The Matrix Resurrections

Thomas Anderson feels his life is moving in a loop: same city, same job, same amazing woman he meets at a coffee shop everyday.  What Thomas perceives as reality, however, is anything but.  As a group of familiar strangers burst into his life, Thomas begins to remember who he really is…or who he used to be.  Awoken to two new worlds, Thomas must relearn everything that made him “The One” if he is to brave a brand new Matrix to save the one thing that still matters the most: his lost love Trinity.

 
I reviewed the Matrix movies two years ago for the 20^th Anniversary of the first film (Jeez, 20 freaking years, I’m old).  To me, the original is still a high bar of action/scifi/cyberpunk storytelling that feels timeless, despite some storytelling flaws and some of its revolutionary visual effects showing their age.  The sequels diluted the near perfect formula of the first, devolving into Philosophy 101 classes with some occasional action peppered in to keep viewers awake.  By the end of The Matrix Revolutions, the story felt stretched beyond what it should have been.  In my mind, “Where we go from there…is a choice I leave to you,” is where The Matrix should have ended.  And yet, against all odds, The Matrix is back with a 4^th Chapter, 18 years after the conclusion of The Matrix Revolutions.  Can the lure of The Matrix still make me go “whoa”?  Or is this another case of too little, too late and why do anything else at all?
 
I’d say it leans towards those latter two sentiments and a lot of that is established in the first 20 minutes of this nearly two and a half hour movie.  The Matrix Resurrections marketing push has leaned heavily on “déjà vu”, nostalgia, you’ve seen this before so it should be so familiar you’ll recognize it and jump right back in.  Resurrections doesn’t just hammer in this aspect pretty hard, it also goes full blown meta with Neo being forced to work with a bunch of what are essentially fanboys whose lives were changed by the story of The Matrix and think it’s the greatest thing ever made.  It gets to the point of pure annoyance during a montage debating the pros and cons of reboots and remakes and how to jazz things up with both from a creative standpoint.  At this point, the movie feels less like a “Resurrection” and more like an overblown “Fan Letter”, while also trying to talk seriously about accepting realities and the havoc that can wreck on a troubled mind.
 
For all the fanboy love Ressurections is trying to bring to its own franchise, the sad truth is that while there are some good ideas and fun sequences in the movie, it doesn’t feel nearly as fresh or innovative as the first one…honestly, that’s not much of a shock at this point, is it?  The Matrix was a game changer for sure.  Even if the story itself was familiar, the new filmmaking techniques and visual effects breakthroughs propelled it into the stuff of legends and everything from dumb action flicks to parodies has tried to emulate it ever since.  Ressurections at times doesn’t even feel like it’s trying to do anything new most of the time (there are good bits and I will talk about them).  Stuff that should look cool?  Been there, done that.  Stuff that should feel epic?  Been done better in other films.  At least when it came to the action, The Matrix Reloaded certainly tried to step things up a level and mostly succeeded.  Resurrections might some better action scenes than Revolutions…but still, it feels like its trying way to hard to be the original film that it just furthers my questioning as to why the movie exists at all.
 
If anything did pique my interest at all in The Matrix Resurrections, it was the cast and a couple of good ideas.  Keanu Reeves gets to do a bit more with Neo this time around, particularly in his new reality and his coming to grips with The Matrix (again) has a bit more of a humorous bite to it.  It is nice to see him and Carrie Anne Moss together again, even if Trinity, er Tiffany, doesn’t get nearly as much screentime until the final act.  The new cast is pretty good.  Jessica Henwick continues to prove why she is such a hot star in the action/scifi community right now as Bugs, the young woman who leads Neo on his new quest.  Neil Patrick Harris might be the MVP of the film as Neo’s Therapist who is much more than he seems (and a lot more fun).  The two biggest points of contention with fans, I’m sure, are the recasting of Morpheus and Agent Smith.  Previously played by Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving respectively, new versions of the two characters are now played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Johnathan Groff.  Both look like theyre having a great time breathing new life into these characters, with Groff channeling much of Hugo Weavings scene chewing power that made him one of the more entertaining aspects of The Matrix Revolutions. 
 
As I said, a lot of the movie doesn’t work for me but there are some good ideas all over the place that I wish got more emphasis and screentime.  It was neat being able to see a ships Operator actually appear in The Matrix simulation and act as a spectral voice alongside the crew.  The new Matrix with more of the new digital day and age inspiration we live in today was a pretty novel idea too.  Probably the best idea, though, is The New Matrix not only using good old fashioned Agents but also being able to take over the population and make them into virtual zombies, where the heck was that in Reloaded or especially Revolutions?  Plus, there’s a whole new world to explore beyond The Matrix itself that definitely didn’t get enough exploratory screentime or decent backstory.  However, all of this falls on one particularly problem with Resurrections: it is, at the end of the day, Neo and Trinity’s come back tour.  If it isn’t directly effecting them, more fascinating elements are just there to fill out the background and pad out the runtime a little…seems unfair.
 
The Matrix Resurrections…didn’t need to happen.  It wants to be a do over of the lackluster original final entry and brings some good ideas to the table.  But let’s face it, nothing is ever going to be able to top the original masterpiece no matter how hard any imitator or sequel tries and Resurrections wants to try pretty hard.  It’s good to see Neo and Trinity back in action with a fresh face cast.  But with an opening third that bugged me with too much fanservice and not enough personal interest and the rest of the movie trying to justify its existence, it’s just kind of…meh.  And despite it’s leaning hard on nostalgia to reignite interest, the only thing Resurrections might truly succeed in is getting people to revisit the original Matrix for the first time in a while.  Cause in the end: much like Highlander, there can be only one…and The Animatrix.
 
4/10