years, and during that gap the machines were at war with each other. Too many people were given hope that they can be freed from the digital world, and hopeful people generated less power for the machines to use. It made sense for the machines to go to war with each other for power, but machines WORKING with humans was a surprise. Similar to how “The Oracle” was a program helping the Resistance, more programs and machines gained self-awareness and saw that the only logical way to prolong their existence is to help the humans rebuild. It was also because of the machines that the Resistance was able to free Neo and Trinity.
It was an intriguing concept to see programs making peace with the humans in a new city called “Io”, where the scientists developed nanotechnology to create holograms, with mass, so the programs can interact with the real world. Sadly, not much else is explained about the machine civil war or the freed programs. I just wished we got more backstory about the new world Neo was waking up to, but like most of the other great ideas in this movie, it was forgotten.
Now to move on to the two biggest problems this movie had….
Lazy Writing and Nostalgia
I 100% stand by Morpheus’ quote about nostalgia calming anxiety, but this movie was too reliant on nostalgia. There were brief moments throughout this movie where I saw short clips of the original trilogy, and I thought they were pretty damn cool at first, but then it became too much. This movie focused more on what the Matrix used to be, it forgot to show us what the Matrix is now!
A good example of nostalgia being used to push a new story is Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The plot from the new Ghostbusters movie made many callbacks to the original film, but this was necessary since the main characters were the grandchildren of Egon, and the villain was Gozer from the original movie. The callbacks to the original were not the main focus because it was about introducing the new era of Ghostbusters, so in a way the movie was honoring the past rather than using it as a crutch.
It should also be addressed that there was a lot of lazy writing in the beginning of this movie. I mean come on, the meta commentary about Neo being forced by his boss (who is secretly a rebooted Agent Smith), to make a sequel to his Matrix trilogy titled “Matrix 4”, Neo’s dev team just ramble on and on about why people like The Matrix, and what they believe is the philosophical meaning behind the trilogy, it felt so forced. During that sequence, I was thinking to myself, “I need the red pill,” and I almost gave up watching it. I ended up finishing it because I like Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, and the new Agent Smith (who people keep shitting on, but I like him).
Final Thoughts
The movie was ok, but it could have been better, though in truth the movie should have never happened. I understand now that reboots just can’t cut it for the fans, especially cash-grab reboots. Maybe there shouldn’t be another Matrix movie….
But I think there should be a new Matrix video game, now that will make a shit ton of movie!!!
That’s all I have to say for now, I hope all enjoy yourselves on this New Year’s Eve. This is your friendly neighborhood Deadpool, signning off.
Hall of Mercs 