The Matrix Resurrections
“The Matrix Resurrections” is the first “Matrix” movie since 2003’s “ The Matrix Revolutions ,” but it is not the first time we’ve seen the franchise in theaters this year. That distinction goes to “ Space Jam: A New Legacy ,” the cinematic shareholder meeting for Warner Bros. with special celebrity guests that inserted Looney Tunes characters Speedy Gonzales and Granny into a scene from “ The Matrix .” Speedy Gonzales dodged slow-motion bullets; Granny jumped in the air and kicked a cop in the face like Trinity. The 2003 animation omnibus “The Animatrix” detailed how the Matrix was created, how an apocalyptic war against robots led to human suffering being harvested to fuel a world of machines; there should be an addendum that includes this scene from “Space Jam: A New Legacy” to show what it all led to.
This is the reality that we live in—one ruled by Warner Bros.’ Serververse—and it is also the context that rules over “The Matrix Resurrections.” The film bears the name of director Lana Wachowski , returning to the cyberpunk franchise that made her one of the greatest sci-fi/action directors, but be warned that no force is remotely as strong as Warner Bros. wanting a lighter and brighter take on “The Matrix.” “The Matrix Resurrections” is a reboot with some striking philosophical flourishes, and grandiose set-pieces where things go boom in slow motion, but it is also the weakest and most compromised “Matrix” film yet.
Written by Wachowski, David Mitchell , and Aleksandar Hemon , “The Matrix Resurrections” is about building from beloved beats, characters, and plot elements; call it deja vu, or just call it a convoluted clip show. It starts with a new character named Bugs ( Jessica Henwick ) witnessing Trinity’s famous telephone escape before having her own swooping, bullet-dodging getaway, and later throws new versions of previous characters into the the mix. The wise man of this saga, Morpheus, is no longer played by Laurence Fishburne , but Yahya Abdul-Mateen II , who looks just as cool in dark color coats and sunglasses with two machine guns in hand, but has a confusing purpose for being there. “The Matrix Resurrections” will bend over backward, bullet-time style, to explain why he is. The same goes for how heroes Neo and Trinity return, even though “The Matrix Revolutions” put a lot of care into killing them off. This is the kind of movie in which it truly doesn’t matter when you last saw the original films; your experience might be even better if you haven’t seen them at all.
It is also about making you painfully conscious of what constitutes Matrix intellectual property, as it places Keanu Reeves ’ hero Neo, known in the Matrix as a brilliant video game programmer named Thomas Anderson, in a board room with a bunch of creatives, trying to come up with ideas for a sequel. He has received pressure from his boss (and Warner Bros.) after his game “The Matrix” was a hit; “bullet-time” is discussed with awe by stock geek characters as something that needs to be topped. This is one of the movie’s more reality-shifting ideas—to frame “The Matrix” as a new type of simulation, one that was created by Thomas Anderson inside the actual Matrix, as taken from his dreams that come from taking a blue pill daily, instead of the eye-opening red pill he took in the original 1999 film. And yet like many of the Warner Bros.-related meta redirections, it all ends up adding so very little to the bigger picture.
“The Matrix Resurrections” brings back the love story of Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss) and Neo, our two cyber heroes whose romantic connection gave the earlier films a sense of desperation larger than the apocalypse at hand. But here, they do not know each other, even though Thomas’ video character Trinity looks a lot like Moss. In this world, she’s a customer in a Simulatte coffee shop named Tiffany that he’s hesitant to talk to, in particular because she has kids and a husband named Chad (played by Chad Stahelski ). Reeves and Moss are both invested in this whimsical arc about fated lovers, but the movie plays too much into this nostalgia as well, relying on our emotions from the past movies to largely care about why they should be together.
The movie’s greatest stake is in the mind of Thomas, one that’s been having daydreams that are clips from the “Matrix” movies, while sitting in a bathtub with a rubber ducky on his head. He receives some guidance from his therapist, played by Neil Patrick Harris , who tries to make sense of the break from reality that previously had Thomas attempting to walk off a roof, thinking he could fly. Harris’ part should remain a mystery, but let’s say it’s an unexpected role that does get you to take him seriously, including how he analyzes our own understanding of “The Matrix.” Meanwhile, it becomes apparent that just as Morpheus is a little different than we remember, there’s a new version of big baddie Smith, played by Jonathan Groff , trying to imitate Hugo Weaving ’s slithering line-delivering that comes from a tightly clenched jaw. There are also copies of agents that take over bodies and wear impeccable suits and ties, chasing after the good guys.
Plenty of Matrixing is in store once Thomas believes Morpheus, but it’s more fun to witness in the movie than for anyone to explain in detail. But it includes the feeling of Thomas going back to where it all began, including a training sequence in which Reeves and Abdul-Mateen II do a rendition of the dojo scene in “The Matrix,” only this time Neo leaves with a different power that requires less movement. And as part of Neo’s journey back down the rabbit hole, there’s a breakneck, candy-colored fight sequence on a speeding train, in which Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer ’s blitzing score seems to be powering the locomotive.
Expositional philosophizing is also a part of the “Matrix” experience, and there’s a great line here from one of the film’s villains about fear and desire being the two human modes (you can practically imagine the line scribbled in Wachowski’s notebook). But these wordy passages also conceal the movie trying to move the goal posts, that the rules of the Matrix can change however its saga about cyber messiahs needs it to keep making sequels. And while the apocalyptic, real world action has always been less exciting than the stylized anarchy up in the Matrix, that gap of intrigue is felt even more here. Behind the screens, with Neo, Trinity, and others plugged in, certain returning members of the underground land of Zion like Niobe ( Jada Pinkett Smith, aged forward) try and fail to convince you that this story absolutely needs to be told, and that THIS is the ultimate world-saving chapter, even though the franchise no longer feels dangerous. That latter note becomes all the more obvious when “The Matrix Resurrections” gives us a micro, cutesy, fist-bumping descendant of the sentinel machines that used to rip human beings to shreds.
It’s the action that proves to be the purest element here, robust and snazzy—for years we have been watching directors imitate what Wachowski did with her sister Lilly with “The Matrix” films, and now we can get caught up again in her fast-paced action that marries kung fu with acrobatic gunplay, often in lush slow motion. For all of this movie’s cheesy talk about bullet-time (almost killing the fun of being in awe of it), “The Matrix Resurrections” doubles up with certain scenes that combine two different slow-motion speeds in the same frame, painting some exhilarating, big-budget frescos with dozens of flying extras and hundreds of bullets. The film’s grand finale is an action gem, as it thrives on how much adrenaline you can get from layering multiple big explosions as things suddenly crash into frame, all during a high-speed chase.
And yet once the adrenaline from a sequence like that wears off, you can’t help but think about the guy who sat near Steven Soderbergh on an airplane and watched a clip show of explosive action scenes , virtually making the director want to quit filmmaking back in 2013. There’s incredible merit in the action seen in “The Matrix Resurrections,” but those aren’t the elements that free the mind of the medium like bold storytelling, like “The Matrix” preached and then became a game-changing classic, only to become a docket for satisfying shareholders. Blue pill or red pill? It doesn’t matter anymore; they’re both placebos.
Available in theaters and on HBO Max tomorrow.
Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.
- Keanu Reeves as Thomas A. Anderson / Neo
- Carrie-Anne Moss as Tiffany / Trinity
- Jonathan Groff as Smith
- Jessica Henwick as Bugs
- Neil Patrick Harris as The Analyst
- Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe
- Priyanka Chopra as Sati
- Christina Ricci as Gwyn de Vere
- Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Morpheus
- Aleksandar Hemon
- David Mitchell
- Lana Wachowski
Cinematographer
- Daniele Massaccesi
- Johnny Klimek
- Joseph Jett Sally
Writer (based on characters created by)
- Lilly Wachowski
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The Matrix Resurrections
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Watch The Matrix Resurrections with a subscription on Max, Netflix, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.
What to Know
If it lacks the original's bracingly original craft, The Matrix Resurrections revisits the world of the franchise with wit, a timely perspective, and heart.
The Matrix Resurrections falls short compared to the original, but doesn't skimp on the action or cool visual effects.
Critics Reviews
Audience reviews, cast & crew.
Lana Wachowski
Keanu Reeves
Carrie-Anne Moss
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II
Jonathan Groff
Jessica Henwick
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The astonishing, angry Matrix Resurrections deals with what’s real in a world where nothing is
A furious Lana Wachowski fights back with a love story
by Joshua Rivera
[ Ed. note: Minor spoilers for The Matrix Resurrections follow.]
The story: A man named Thomas is told that the world is not what he thought it to be, and despite the passion of the messenger and the void in his own life, he refuses to believe. He wants to see for himself. He wants, as the Gospel of John recounts, to feel the wounded flesh of the resurrected Christ, to feel where the nails were hammered into his hands. In his doubt, he becomes a myth, the first man to doubt the gospel, only to believe there is truth there when he’s standing in front of the gospel’s corporeal form.
Another version of the story: A man named Thomas Anderson lives a respectable life at the end of the 20th century, a gifted programmer at a nondescript software company. Everything is as it should be, and yet there is a void in him. Messengers find him and tell him his suspicion is correct, that this world is an illusion, yet he refuses to believe. Not until he takes a pill and wakes up in a nightmare, where he, along with everyone else he thought he knew, is plugged into a machine from birth until death, living in a simulation he never doubted until he could feel the wounds in his own flesh, where the machines jacked him into a digital world called the Matrix. Over the next 22 years, Mr. Anderson’s story in The Matrix becomes a different, newer myth, disseminated through the burgeoning internet and refracted through various subcultures. Depending on which set of eyes it encountered, the story’s symbolism and themes took on new meanings, some thoughtful and enlightening, others strange and sinister.
The Matrix Resurrections ’ third version of this story: Once again, there is Keanu Reeves’ Thomas Anderson, a gifted programmer who suspects his world is wrong, somehow. Once again, he is contacted by people claiming to confirm his suspicions. Once again, he refuses to believe. For a little while, the story seems the same, to the point where it doesn’t seem worth telling. Yet the world it’s being told to — our world, the one where we’ve returned to see a new film called The Matrix for the first time since 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions — is very different. In the final days of 2021, Thomas, just like those watching him, has much more to doubt. And Resurrections finds its meaning.
Directed by Lana Wachowski from a script she co-wrote with David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon, The Matrix Resurrections is about doing the impossible. On a very basic level, it’s about the insurmountable and inherently cynical task of making a follow-up to the Matrix trilogy, one that breaks technical and narrative ground the way the first film did. On a thematic one, it’s an agitprop romance, one of the most effective mass media diagnoses of the current moment that finds countless things to be angry about, and proposes fighting them all with radical, reckless love. On top of all that, it is also a kick-ass work of sci-fi action — propulsive, gorgeous, and yet still intimate — that revisits the familiar to show audiences something very new.
Reloading, but not repeating
The Matrix Resurrections soars by echoing something old. A familiarity with The Matrix and its sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions , comes in handy when entering the new film, as the first task Wachowski, Mitchell, and Hemon go about resolving in Resurrections is extricating Thomas Anderson — better known as Neo — from his fate in Revolutions . Slowly, they reveal how Neo, seemingly deceased alongside his love and partner Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), may or may not have survived to once again become Thomas Anderson, a blank slate who has trouble telling what’s real and what is not.
This Thomas Anderson is also a programmer, but now a rockstar of game development, responsible for the most popular video game trilogy ever made: The Matrix. These games are effectively the same as the Matrix film trilogy that exists in our world, a story about a man named Neo who discovers that he is living in a dream world controlled by machines, and that he is The One destined to help humanity defeat them.
Like Lana Wachowski, who co-created the Matrix films with her sibling Lilly decades ago, Thomas is asked to make a sequel to the Matrix trilogy, one that his parent company — also devilishly named Warner Bros. — will make with or without their input. So, as Thomas goes about his task, his reality takes on an M.C. Escher-esque level of circuitousness. Was the Matrix trilogy a series of games of his making? Or did they really happen, and he is once again a prisoner of the Matrix? Why is there a woman named Tiffany (Carrie-Anne Moss) in this world with him, one who strongly resembles the deceased Trinity of his fiction? Wachowski layers these questions in disorienting montage with voyeuristic angles, presenting Thomas’ presumed reality with just enough remove to make the viewer uncomfortable, and cause them to doubt, as Thomas does.
Casting the previous films as in-world video games allows The Matrix Resurrections to function as a refreshingly heavy-handed rebuke of the IP-driven reboot culture that produced the film, where the future is increasingly viewed through the franchise lenses of the past, trapping fans in corporate-controlled dream worlds where their fandom is constantly rewarded with new product. That video games are the chosen medium for The Matrix Resurrections ’ satire is icing on the cake: an entire medium defined by the illusion of choice, a culture built around the falsehood that megacorporations care about what their customers think when they have the data to show that every outrage du jour will still result in the same record-breaking profits.
As one of Thomas’s colleagues bluntly puts it: “I’m a geek. I was raised by machines.”
Bugs in the system
The opening act of The Matrix Resurrections is wonderfully confounding, a delicious way to recreate the unmooring unreality of the original to an audience that has likely seen, or felt its influence, countless times. Yet as it replicates, it also diverges. This is not, as the hacker Bugs (Jessica Henwick) notes early on, the story we know.
Bugs is our window into what’s new in Resurrections , a young and headstrong woman dedicated to finding the Neo that her generation knows only as myth. Her zealotry puts her in hot water with her elders; outside of the Matrix, humanity has eked out a small but thriving post-apocalyptic life, resting on the uneasy treaty between man and machine that Neo brokered at the end of the original trilogy. By constantly hacking into the Matrix to find Neo, Bugs threatens that peace — yet it’s a risk that Bugs and her ragtag crew (which includes a phenomenal Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in a role that’s not quite who viewers think he is) feel is worth taking. Because despite the war fought to free humanity from machine enslavement, much of humanity is still choosing to remain in the Matrix. The real world being real is not reason enough for anyone to wake up from the dream world.
But the hope of rescuing Neo is only half of the story. Wachowski makes a dazzling pivot halfway through The Matrix Resurrections , one that underlines a focal shift from individual freedom to human connection: The Resistance learns that it may be possible to free Trinity again as well, although by means never tried before. It’s a mission that isn’t likely to succeed, but in this strange new future, it’s the only one worth living and dying for. In pivoting to a mission to save the theoretical Trinity, Resurrections takes the messaging of the original film a step further. It’s not enough to free your mind; in fact, it’s worthless if you don’t unplug in the interest of connecting and loving those around you.
This back half gear-shifts into something much more straightforward, and frankly, it whips. It’s The Matrix as a heist movie. Because of this genre pivot, Resurrections ’ action takes on a different flavor from that of its predecessors. While weighty, satisfying martial arts standoffs are still in play, they’re not the centerpiece, as “Thomas” and “Tiffany” are the heart of the film, played by actors 20 years older and a little more limited in their choreography. Instead, The Matrix Resurrections chooses to dazzle with gorgeous widescreen set-pieces, big brawls, and visual effects that once again astonish while looking spectacularly real. Wachowski and her co-writers split the action as Bugs and her crew — who don’t get enough screen time but all make a terrific impression — race to find where their heroes may be hidden in the real world, and “Thomas” tries to get “Tiffany” to remember the love they once shared. All of the heady philosophy that these movies are known for is put into direct action, as the machines show off the ways they’ve changed the Matrix in an effort to not just keep a Neo from rescuing a Trinity, but to imprison him again.
In this sequence and throughout, The Matrix Resurrections relishes in being a lighter, more self-aware film than its predecessors, a movie about big feelings rendered beautifully. Its score, by Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer, reprises iconic motifs from original Matrix composer Don Davis’ work while introducing shimmery, recursive sequencing, a sonic echo to go with the visual one. While legendary cinematographer Bill Pope is also among the talent that doesn’t return this time around, the team of Daniele Massaccesi and John Toll bring a more painterly approach to Resurrections . Warm colors invade scenes from both the Matrix and the real world; the latter looks more vibrant than ever without the blue hues that characterized it in the original trilogy, while its digital counterpart has now changed to the point where it’s painfully idyllic, a world of bright colors and sunlight that is difficult to leave.
Embodying those changes is Jonathan Groff as a reawakened Smith, Neo’s dark opposite within the Matrix. Groff, who steps in for a role indelibly portrayed by Hugo Weaving, is the audacity of The Matrix Resurrections personified: He nails a character so iconic that recasting it feels like hubris, yet also finds new shades to bring to an antagonistic role in a world where villains only appear human, when in fact they’re often ideas. And ideas are so hard to wage war against.
Systems of control
If the old Matrix films are about lies we are told, the new Matrix is about lies we choose. In spite of its questions, 1999’s The Matrix hinges on the notion that there is such a thing as objective truth, and that people would want to see it. On the cusp of 2022, objective truth is no longer agreed upon, as pundits, politicians, and tech magnates each present their vision of what’s real, and aggressively market it to the masses. Our current crisis, then, is whatever you choose it to be. You just have to choose a side in the war: one to be us, and another to be them.
“If we don’t know what’s real,” one character asks Neo, “how do we resist?”
In returning to the world she created with her sibling, Lana Wachowski makes a closing argument she may very well not get to have the last word on. The Matrix Resurrections is a bouquet of flowers thrown with the rage of a Molotov cocktail, the will to fight tempered by the choice to extend compassion. Because feelings, as the constructs that oppress humanity in the Matrix note, are much easier to control than facts, and feelings are what sway us. So what if Neo fights back with a better story? A new myth to rise above the culture war?
It doesn’t have to be a bold one. It can even be one you’ve heard before. About a man named Thomas who can’t shake the idea that there’s something wrong with the world around him, that he feels disconnected from others in a way that he was never meant to be. And when others finally tell him that he’s living in an illusion, he doesn’t quite believe them — not until he sees something, someone, for himself that reminds him of what, exactly, he is missing: that he used to be in love.
The Matrix Resurrections hits theaters and HBO Max on Dec. 22.
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