The Matrix Resurrections questions its own existence.
But brilliant meta-commentary is no savior.
The Short Take:
The Matrix Resurrections excels at self-aware franchise meta-text. But as a movie, it pales in comparison to the original. The biggest winners here are the sunglasses.
Image Credit: LA Times
The Long Take:
When someone decides to remake, reboot, or, in this case “resurrect” a franchise, I usually ask, “Why?” I know the answer is actually because we know it will make money, but from an artistic standpoint a franchise film has to justify its own existence. Director Lana Wachowski — one half of the Wachowski sisters, who directed the original film, The Matrix (1999) — apparently asked the same question when Warner Bros. approached her about making another installment. This film is chock full of meta-text.
I don’t think the new film ultimately works, and I’ll say more about why later, but, through its meta-textual commentary, it is an extremely thoughtful, acerbic meditation on the franchise reboot culture in which we all currently live. Especially in the first hour or so, my analytical synapses were constantly firing with almost every line: “ooo, that’s actually them talking about the movie…haha that’s a jab at Warner Bros…oh wow, we really are complacent in our entertainment preferences these days.” So if the idea of that sounds entertaining to you, I would think it’s worth a watch. But if that kind of stuff annoys you, there’s really not much else here, even if you’re a huge fan of the franchise.
Wachowski, through various characters and conversations, openly, almost pleadingly asks the audience what we want. Do we just want to mindlessly feed on reproductions of what we liked before? Or will we scoff at a film for being too much of a retelling, too much of a rehash of the original? The most obvious reminder of this question is Star Wars: The Force Awakens. So many Star Wars fans had a great time watching it, but the critical reception had that asterisk next to it because it was too similar to A New Hope. Wachowski expresses this frustration and you can feel the pressure she’s under in making this film. The unfortunate conclusion she reaches, I think, is that no one will be happy no matter what you do. Her resurrection paradoxically needs to both capture the same lightning as the original bottle and do something creatively bold and new.
Unfortunately, as much insight as she has into franchising and as incisive the critique of our own media consumption is, the film itself, especially once the main plot kicks in, buckles under the pressure of this paradox. Amidst all the handwringing, Wachowski loses sight of actually making a satisfying and entertaining film.
Most notably, the action sequences and fight choreography simply do not live up to the original. Instead of repeating the iconic slow motion technique that would go on to revolutionize action filmmaking as we know it, the fighting in Resurrections actually feels more sped up. This could very well be an attempt to avoid merely reproducing what worked before, but something about what we get instead feels strained rather than fresh. Asking Wachowski to up the ante and come up with a new style that would similarly disrupt cinema is a huge ask, I’ll admit. So, again, this film may have been an impossible task, doomed to fail.
[SPOILER WARNING: Usually I can go a little longer without spoilers, but it’s hard to even describe the basic premise of this film without spoiling a viewer’s experience. The film’s streaming on HBO Max right now, so plug into that matrix before you continue.]
The one exception to the disappointing action might be the fight between the “new” Morpheus and Neo. This was one of the few scenes where I thought Keanu Reeves actually had the opportunity to shine; the rest of the film weirdly underuses him, as he mildly Hadoukens his way through a bunch of henchmen. Morpheus beating him down so he’ll regain his mojo — in a dojo (hehe) — was genuinely thrilling to watch. It was the only time in the film I had a “yea!” fist pump reflex. In contrast, the big showdown between the “new” Agent Smith and Neo was very forgettable. I only remember Smith punching through a wall and a lot of dust flying around.
While the action may not have been trying hard enough, the plot may have been trying too hard. Especially once we arrive in IO, the city that Niobe built, the story becomes very convoluted. There’s internal tension between Niobe and some of her people, there’s a ton of backstory to catch Neo up on since he was last unplugged. And most of it is just long bouts of verbal exposition. I didn’t get a chance to go back to the original trilogy and can’t really remember what happens in the second and third installments because I haven’t seen them since they were initially released. I fully admit that maybe if I had rewatched those films I wouldn’t be writing this at all. But considering the last film, The Matrix Revolutions, came out in 2003, nearly 20 years ago, remembering the plot particulars of previous films might be unrealistic to expect.
There were also plot points that did not quite make sense. I love Jonathan Groff and am not going to fault him for anything I’m about to say, but his character was really uneven; I never quite understood what his deal was. I almost started to think he might have been miscast, but then realized that the writing was more to blame. How exactly are he and Neo bound together? Why does he suddenly switch sides? I get that there’s some turf war happening between him and The Analyst, but his heel turn seemed more anarchic than clearly motivated by anything in his character.
If I begin to get too discouraged about the film, I just think back to the meta-commentary that dominates the first half, and then I begin to see the value, the glimmers of genius peaking through the morass. I laughed a lot at all the gaming/entertainment industry jokes and found the broader premise of how we reenter The Matrix quite clever. When we reencounter Keanu Reeves he’s Thomas Anderson again. This time, however, he is not just a software programmer. He’s a super successful and famous video game designer, who made it big by making a game based on the events of the original films. (It’s literally called The Matrix.) A parent company demands that Thomas Anderson and his business partner, who is actually Agent Smith/Jonathan Groff, make another game to create a franchise based on the original. When new characters find a download of Morpheus and track down Neo with him, Neo thinks that he’s gone off his meds and is having what his psychiatrist — who is actually The Analyst, running The Matrix — has convinced him is a nervous breakdown.
Image Credit: Vox
Both the critique of how entertainment corporations try to, through focus groups or board room meetings, try to figure out how to exploit the desires of the masses and manipulate them into consuming media and the idea that most of us will happily numb ourselves with escapist entertainment or fantasy, hits close to home in 2021. I think the film is being very smart in how it’s updating the concept of the Matrix for the 21st century. The Analyst’s whole discussion of humans being weak to feeling more than thought is a not so subtle reference to post-truth politics and anti-science movements of late.
But what’s more intellectually rich is the discussion of the original film becoming such a flashpoint for political and philosophical thought. The way that characters talk about the video game version of The Matrix in the film very audibly sounds like Wachowski reflecting on the cinematic and cultural significance The Matrix had in its day. So anytime I’m following Neo through his reawakening or identifying with him as he rolls his eyes at his colleagues when they talk about how to top Neo’s original Matrix game, the film has my attention (and my funny bone). But once Neo became Neo again, the film started to lose me.
Out of all the new conceits in the film, the idea of The Analyst has the most potential. While I wasn’t totally clear on what he was trying to do or how he had come to be in control of The Matrix, his manipulation of Neo and his dastardly monologue about how easy humans are to exploit did draw me in. And NPH is giving this role his all. He played the calming therapist but really a supervillain in disguise bit perfectly.
Image Credit: Thrillist
Thinking about other standout performances, I would be willing to watch Jessica Henwick, who plays an entirely new character named Bugs, in a Quantum Leap-esque series where she Matrix-hops and saves people every week. She was effortlessly cool and I wish the film had invested more in her after she serves her plot function in recouping Neo. There are a whole band of young actors, actually, who seemed to have a lot of potential and contributed a lot to the overall coolness of the film. Gosh, does everyone look amazing in sunglasses. And the sunglasses themselves are diverse — funky, futuristic, and badass in so many different ways. It’s just too bad that the fashion forwardness of the film didn’t have more peeking out from under those shades.
My suspicion is that this film will be extremely polarizing. For me, I appreciated what it was trying to do and liked certain aspects of it, but overall was disappointed. If you loved it, though, I’d love to hear about why!
One of the weirdest big budget movies I've ever seen. It was ALMOST an Adaptation-esque meta-commentary about the experience of being forced into making a terrible sequel against your will: as such, it's both a commentary on making a bad film and the bad film itself (which means the movie has a built-in defense for how bad it is).
But it doesn't quite go far enough; If the director had gone full Charlie Kaufman, it might have been amazing, but it seems to also want to be a proper Matrix movie at the same time, and, as you say, it fails.
There's probably a great paper to be written about this film, but that would involve me having to watch it again, and I don't want to.
I found there to be a weird ageism in the film. Why did Neo need to give up the gains of his youth? Why couldn’t he fly anymore? It just felt less like character development than character regression.