Keanu goes back through the looking glass in the legacy sequel The Matrix Resurrections
Lana Wachowski’s solo return to the Matrix franchise is more self-referential than innovative
Film Reviews The Matrix Resurrections
For its first 45 minutes or so, The Matrix Resurrections plays like Lana Wachowski’s version of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. In the latter film, Heather Langenkamp played a version of herself, an actress reluctantly returning for a Nightmare On Elm Street sequel that blurs the lines separating reality, fiction, and dreams. Now, Keanu Reeves is not playing “Keanu Reeves” in The Matrix Resurrections. But the mind-bending meta dimension is similar—enhanced, even. This is a Matrix movie, after all.
As the story begins, Neo (Reeves) is once again living the pointless, soulless life of “Thomas Anderson,” having been plugged back into the simulation sometime after the events of The Matrix Revolutions. In this particular program, Thomas Anderson is a world-renowned game developer, hailed for his visionary work on a trilogy of video games called—what else?—The Matrix. Living under the assumption that he had a psychotic break after completing the trilogy, Thomas takes his blue pills every morning, and visits a therapist (Neil Patrick Harris) who explains to him that sometimes creatives get so immersed in their work that they lose the ability to discern imagination from memory.
Then Anderson’s business partner, Smith (Jonathan Groff), calls him into his office and announces that “our benevolent parent company Warner Bros. has decided to make a sequel” to The Matrix. Thus begins the most gratifying stretch of the film, as Wachowski stuffs all of her resentment about the existence of Resurrections into a slickly edited montage set to Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Lana and her sister Lilly have stated many times that they have no interest in continuing The Matrix as a film series. And Resurrections implies that the only reason Lana came back for a fourth movie was that Warner Bros. would have done it with or without her participation. As such, The Matrix Resurrections is a calculated compromise.
Love is still the key to The Matrix’s philosophy in this fourth installment. But first, Wachowski and her co-writers, David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon, must air their grievances. They do so through the character of Thomas/Neo, whose depression presumably mirrors the writers’ feelings at having to do a Matrix revival because no one will fund their original ideas. None of the meta elements in the first half of the film are subtle: There’s a cat named Deja Vu, for example, and a coffee shop called Simulatte. But in an era where the body of cinema is being consumed by franchise rot, it’s righteous to see Wachowski kick and scream and bite as she’s dragged into the insatiable maw of recycled IP. Besides, subtlety has never really been the Wachowskis’ thing.
Reeves remains an avatar for Wachowski throughout the film, into a second half that trades screaming into a pillow for a messy but optimistic statement on what it feels like to see something you created grow beyond you. Old favorites from the original trilogy do appear, but it’s the new characters who are most effective in shaking Neo out of his Mr. Anderson funk. These include Bugs (Jessica Henwick), a freedom fighter with blue hair and a white rabbit tattoo, and the new Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), more colorfully dressed but equally unflappable.
These characters approach Neo with an awe reminiscent of how Rey and Finn looked at Han Solo in The Force Awakens. And at times, the second half of The Matrix Resurrections plays like that Star Wars adventure, albeit dressed in cooler clothes. (Don’t be surprised if this movie brings back tiny geometric sunglasses and longline leather jackets.) Like the latter-day Star Wars films, Resurrections is at its weakest when it kowtows to conventional wisdom about what audiences want from a sequel. Wachowski brings some inspired visual touches to the film, like the lines of code that crawl like ants along the edges of windowpanes in the simulation. But these are in constant tension with the dopey callbacks and tortured exposition dumps.
Where Resurrections really disappoints is in the staging of the action. The Hong Kong-influenced long shots that made The Matrix so revolutionary are all but absent, replaced by rapid cuts that render the fight choreography less legible than in previous installments. And although there are a few giddy moments of sci-fi mayhem, the set pieces—and there are many—never reach heights as outrageous or as thrilling as the highway chase sequence in The Matrix Reloaded. Here, Carrie-Anne Moss plays a pivotal role. Her character has been brainwashed into believing that she’s a devoted mother of two named Tiffany, but she still rides a motorcycle like no one else. Call it sense memory.
The hopepunk of it all remains intact. (So does the Wachowskis’ penchant for bizarre aging makeups, for what it’s worth.) This film has one character pointedly remark that “nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia,” but it also has another say, “Hope and despair are almost identical in code.” There’s a clear ambivalence of creator for creation in The Matrix Resurrections, but the impression left by the end is not of bitterness but hope. Confusing, heartfelt, goofy, vulnerable, endearing, all-too-human hope.
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Didn’t Revolutions end w/the machines agreeing to let people who become aware of the Matrix unplug and go live in Zion, and not try to destroy the place, in exchange for those humans not hacking into the Matrix and running around killing everyone? So who broke the treaty first?
The MMO video game is technically considered canon I believe. That game saw different factions rise up who started fighting with each other about forcing everyone back into the matrix. I have no idea if they keep that explanation or not.
I don’t think anyone seriously believes this film will be in any way beholden to that game.
There’s a quick expository scene showing a machine civil war. The movie had already gone off the rails at that point imo.
The movie went off the rails in the first 5 minutes. The movie opens with someone inside a modal version of the matrix, inside the actual matrix running on Neo’s work computer. How did they broadcast into that in the first place?
I mean, if you’re going to go down that rabbit hole then you should really start by questioning how they broadcast at all. If you don’t buy into how WiFi works in that dystopian setting then you got bigger issues than how Bugs got into the modal.
It is clear in the text of Resurrection that the MMO has not been included in canon, although I suspect there is enough wiggle room to squeeze it in if you really needed to.
There definitely is not room for both, Morpheus dies in a different way in the film vs the MMO.
I think we all know it’s the humans
Warner Bros, apparently.
Let’s not get carried away by the urban legend that anything happened in the matrix revolutions.
“We don’t know who struck first us or them, but we know it was us who scorched the sky.”
The peace treaty is still in place. There’s no war, but the movie does set up potential conflicts for the future.
This is explained.
The machines half-assed the deal by leaving Zion alone, and the survivors we’re like “Bet” so they’ve been at a weird stalemate for about sixty years. It probably doesn’t matter how many people escape at a trickle because they got a better battery to draw from.
From what I understood from this movie, removing the people led to a civil war between different Machine cities and factions, which they never implied existed in the original trilogy. I always thought the machines were a monolith controlled from the top, but I guess the emergence of someone like Smith meant that wasn’t the case. Anyway, it seems like there were, for lack of a better term, Red Pill States and Blue Pill States who disagreed about letting the humans out of the Matrix.
I never understood the machines to be that monolithic, though you’re right, there’s no mention of multiple cities. There are disagreements between agents and programs, between the Merovingian and almost everyone else, and of course the Architect and Oracle both argued quite a bit about the fate of humans (I have no idea if the Wachowskis’ read Dan Simmon’s Hyperion & Beyond Hyperion but I felt like the AIs in those books were having similar debates). In that sense something like Smith could have happened earlier given the right combination of circumstances inside (or maybe outside) the Matrix.
This is about what I was expecting for the film grade wise, but I didn’t realize that Lana Wachowski was so resentful over the whole thing. It’s a little disappointing, too, as I was hoping for far more than just a meta statement on sequels and franchise-building. Jurassic World already did that and it sucked, a lot.
I mean, this review just claims Wachowski was resentful, on the basis that the Wachowskis have previously said they didn’t want to do more Matrix movies, and something something Warner Bros. reference. There’s no link or anything to a statement like “I really resented doing this movie.” It’s all conjecture.
I hate when reviews are a thoughtful interpretation of a movie’s themes. It’s absolutely true that a person only makes a movie to express things they can easily state on a press junket. It’s equally true that directors say they resent their movies while promoting them.
Lol nothing thoughtful about this cheap, baseless criticism.
Lilly Wachowski certainly didn’t seem thrilled with the idea. As for Lana, you might well be correct. But it certainly sounds from the review as though a lot of attention is devoted to meta-commentary about the movie as a sequel, which would suggest that Lana Wachowski at least had some reservations about making it.Regardless, I just think it’s a bit disappointing either way. YMMV on the last two Matrixes (Matrices?), but they dealt with a lot of heady themes, and tried (at least) to make a profound philosophical statement on structures, power, resistance, societal change etc. They had ambition, and vision. So to see all that reduced to a self-referential statement on creative franchises, IP, etc – on the same level as Jurassic World and the weaker parts of recent James Bond movies – is disheartening, to say the least.
I think their vision for the Matrix was already reduced long ago, ironically by the massive budgets they got for the sequels. Just one example: The Matrix Revolutions had CGI robot squids pouring into the last underground human city, to be blasted apart by dudes in sick power-armour… and somehow they managed to make this boring to watch.
I’m not gonna defend the last two films – I’m just saying, all other things being equal, I enjoy movies more when they’re about something other than themselves.
I rewatched Revolutions recently because I specifically remember really liking the scenes of the mechas fighting the squid. And on rewatch, I still think it’s cool! …to a point. I still don’t know what it is but something clicks and it becomes boring.
Personally I find making profound philosophical statements in film disheartening.Tell a story. I don’t give a shit what you think about the nature of existence or identity or blah blah fucking blah.(To be less hyperbolic, I just don’t see thematic resonance as particularly valuable. It’s *nice* if done well, but unnecessary and all too often a distraction from crafting a solid story.)
At firs this post didn’t make any sense to me, but then I read in the same vein as someone whining about black and white film or subtitles. Now I get it.
Why would you read it in that vein? Black and white or subtitles are not related to the nature of narrative. Whereas telling a story vs thumping a pulpit or going on a symbol safari IS related to the nature of narrative.But whatever. If you like a pseudo-intellectual pretentious Philosophy 101 bit of tripe, more power to you.(There is middle ground and I do tend to prefer those efforts but I’ll take a well written story that has nothing to say over clumsy fumbles at metaphor ANY DAY.)
I mean, it depends what you’re talking about here. T2 is unarguably a much better movie than the Matrix sequels, despite having very little in the way of an artistic/thematic message or whatever. Nor is it a forgettable movie. But there are a lot of lesser action movies that, while still better than Revolutions, are super forgettable, and I’ve found myself thinking more about the Matrix films than those after I’ve watched them – in part because they have nothing to say about anything. Thematic resonance does make a difference to me, and I’d argue that most films that stick tend to be about something, even if they don’t necessarily let that something dictate the story.But in this case, the review makes it sound like this movie very much has a thematic statement to make – its just one that is entirely self-referential. And I’m saying that, if thematic resonance is require, and I had to choose between a movie that’s about all those themes I mentioned above versus one that’s merely about its own artistic value as an IP, I would choose the former. That’s why this is disappointing to me.
I just don’t like equating ambition and vision to attempts at philosophical exploration. It’s one thing to prefer the themes of the trilogy to the theme expressed here. It’s another to claim that those themes are somehow more cinematically ambitious or intellectually vital. I mean… I can take an edible and have the same conversation about the nature of reality.
I’m not saying that philosophical exploration is the only way a film can be ambitious or visionary, just that it’s one way that it can be those things. And in the case of the original Matrix, and to a lesser extent its sequels, those things were pretty obviously part of the hook.And yeah, I would say that the themes expressed in the original Matrix trilogy are absolutely more cinematically ambitious and intellectually vital than the one expressed here (based solely on this review, of course). If we were talking about Skyfall, with its meta-commentary on the hitherto theme-free James Bond franchise, I would say that yes, throwing such a theme into the mix is a comparatively ambitious and intellectually vital move. But a Matrix movie doing essentially the same thing represents a massive step down in ambition. I’m honestly not sure how anyone could argue otherwise.Also – referencing weed as a knock on any movie that engages with philosophy is lame, it’s played out, it’s a non-sequitur.
A movie engaging with that sort of philosophical navel-gazing is lame and played out.What is actually “ambitious” about a film asking questions that have been asked since the days of old Aristotle? The addition of advanced tech to the conversation doesn’t change the essence of that conversation. And it’s not like The Matrix was the first of its kind.I don’t see that as any more relevant than the metatextual conversation hinted at by this review. Self reflexive art has just as long and respected a history and is as deep an intellectual dive as the nature of reality.
This thread itself is a scene in the movie
Having watched it tonight, it’s….. *interesting*…. that the movie itself at one point sort of comments on how wrong-headed Matrix fans are to have boiled it down to an “either/or” appreciation of the theme-pushing or action.
necgrey — then you’re not gonna like the film versions of Dune Messiah, Children of Dune or God-Emperor of Dune one little bit.
Hey, if Garth Marenghi says it, you know it’s right!
It’s so funny that there’s even a couple lines/a character dedicated to exactly what you’re talking about
She’s not but the people who don’t like this one seem to be projecting their own cynicism on probably the least cynical person in Hollywood.
Super cool to mention story details that were intentionally left out of the trailers.
Super dumb of you to read a review if you care that much.
“how dare these reviews contain information I was unaware of before reading the review”God damn morons.
Seriously, this website used to relentlessly mock the people who clicked on reviews and then complained about spoilers and sometimes I miss those days…………
Man I miss those days. I miss those days when the reviews actually talked about the spoilers and content of the movie too. This one does to an extent, but so many of the reviews nowadays keep things super vague. If I wanted simple “should I go see this movie” score, I’d check sites like rotten tomatoes or whatever. But I want detailed discussions about the themes and plot of the movie. This place (and a couple of others) use to provide that in its reviews. But that style of review is basically extinct now.
They save that for the “For Our Consideration” pieces.
But I want detailed discussions about the themes and plot of the movie.I do too… but typically I want that after I see the movie. I’d rather not have a bunch of preconceptions based on a critic’s opinion (even if they’re a critic whose opinion I like and trust) before I go see a movie. But that’s just me. I don’t think there’s any one right way to write reviews: some reviews will include spoilery details, some won’t, and I think it’s fair to ask that critics at least mention how spoilery the review is going to get.
This is why, for some films, the AV Club used to provide “Spoiler Space” reviews where the reviewer would have a more open discussion — with the understanding that everybody reading it had either seen the movie or didn’t mind being spoiled on it.Like this one for Wreck-It Ralph: https://www.avclub.com/wreck-it-ralph-1798234338
Yeah, I think that was a pretty good approach. Wish they’d start doing it again.
Can people not just wait to read the reviews until after they’ve seen the film? That’s how I work it 🙂
Depends on why they want to read reviews. Some people want to know if the movie is worth seeing, so they seek out opinions in advance. In that case they generally prefer if the review isn’t very spoilery. Not all reviews are written for this audience, but sometimes people read a spoilery review (expecting it to be a non-spoilery review) and then get mad because they think all reviews should be written to meet their needs. For my part, if I’m on the fence about a movie, I don’t read reviews, I just look at the Metacritic score, which gives me an overall sense of the critical reaction without giving me any particular bias.
I commonly read reviews before seeing a movie if it’s a movie I’m not very interested in, or expect to be awful. In this case I’m just curious to see what someone said about it. For movies I am interested in seeing, I avoid reviews until after I’ve seen it, because I would rather go in without any preconceived opinions. It’s not mainly to avoid spoilers, but rather to avoid having my experience of the film affected by someone else’s opinion before I get a chance to see it.
Do you listen to The Next Picture Show at all? It’s usually Koski, Tobias, Robinson and Phipps and they do good in depth discussion of a current release and a film they pair with it.
From another recent review on this very site:“This review contains minor spoilers (including a revelation of the main villains) from the movie Spider-Man: No Way Home.”Simple.
If you needed that text to know that a movie review would give some things away, you are simply not cut out for reading about movies online.
Wow, I’ve been doing it wrong all this time. Good thing you came around.
stfu bitch
Came here for a review, not a recap. If it was gonna give away that much there should’ve been a spoiler warning.
Yeah, the first act of a movie is totally off limits.One time I was at a movie and the grown man next to me covered his ears and shut his eyes when a trailer appeared because he didn’t want to see or hear a single thing until opening night about Quantum of Solace. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time, follow that guy to the premiere of Quantum of Solace, and ask him during the end credits, “So was that with embarrassing yourself in front of your date a couple years ago?”
This isn’t a recap, it covers the literal premise of the movie.
It gave away the first half of Act I. Everything described here happens within about 20 minutes of the opening, in a movie that lasts about two and a half hours. It doesn’t even touch on the eventual main plot.
This covers the basic setup of the plot, established within the first 20 minutes or so. If you really truly don’t want to know anything about a movie going in, including the basic foundation of its story established during the first half of Act I, then don’t read reviews.
C+“It happens when they change something.”
99% sure they pick grades here by throwing darts at a board with letters on it. they’re meaningless.
“You’ll shoot your eye out.”
“Luke, I’m, like, your father, okay?”
“And Resurrections implies that the only reason Lana came back for a fourth movie was that Warner Bros. would have done it with or without her participation.”Katie that is kind of a cheap shot. In a very revealing interview on Gizmodo, Lana explains the death of her and Lilly’s parents impacted them each differently. But for Lana, it was something far more personal and intimate “My brain has always reached into my imagination and one night, I was crying and I couldn’t sleep, and my brain exploded this whole story. And I couldn’t have my mom and dad, yet suddenly I had Neo and Trinity, arguably the two most important characters in my life. It was immediately comforting to have these two characters alive again, and it’s super simple. You can look at it and say: ‘ok, these two people die and ok, bring these two people back to life and oh, doesn’t that feel good?’ Yeah, it did.”
I’m not sure you can call it a cheap shot if the film itself implies this as strongly as this reviewer and others are saying. It’s possible for a creator to be of two minds about their own work (i.e. Trinity and Neo could be incredibly comforting figures…in a movie Lana really didn’t want to make). But forgive me for speaking out of turn since I haven’t seen it yet and context might render my point entirely wrong.
Well and vice-versa, there could be something alluding to what Katie implies but the interview with Lana was very recent and it seems she would have alluded to it.
You may not have seen it yet, but the movie is not afraid to make some 4th wall breaking jokes about Warner Bros, marketing, nostalgia, and franchises carrying on with or without key individuals during its first act. That material is probably the best stuff in the film, because the second act is pretty boring, and the third isn’t nearly as bombastic as it thinks it’s being.
Not a cheap shot. That interview implies one reason Lana made the movie, but the movie itself (by this reviewer’s read of it) implies a different reason.Art often implies things that are not claimed to be true by their authors, either for calculated effect or because the work speaks for itself.
What’s implied by a piece of art and what’s inferred by the viewer can be very different things. (Looks at sentence, let’s out Keanu Wooah)
It could be two things, where working with familiar characters was comforting, but not really something she intended for public consumption.
Yeah, I find myself hoping that Katie is WAY off with this description, because the idea of Lana Wachowski making a reluctant sequel (and making sure we all know she’s making it reluctantly) seems about as pleasant as multiple paper cuts to the tongue.
There’s literally a line in the movie that Warner Bros are forcing Neo to make a sequel to the Matrix (the in-universe game) and if he refuses they’ll just do it without him anyway.
That scene was straight out of Nick Offerman’s scenes in the 21 Jump Street movies.
That’s very sweet and it makes me like the movie even more than I already do.
Except that according to this: https://collider.com/matrix-4-action-scenes-directing-style-jessica-henwick/ Lana wanted to pull the plug on the whole thing for good when the pandemic hit, but it was the cast that talked her into finishing it, so it looks like Katie is sort of right.
I can see both things being true. Art is complex.Maybe she didn’t want to make a new Matrix. Maybe she’d have preferred to let it be, do something original. But also she had this comforting thought and wanted to realize it, and this was a project that allowed that to happen.I can’t begrudge a creator trying to make their output good or meaningful, even if they were reluctant to make it in the first place. FWIW Neo and Trinity’s love story in this movie is one of the few things that landed for me (I didn’t love Resurrections, but found aspects of it super endearing and still love the Wachowskis for their ambition and worldview.)
Surely given the subject matter of the film, the grade should have been C++?
“I give this film the grade of JavaScript.”
That bad, eh?
https://www.sitepoint.com/javascript-truthy-falsy/
“The plot is pretty Basic.”
“Not enough action…too much Smalltalk.”
i hope they make an rpg of this game.
Get out (of my dreams and into my car).
Of the Matrix films, this is the Forth.
Rated R
So it’s the third SQL.
Well, the film is rated R.
I Object. This movie obviously has no class. The plot is BASIC. At least all the characters are binary.
… take your star, dammit
not the most ringing endorsement of the movie but I’m just glad they appear to have adopted the philosophy “let’s pretend Matrixes 2 and 3 never happened and perhaps wrap everything up in a nice, upbeat bow.” Looking forward to seeing this with my kids and maybe they’ll be as inspired as I was by the first Matrix.
Nah, they reference Matrix 2 and 3 several times.
1) Good review thank you, I was thinking of seeing this but am now on the fence again.2) I wonder what grade A.A Dowd would have given it, I cannot possibly guess…..
Imagine letting a kinja era AV Club review influence you
Meta commentary has grown tired, in my opinion. Spaceballs did it best, and the last time I think I enjoyed it was in 22 Jump Street. It seems to work best in comedies, but WB seems to be struggling with the whole “haha look at us, mining our IP for cash!” meta-angle, since it’s not as cute as they want us to think it is.
Jurassic World is my go-to example for this. It takes such a smug, cynical attitude towards movie audiences and then uses it to justify making such a goddamn lazy, awful mess of a film.22 Jump Street was great though.
What was meta in Spaceballs?
At one point in Spaceballs, the characters watch themselves on a VHS tape of the movie they are currently making so they know where to go next.
Ah. It’s been a long tiome since I watched this movie.
There’s a whole gag about merchandising too. “We put the pictures name on everything!” it’s not quite the heights of Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein but imho it’s not far off.
Spaceballs is not a great movie, but this sequence is friggin’ inspired.
You’re right it is not a great movie, its a fuckin fantastic movie!!
I saw Spaceballs at the cinema with my sister, mother, and a family friend. The screening was about maybe 30% full. We sat bang in the middle and howled with laughter… while the rest of the audience gave no more than an occasional “ha hehe”. It must have been like 40-50 people.It was weird enough that my mother still mentions it every now and again, 34 years later.
Since we’re sliding off topic, and this is 5 days late, so no-one will see it, I had the same experience with “A Fish Called Wanda”. Saw it with a group of friends, most of us British ex-pats, so we were howling throughout, while the rest of the SoCal folks around us wondered why. And Cleese’s speech about what a pain in the ass it is to be British remains a talisman for me.
“No-one will see this.” but three upvotes.Suspicious! (Yet another glitch in the Matrix???)
They also kill one of the film crew during the sabre battle. I’m not sure fourth-wall breaking is automatically meta commentary, though. Yogurt showing of the “moichandizing”, on the other hand, certainly is.
Not to mention the whole merchandising shop scene.
Indeed, plus things like director Mel Brooks playing a character called President Skroob (“Brooks” spelled backward, or nearly.)He’s an old hand at self-referential cinema, q.v. the end of Blazing Saddles, where the heroes ride right out of the movie and onto the Warner Brothers lot, then pursue Hedley Lamar to Grauman’s Chinese Theater — which is playing Blazing Saddles — shoot him in the groin, and then buy tickets to the movie so they can find out how it ends.
Brooks tended to recycle jokes. For example, the joke of the characters hearing the soundtrack music was used in Blazing Saddles and High Anxiety.
“With luck, we will see each other again in Spaceballs II: The Search for More Money.”And that’s after Yogurt shows off all the merchandising done for Spaceballs, including a Spaceballs-branded flamethrower, which he demonstrates saying, “Kids Love This One!”
Now, we pretty much accept that the main reason Lucas did more movies was to create more IP he could license out for toys, games and whatnot, but at the time Mel Brooks’s vulgar piss-take on the STAR WARS original Trilogy was really subversive….
Bunch of stuff. It makes fun of its own merch within the movie, at one point they literally break the 4th wall when they realize they’re being watched in a movie, so on and so forth.
.
Also, an alien bursts out of John Hurt’s chest, just like in Alien, and as he dies he says “Oh no, not again.”
I think meta-commentary on the tropes of a genre peaked with A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1595. It’s all downhill from there.
I think the Bard did it better in his later Twelfth Night with the “if this was played upon the stage I would condemn it as an improbable fiction” quip. Basically the same joke that was in Top Secret! “this all seems like a bad movie!”
Sadly, I think the Mets commentary in the first act at Neo’s day job is some of the best stuff the movie has to offer. It’s not profound, but it is surprising to me that WB would be so self effacing in a big tent pole action movie.
No, Gremlins 2 did it best.
“Please…don’t mention Lincoln! Something terrible happened to me once
on Lincoln’s birthday! I was six or seven, I had the day off from
school. Mama let me go to the park – she made me a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich… This man with a beard and a hat just like Abe
Lincoln….I remember…oh god!”
There is always room for meta commentary if done intelligently, same with snark, and sarcasm, and all sorts of things that feel omnipresent. Anyway, this meta commentary is HIGHLY specific to the actual person making the movie.
I tend to agree with you when they do it to be like fan service but I thought they actually used it as a storytelling device and kinda let the audience know where the movie was not gonna go. I would say for a series as big as the Matrix and that had the cultural impact it had you kinda have to bring it up to steer the audiences towards the main point of the plot and away from their expectations of only doing the same thing again.
this review starts out with spoliers, albeit minor,and continues with major plot points. this is not a movie i want spoiled.
stfu bitch
Questions of quality aside, the Wachowskis haven’t had a giant hit since the original trilogy ended. Of course Warner Bros. wants to go back to the well. Why would they continue funding new original work when the pair haven’t had a box office hit in almost 20 years?
I can’t even be bothered to pirate this.
I can’t even be bothered to pirate this.
“subtlety has never really been the Wachowskis’ thing.”Work In Progress which Lily has cowritten is amazing and filled with nuance and complexity in its central character. They should have just went full on queer with this Matrix.
We need more Sense8 type Wachowski pansexual hopepunk, to borrow the reviewers term
I adore Sense8. No, it’s not subtle but who cares. It’s such a celebration of love and acceptance, it was just a joy.
I would love for them to pick that thread back up and really corner the market on spectacular erotic scifi stories starring the hottest people you’ve ever seen.
Bound 2 please!
Jennifer Tilly is too busy doing Chucky stuff and beating people at poker.
Well, if you’d been shacking up with Phil “The Unabomber” Laak for the last 17 years, you’d probably be beating people’s asses at poker, too.
AV Club gave Spiderman No Way Home a B and then gave this a C+….so this movie is really an A-/B+ type of movie then huh?
Nah. It sucked.
I still think it should’ve been called The Matrix Rebooted
The Matrix – iOS update That Slows Down Your Phone Until You Install it.
Somewhat off topic, but I just watched JUPITER ASCENDING last week for the first time and I…kind of loved it? It was ridiculously fun. I know Eddie Redmayne won a Razzie for it but I adored his wacked out Crispin Glover energy.
It’s a pretty underrated movie. There’s some great Terry Gilliam-esque scenes with the interstellar bureaucracy.
Terry Gilliam himself has a cameo in that sequence.Brazil is one of my favorite films of all time, but that sequence in Jupiter Ascending was such an out-of-place and on-the-nose homage. Ironically for me, that was the point where I decided the movie was unsalvageable.
Can you call a thing Terry Gilliam-esque if Terry Gilliam, himself, is in it?
Lol, I guess so. Totally missed that that was him in it.
That makes it Terry Gilliam-ic.
Why not? Gilliam appears in his own work sometimes….
Never apologize for loving Jupiter Ascending!
This is the correct take.
I always thought that was their homage to old stupid but fun sci fi and fantasy books for kids, the kid that haven’t been written since Hunger Games and Twilight made the YA genre all about angst. It is a really fun movie but like Speed Racer it seems made for some alternate dimension where tastes are different and audiences are more open minded and optimistic.
From what I remember it was commissioned by some Aussies who wanted a sci-fi franchise , so yeah, alternate dimension.
Speed Racer is one of my favourite films. The ambition of it is mind-blowing. I still get a kick out of that final race and the line “get the weak sh*t off my track” gets used fairly regularly around my house.
Jupiter Ascending is glorious grade-A garbage. We watched it for the first time while we were high and it was amazing. We don’t re-watch stuff very often but we rewatched it again last week (again, while high) and it was still amazing.
Could someone enjoy it while not high?
Well, now I want to see it again while high.
Probably, assuming one goes into it prepared for utter nonsense and with mockery in their heart.
I was not high at the time but I certainly hope to be if I rewatch it!
I hope not.
I screened it once for a friend, also while we were smoking. She immediately realized how corny it was, and when I explained that Tatum’s character was a dog / human hybrid, we started barking or growling over all dialogue lines. It made for a hilarious time. God that movie is terrible. Now I want to watch it again. It certainly looks incredible.
Maybe it’s not a rewatch. Maybe its not a week between rewatches. Maybe its the same watch, over and over…
I had a great time. What more do you need?
It has space people with wolf DNA and bee powers. That’s all I need.
Jupiter Ascending is my go-to so bad it’s good film from the 2010’s. I hate it so much but I can’t help but watch it. It is in the same pantheon as Ecks Vs. Sever and Valerian. Horrible, pointless movies of too much money and no plot. And yet I can’t help but watch the train wreck over, and over, and over again.
I was into the movie until someone said something about bees instinctively recognizing royalty. After I finished laughing, I turned the movie off and have never finished watching it. Maybe one day I’ll make it through.
That someone was Sean Bean of all people saying that line.
I CREATE GREAT ACTING PERFORMANCES…. and I destroy them.
If you know anyone that still has a 3D capable tv, I remember thinking that Jupiter Rising was as good a demo piece for 3D as The Matrix was for upgrading from VHS to DVD…
It’s a mess but an enjoyable one. I really though the stuff with the bees was going to come up again.
It’s kinda great! Really feels like they grabbed some old sci-fi paperback off the shelf and put it onto the screen. The royal lineage, warring houses stuff ( I haven’t seen it since it came out so I can’t remember specifics) feels almost Dune-ian in its ambitions, albeit intentionally more fun and silly.
Jupiter Ascending sucks in a way that makes me so happy, as long as I am unreasonably stoned.
Channing Tatum does a fine job as the errant knight to Mila Kunis’s princess, but making him a half human half dog was shall we say is an interesting hurdle in the film. You are a better person than I if your mind didn’t go immediately to John Candy’s half human, half dog character in Spaceballs. Then they go on to explain that Channing Tatum’s character is a bad boy who has lost his pack, and he was court-martialed cause he was a biter. Did Wes Anderson write Isle of Dogs after screening this film? Channing plays his character as someone who is loyal and protecting his master rather than a traditional love interest. Mila, on the other hand, is clearly smitten and declares it will work out cause she loves dogs. I guess Mila will be packing a jar of peanut butter for the honeymoon.
I stan Jupiter Ascending. The only thing bad about that movie is not enough Doona Bae and her biker mercs, but that’s because there should be more Doona Bae in everything.
Let me guess: no draculas in this movie either.
No but there is a Harker. And a Candyman.
And this conversation has given me a terrific idea for a movie: simply hire all living actors from any dracula movie made (everyone from the Coppola picture of course; plus people like Frank Langella and Kate Nelligan from the 1979 production; George Hamilton, Susan Saint James and Richard Benjamin from Love at First Bite; plus people from 80s and 90s vampire flicks, like Chris Sarandon, Grace Jones, Lance Henrikson, James Woods, and so forth) and put them all in a movie featuring absolutely no draculas! The movie would be called Damn No Draculas.
Lackula
Perfect!
You forgot Lauren Hutton, Jim Carrey, and Cleavon Little (as a vampire).
I want this movie plus a time machine to include Lugosi, Lee and Palace for more hilarity.
I agree. And furthermore I want studios to start greenlighting movies not based on established IPs and audience metrics, but on totally nonsensical idea like this one. It sounds like I’m being glib and sarcastic, but I’m not.
C+? I’m guessing the Zion rave scene in this one just didn’t work like it did 20 years ago.
Man that Zion Rave scene was so long I still feel like I’m watching it…
“Long after humankind had made tenous peace with the Machines, victims of the infamous Cavern of Farts festivals still dealt with the aftereffects. Some couldn’t rest unless piled upon other people like sleeping puppies. And others would fly into a wild burst of uncontrolled and a-rythmic moshing at the merest whiff of body odor. Treatments are still on-going.”
Let’s show those machines we know how to party!
Neo is once again living the pointless, soulless life of … a world-renowned game developer, hailed for his visionary work on a trilogy of video gamesI don’t know how much of this is editorializing, but “soulless life of a beloved, respected creator” is weirdly cynical.
Only if you set aside the central conceit of the Matrix movies, where everyone’s life in the Matrix is by definition pointless and soulless.
Maybe they are just all being asked to move to LA?
Oh no.
I do think people can struggle with being famous for doing one specific thing people really loved. Especially when it just gets brought up as a sign they only had that one thing in them and nothing else.
The problem is the hierarchy of needs and whatnot. Lots of people don’t get to attempt spending their life doing the thing they love most.
On the eve of the successful creation of the games, Neo attempts to jump off of a building. He’s… not doing great in there.
Not going to read this review because I don’t want spoilers, so maybe this is addressed: it’s been a long since I saw The Matrix Revolutions the one and only time. I wonder if I’ll need to revisit it to understand the new one. I’m supposed to be going on Thursday so time is short if I want to do all 3.
I just rewatched them and had a great time, but I don’t think it will be necessary to enjoy the new film.
All three are referenced, but I don’t think they are required.
Not required. My daughter has seen only The Matrix, and she did just fine with this. Just pay attention.
“Tortured Exposition Dumps” should be the subhead for all of the Matrix movies, including the first one. Graceful world-building has never been the writing strength of the Wachowskis.
“Tortured Exposition Dump” is me describing getting through a hangover after my last trip to Tijuana.
Tortured Exposition Dump is the name of my synth-punk band. Wr give long, detailed descriptions of each song before we play them.
To be fair the original film had several of its exposition dumps during scenes of literal torture. So… that was meta… or something?
The fucking Programmer scene in 2 is a top notch Tortured Exposition Dump the likes of which makes the CIA envious.
Tortured Exposition Dump is actually what the TED acronym in TED talks stands for.
Great band name.
So this is all just a set up for the Matrix/Terminator movie everyone has been demanding?Which will lead us to the ultimate modern studio movie: The Matrix vs. Terminator vs. Alien vs. Predator: Electric Boogaloo.
The Matrix vs. Terminator vs. Alien vs. Predator vs. Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash vs. Batman v. Superman: Martha’s Revenge
The Matrix vs. Terminator vs. Alien vs. Predator vs. Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash vs. Batman v. Superman vs. The People vs. Larry Flint.Woody Harrelson plays every role.
The Matrix vs. Terminator vs. Alien vs. Predator vs. Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash vs. Batman v. Superman vs. The People vs. Larry Flint vs. Kramer vs. Kramer. The Oracle sues the Architect for sole custody of Neo. It’s heart-breaking.
You had me until The Matrix vs. Terminator vs. Alien vs. Predator vs. Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash vs. Batman v. Superman vs. The People vs. Larry Flint vs. Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Ecks vs. Sever.
The first movie to achieve a negative Rotten Tomatoes score
A guy at my local video store almost convinced me that Freddy vs Jason had a post-credits sequence where they fight Pinhead and Michael Myers in hell. I didn’t exactly believe him, but I did fast-forward past the credits, just in case.
vs Hellraiser vs Robocop vs Polio vs Leon Spinks
The Matrix vs. Terminator vs. Alien vs. Predator vs. Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash vs. Batman v. Superman: Martha’s Revenge, Space Jam: A New Legacy
I already think of the Matrix series as being post the Terminator series and a complete machine victory but where victory doesn’t turn out to be killing us all off as that’s potentially much more interesting.
Dont forgot vs Robo Cop. It was a comic damn it!
implies that the only reason Lana came back for a fourth movie was that
Warner Bros. would have done it with or without her participation
Sounds like Thomas Harris writing “Hannibal Rising” because Dino de Laurentiis was going to make a prequel with or without him. The more optimistic take would be Coppola somewhat unwillingly making Godfather 3 after his other films flopped and venting his frustration into the screenplay.
The more optimistic take would be Coppola somewhat unwillingly making Godfather 3 after his other films flopped and venting his frustration into the screenplay.Venting? The Godfather 3 script definitely came from one of Francis Ford Coppola’s orifices, but it wasn’t his mouth.
The weird thing is, Warner Bros kept asking since Revolutions and the Wachowskis kept declining. I figured if they wanted to force the issue, they would have done so by now. I also got the impression from the articles and interviews I read that this one got made when it did because Lana had an idea post the death of her parents and that’s both related to why it was made now as well as why it had the subject matter it did.
why didn’t they get Yuen Woo-Ping back to do the fight chorography? His recent work in Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy (2018), was amazing. from reading IMDB, they’ve just got the team that did the John Wick fight scenes to do this film, which doesn’t seem right.
I got the distinct feeling watching this that it was made on the cheap. I mean, it doesn’t look cheap, but nothing about conjures up the kind of budgets the last two Matrix films had. Perhaps the John Wick people and what they wanted to do were just more affordable.
Without checking IMDB, I’m guessing Keanu Reeves is a producer on the film, and he wanted the fight choreographers he’s been working with for the last few years. Also, he and Carrie-Anne Moss are in their 50s, and it’s entirely possible that they weren’t up for long-take choreography.
These fights were way less interesting than what happens in John Wick.
Exactly. John Wick has some amazing choreography. Even in Part 3 there were still parts of fights that had me saying WOW out loud.Nothing in Matrix Resurrections made me feel much of anything from a fight choreography standpoint.
The Whackowskis have always been hacks who relied more on author insertion than any kind of coherent narrative, and who have gotten far more credit for the original Matrix than they ever deserved.
“…calls him into his office and announces that ‘our benevolent parent company Warner Bros. has decided to make a sequel…’”I can’t believe that’s an actual line of dialogue. Does this movie take place in the Serververse?
ohh look a woman who hates everything so i should really go by what this thing says
kill yourself
Can I watch this if I skipped both prior Matrix sequels?
Yes. All you need to know is that Neo and Trinity sacrificed themselves to save the humans and make peace with the machines.
ok thanks.
Yes. Worry not- They constantly show clips from the prior movies to keep us up to speed. (And I actually can’t believe that in 2021 I watched a movie that literally did this)
The clips aren’t just flashbacks, they’re cannibalized memories turned into the cutscenes in Neo’s “video games.”
Ill never forgive The Hangover Part III for the clips from the previous films. Gross.
Yes.
You CAN do anything. Should you? No, not really. There are pretty constant references to very specific plot points of 2 and 3 in here.
Unsubtle or not, Deja Vu is a great name for a cat, considering their propensity for demanding to be fed mere seconds after you’ve fed them.
I liked it. I’m kind of surprised by some of the mixed and negative reactions.The movie does get a bit too cutesy with the callbacks and meta jokes but they’re mostly in the first half. I would say that this movie is way better than the Star Wars sequels. It advances the story and expands the world in more interesting ways. Things don’t just go back to the status quo. The peace between humans and machines is kept. Humans are rebuilding a lot more. There are machines allied with humans. There’s more division among the hostile machines. There’s room for growth and expansion for this world, they’re not just redoing the old story.It’s not as good as the original Matrix but I kind of see it as a better version of Reloaded. It expands the world a lot more, both the Matrix and the real world. But this movie does the exposition a lot better. It still drags a bit but the dialogue is just better written and more interesting to watch.
I’d generally agree. It’s not a great film by any means, but it’s better than the vast majority of decades later callbacks.Also, the first hour really was a bit too long; we didn’t need nearly as much setup as we got, and I think some of that could have been better spent on the resolution – which felt a bit deus ex.I’m not entirely sure the Catrix wouldn’t have been better though.
I agree that the opening act is too long, but I also think it’s the best act. It has the better fight scenes and the most interesting writing in my opinion. The middle section of the film gets really boring, the plot to save Trinity is contrived, and the action sequences don’t really stand out after Neo’s first fight with Smith. Speaking of that fight, the concurrent fight with the exiles is where I think the film starts going downhill for me. It wasn’t very interesting, looked cheap, and didn’t really have any stakes or tension – we’re supposed to derive tension from Smith pulverizing Neo downstairs and seemingly needing help from the others, but the audience knows Neo is going to pull it off, so there is no tension.
I’d go further than that; the fight scenes overall were not particularly interesting.They missed a chance to do something very different here, which was to emphasize the age of their leads. I thought they were going that route with Keanu walking (rather than running) on the treadmill but it got largely dropped after that, and it was a mistake. Instead, the fight scenes of him trying to recapture what he was 20 years ago didn’t work that well. He’s in great shape for his age, but it would have been far deeper to posit that he simply can’t do what he did then, like with the flying – especially since his matrix vision seems to have disappeared, and that probably would have been a better path for him to rip through baddies. Would have allowed for some humor too.
So, OK, but why should his age matter when he is fighting in a digital world? That’s not air he is breathing.
I guess that whole sequence about him being a refurbished model isn’t part of your head canon.
I thought the cutesy first half had the movie’s best material, although it is too long. The movie went downhill for me when the Exiles showed up, and the fights were not interesting enough to salvage it – nothing memorable to bail it out like the fight scenes with the Twins in Reloaded. That horrid Wake Up cover at the end was like a putrid cherry on top of this mess.
I think ultimately, the biggest problem with the whole franchise is the human battery idea. It’s a terrible idea but it’s become so important to the world itself. The main conflict is pretty much over human batteries. The machines need to keep the Matrix running because they need the power from their human batteries. No Matrix, no power, machines fight amongst themselves for the little amount of energy that’s left, and everything collapses.They can have as many philosophical discussions over identity, control, and reality that they want but in the end, it just boils down to: yeah, the machines just need humans as power. Doesn’t matter how they get that sweet sweet bioelectricity. If the machines still get that human battery by telling everyone about the Matrix and giving everyone free will, they’d probably do it.And you kind of need to accept that silly premise to enjoy any of the sequels.
I 100% agree, but I’ve added a layer of contrivance on top that helps make sense.I’m thinking they need the human brains for their highly optimized neural networks. The machines can’t make their own without requiring terrawatts of power.So their computer power comes from human brains, but their electrical power comes ‘from a type of fusion’ (Morpheus from the first movie said as much).
I’m forced to wonder if the fight scenes are so bad because of the bullet time reveal and also to insist on the genre change of this not being a fighting movie but about the other plot stuff. It’s really resistant to being an action movie in the meta stuff too when they’re developing the game version of the sequel.
I think the Wake Up cover choice was inspired for two reasons, one on purpose, one inadvertant – it was meant to indicate that the movie is sort of a recapitulation/recursion of the first movie, the same but different, and ALSO the band that did the cover, Brass Against, is the one that was on video last month pissing on a fan on stage, and I will both never get over that and will cheer it to my last breath.
Counter point: it’s a bad cover. They got banned from performing at NASCAR venues. Edgy.
And the meta stuff actually serves the plot and is intrinsic to the premise. It’s not just there to be cute.
Spoiler:When “Thomas Anderson’s” “boss” said something to the effect of “Our parent company Warner Brothers said they were going to make another sequel with or without us”, something in my brain switched and I started treating the whole thing like a meta comedy and I found myself enjoying it probably more than it deserved.
I liked it better when it was called Gremlins 2: The New Batch.
Shut the fuck up
The Matrix Resurrections would have been vastly improved by an army of puppets and I will die on this hill.
The cinematography was bad in this film. First, alot of it looked like it was shot on an iPhone. 2nd, I don’t want constant fight scenes which gets boring. It should be like the first film which had such stylistic shots and scenes. 3td the music was terrible. It should of had thumping base songs
Aspects of this sound downright Existenz…And a C+ means it’s actually an A or at least B+, correct? Hopeful.
Nope. C+ is generous.
I thought it was entertaining enough, if not particularly enthralling, either narratively or visually, which makes it feel pretty inconsequential compared to the original films. But for those who were wanting a happier ending to the saga, it does deliver that.
Hi, I’m Neo Reeves, but you can call me “Thomas Anderson”!
Simulatte is clever. I’ll give ‘em that.
Are you joking?
I watched about the first hour last night before sleep claimed me. There was a whole lotta navel gazing, annoyingly so. Did they really think everybody had forgotten what happened in the first three movies?
I forgot almost everything from the entire trilogy. I took the opportunity to see the original in IMAX a few weeks ago since I never watched in theaters. I’m glad I did, because even with the legwork they did in including all the previous footage, I would have been fairly lost right from the start. As it was, I had no idea who the Exiles were, and could barely follow that whole scene. It’s been a decade and a half since I saw the sequels and I can barely remember things I did last week.
Your informational graphic should include that it’s available right now directly on HBOMax (which I just realized). Not only theaters everywhere.
I love Yahiya Abdul Mateen II, but why didn’t Laurence Fishburne come back? (I love him, too)
I felt like the bigger loss was Hugo Weaving. Groff really didn’t work and their plotline really only works with Weaving returning.
But I felt that if it was Hugo Weaving, IDK, it would have been somehow distracting? Without Weaving I could almost suspend disbelief and think that the events of The Matrix really were a psychotic break (which makes more sense than them being real in a whole lot of ways) even though I knew that of course they weren’t (in this Universe). Like that one episode of Buffy when she’s a mental patient.
Except in Normal Again, the fact that reality kept on going after Buffy returned to the Buffyverse had the terrifyingly sinister implication that not only was that other world real, Buffy had unintentionally driven her alternate world counterpart insane because their minds had been linked at least from the time she was first activated as the Slayer.
It’s weird that ending had so much internal debate apparently only for them to stick with it despite having concerns it cast the rest of their show into some type of doubt with fandom.I’m about halfway through the first season still, but there’s a weirdly paced show that decided to have their “what if it’s all a dream?” episode as the 4th or 5th one of the entire series. I thought that was an interesting choice when the audience is still trying to get their footing on what kind of show they’re watching and it is one of the few times where I thought they did effectively build any stakes in the premise.
His character was absolutely pointless anyway. Like many reboots, it was strictly for the comfort of the past. If anything I congratulate Laurence Fishburne on not taking a check for this hot garbage.
The explanation from the film is that the Morpheus from the original trilogy is dead and the one we see on screen now is essentially an amalgam of Morpheus and Smith that Neo has created in his modal. (FWIW I found this new interpretation to be well done and a bit fun, if also a bit wasted in the grand scheme)
Because it wouldn’t make sense. They’re not the same character.
It’s my understanding he simply wasn’t available. He could still be in the next one if schedules line up.
When the hell did the term “hopepunk” becomes so popular and is AV Club determined to use it till it goes out of style again?
I thought it was totally fine. I actually liked the beginning “meta” section better than the 2nd part of the film outside the matrix. The first part was somewhat clever and funny, had Jonathan Groff being a douchey tech CEO, and had Neal Patrick Harris being a douchey therapist. Once they got out into the “real world,” I wasn’t sure what the point was and what the stakes were.SPOILERS…Why was Bugs so intent on finding Neo? In the original trilogy, it was clear that some of the freed humans, led by Morpheus, thought Neo was the chosen one who could save them from destruction. So, it made sense for him to be really into finding Neo. But what was the deal this time? It seemed like things were pretty ok in Io, and finding Neo only increased the chances that the hostile machines would go looking for this place. And then once Neo was out, why go back from Trinity other than it would make Neo happy? Maybe I just didn’t get the explanations…
Bugs saw Neo jump, and when she was later pulled out of the Matrix, she remembered seeing him, so she knew he was alive. That’s not exactly the justification for pulling him out, but it seemed like she kept pulling that thread because she thought something was going on if he was supposed to be dead but was actually still alive. And once she found the modal he had started in the game, and with it Morpheus, she thought it meant he was trying to find a way out. But they really did just get Trinity to make him happy. I mean, the alternatives were that he would have to go back in the Matrix or else the Analyst would kill her, but those were both still fairly viable solutions considering the circumstances.
I liked the film, and the ending, but it’s not actually clear that things are going to get even better going forward. Presumably the Analyst would have caused problems down the line, but it did seem like the events of the movie caused very little discernible change in either the real world or the Matrix. But hey, love and whatnot.
I agree with you about the first half being better than the second. The first half, while not entirely original, was far more interesting to me (and even funny at times). The second half ditches that – fine with the Meta humor being dropped, because that works better in the simulation – and replaces it with… boring fight scenes and plot contrivances to drag things out. But hey, Groff was good.
This is an important point about the stakes — in the original trilogy, the stakes are that the entire human race will be doomed to eternal slavery (or extinction) depending on whether Neo is able to assume his role as savior and make the right choices.In this film, the humans and machines are basically all pretty comfortable and at peace, and the only question is whether Neo and Trinity can be free together after ~60 years of living dream lives in the Matrix. In the worst case scenario, they both go back to sleep (after already having chosen to sacrifice their lives) and everyone else is still doing fine.
Technically maybe, but the programs aren’t free and the humans aren’t free either and while it would be easy from the outside to just settle up with being okay with the stalemate while oppression continues, that’s not what our heroes believe in or are about.It’s a more complicated message to push past being well fed and comfortable to come back and keep fighting until everybody can be free. It might seem that the stakes are less but that’s why its so easy to backslide into the old system if you let it lie.
Dream lives? The main villain states that in his new Matrix, the greater the human suffering, the more power they generate. So he has, naturally, amplified the suffering as high as he possibly can. This is also a completely unsubtle metaphor to the state of the current real world, which the Merovingian character methodically over-explains in a cartoon character rant.
The Analyst says that out loud, but there’s always been a weird thing about the Mattix universe — life outside the Matrix seems far more miserable than life inside of it. In the real world, people have to live in dingy underground cities and eat gruel and dress only in unraveling knitwear. Things seem to have improved slightly in Io during the 60-year time jump, but not by much. Neo’s “suffering” in the Matrix is that he has to live as an unfulfilled wealthy programmer pining for Trinity in a coffee shop. Trinity is doomed to an eternity as a comfortable suburban mom, a lifestyle literally billions would kill for.I think the Wachowskis place more of a premium on authenticity than the average person. I’ve always viewed the Zion layer of reality to be way more horrifying than living out one’s life in a video game.
So basically saying Cypher was right all along but taking three more movies to get back to what he said in the first one!
but they got strawberries now!
I think Bugs was obsessed with getting him out because seeing him break the rules of reality launched her out. You can construe that finding out the person who set you free is now a prisoner would make you want to save them too.As for getting Trinity out, its a reoccurring theme that Neo can’t leave her alone its like the thing that subtlety draws Neo into the Matrix the first time and in the sequels all points of actions are drawn around Neo trying not to lose her and failing so…probably soon as he was able inevitably the choice he would make was always gonna involve her and the crew is fanboys of Neo, was created by him and thus the purpose of his existence is to assist Neo, or is plucky captain who thinks freedom isn’t possible til everybody is free and it probably starts with the other unaging battery person the machines are using to prop the system together still.
I definitely thought the first half was better than the second half. The problem with the second part of the film is that it kinda felt like it was the third part of the film and that there was a middle part missing. Like, they went from this ultra-meta commentary setup for 45 minutes, then a quick “Oh, OK,” then right into the Matrix-y action. I still don’t understand why Smith had to be there, and that was kind of the tipping point for me that took me out of the movie. Everything else I could buy, but just shoehorning Smith in there just made it seem like they were more interested in fan service than serving a coherent story.
This, a lot. Especially with Weaving unavailable it seemed unnecessary. Granted though, I thought most of the second act could’ve been cut as well (and my sister fell asleep during it, heh).
My friends and I have planned to watch and discuss this flick.
My planned opening line: “It could have been WAAAAAY worse.”
I agree the choppy action and implementation of a certain Frenchman in that one scene could have been way less…unnecessary?
Despite its misgivings, this movie was enjoyable for me. It was way more comical than most wanted it to be, but it kept the exposition balanced well with the action. It was NOT a “return to form”, unless that form is “tonally making the movie they wanted to make.” My biggest disappointment came in the form of all too little Morpheus. It’s like…he disappeared or something by the end. *shrug*.
Let’s just say I’m happy to stay in my pod and watch this maybe a couple more times in the future. It ain’t a stonecold classic that’s gonna reinvent the wheel, but hey…insert any meta-phrase Wachowski already put into the movie to explain why I might have liked it.
I have been trying to watch this movie for 3 hours. I can only stand about 15 minutes at a time and then I have to do something else. What is this badly colored ‘memoire’? Please, Ms. W. just publish all the things you would like us to know in a text/podcast/ reality show/tell all because this isMAUDLIN af.
Wow, so I’m not the only one. I stopped watching at least twice, because… I just couldn’t. Finally barrelled through to the finish, but it got demoted to background noise while I did other things. It was a hard watch. But I thank them for putting this on HBO Max, where stopping is a mercy. I cannot imagine having to sit through this in a theater
That’s how I had to finish it too. At least there was some hand-holding at the end. The movie felt like a ‘reunion show’ and I kept expecting one of the characters to break into a little song & dance and then they’d all laugh about how Neo couldn’t fly anymore.
Huh. Maybe it’s better in a theater? You are more immersed and less easily distracted. This is not sarcasm. I genuinely react in a different way to movies in a theater than I do at home, and this is probably true of many people.
You sound like a miserable human being
I just watched this movie on HBO max and freaking loved it. 9.5 out of 10, made me retroactively enjoy the third movie… almost. I grade for my expectations and never expect all that much out of Hollywood these days, but this was the most fun I’ve had “at the movies” (you ain’t catching me in no theater anytime soon) maybe all year? I guess I’m not surprised to see it not be embraced by critics, it’s pretty easy to pick apart. I went in for the ride and it took me where I wanted to go. It was good to see them back and it was great to watch this movie in San Francisco, they did the City proud 🙂
9.5 out of 10?!? Please share with me whatever drugs you’re talking. It was an ABYSMAL movie.
I guess you skipped the part where I said I grade for my expectations? And I was stoned. I thought it was great 🤷♂️
Watched it with my SO and she said “I have n idea what just happened, but it felt unnecessary” We did get a good laugh at them flying off into the sunset at the end at least.
Abysmal? What drugs were you on?
Clearly not the same ones you were clearly on while watching what can only be described as a hack job of a film.
Man, the first thirty minutes of this film actually seemed promising. It was meta, it was addressing how fucking stupid nostalgia can be, and then it just totally gave in and became the joke that Ghostbusters, Star Wars, and other nostalgia/money traps became. This film is forgettable, and worse than that, completely unnecessary and unintentionally hilarious.
I’m sorry, I really am, but Matrix Resurrections is laughably bad. Its easily on my short list for worst film of the year. I love the original Matrix. I thought the 2nd one was ok but not particularly good and the 3rd one was absolutely awful. This 4th film is a complete disaster. How in God’s name this is the best the creators could come up with is absolutely beyond me. This seriously felt like a parady of the first film, that’s how bad it is. I feel bad for the actors as they give their all but the end result is terrible. I was so looking forward to this but this film is complete garbage.
But in an era where the body of cinema is being consumed by franchise rot, it’s righteous to see Wachowski kick and scream and bite as she’s dragged into the insatiable maw of recycled IP.
This movie was, without question, terrible.
Just watched it last night and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare immediately came to mind. That said, I expected very little from Resurrections and it was even worse than I could’ve imagined.
This is a weird one. It felt like the Sense8 team decided to make a Matrix miniseries and the footage somehow got re-edited into a movie before release. The stakes are… poorly defined, the pacing is all kinds of strange, the visuals feel straight out of a TV show aiming to be “cinematic” without really having the budget to fully achieve it, the fights feel like they were shot with a weekly schedule in mind… it’s just strange.Also, I’m not sure where Lana got the idea that the framerate shenanigans worked in any way, shape or form, but I really wish someone would have told her that it looks godawful, like a YouTube video trying to imitate bullet-time without actually having the budget to achieve it. Every time things got streaky, frame-y, or unusually smooth, it just didn’t work.The meta commentary also didn’t hit for me. Part of it is I’m just getting sick of Warner Bros getting overtly meta with their properties in the first place, and part of it is that nothing here struck me as particularly more insightful than Gremlins 2 or 21 Jump Street, with the notable exception that the jokes in those actually land (this is by far the “funniest” Matrix and that’s entirely to its detriment… at its absolute worst it feels less like a Matrix sequel and more like a weird Free Guy knockoff).But despite all of this, I still… kind of liked it? It has a big dumb dog kind of charm to it, and Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss are as good as they’ve ever been, maybe better.
Having watched it today, I’m relieved it was so pedestrian.I was in a crisis of perhaps having to acknowledge the R&R films if this one was as strong as the trailers suggested.
But NOPE. I can just safely ignore one additional R.
I saw it last night in IMAX with my husband and (19-year-old) daughter. We all enjoyed it immensely. We thought it was a much more fitting resolution to the story lines of two beloved characters than the third movie. Everyone does a good job, and of course it looks very cool.
It wasn’t a very good movie, but I loved it anyway.
Because your dad told you to?
“And at times, the second half of The Matrix Resurrections plays like that Star Wars adventure, albeit dressed in cooler clothes.”We have very different ideas about what kind of clothes are cool.
Man what a disappointment… I’m one of those weirdos that absolutely loves trilogy. All three of them! The main reason being the action, not so much all the meta textual things I’m supposed to feel and get from the story. It’s fine but not why I’m watching them. I was onboard for a little while, the super meta concite was ok but we’ll get to the badassery at some point, right?Man was I wrong. it seemed like everytime they began to set up some big payoff it just fell completely flat. Oh how fun a super depowered Neo, just what I wanted. I’m fine with what they did with Trinity but it’s way to little too late. Pretty sure I’m never sitting through this one again and I’m just gonna keep it out of my Matrix head cannon.
this write up was on point. the story telling in the first half of the film was fun and humorous and matrixy…oh man the set pieces left me disappointed.
I generally enjoyed the movie and liked things like the addition of bots or what they did with Morpheus.But I felt a lot of the action was missing any ‘snap’. Like the punches lacked energy and the fights were nowhere as good as the original.I thought it got interesting towards the end, but this movie kind of proved to me the original was great and the sequels are a matter of diminishing returns.
*SPOILERS AHEAD*I really liked the idea behind ‘Nu-Morpheus’ ….but then Agent Smith was back anyway? That just felt redundant and unnecessary – to the point where he pretty much disappears at the end (because he’s ‘everyone’? Ugh)I thought Nu-Morpheus would’ve played a bigger role (due to his Morpheus/Smith personality combo), but instead he was mostly another R2D2/magic key
A lazy pile of shit. Indefensible
Giving this tripe a C+ is probably the most generous gift I’ve seen this christmas. It’s the worst film I’ve seen in a long time, without so much as a single redeeming feature. About the only positive thing I can say is now nobody will have to argue whether Reloaded or Resurrections is the worst Matrix sequel.
Well, just got out from the cinema after seeing it … and that was a movie that happened.The was a post credit scene too … after a lot of credits.Don’t wait for it.
This review aligns with my thoughts quite well, thanks. I didn’t like the movie, and yet I’ve noticed that I’ve thought about it a lot since seeing it. I could probably write a couple of pages about it (I’ll spare you) and would gladly read the inside story of how this got made. So… Lana’s mission accomplished, maybe?
gotta give credit to the Wachowskis for managing to spin a string of consecutive failed attempts at big-budget, crowd pleasing action movies as “the work of auteurs”. that’s a great PR team right there. m. night should try that.i mean, getting people to think The Matrix is clever at all, and not just the typical hero’s journey appended to 90s cyber-culture via one solitary interesting idea (“what if we’re in a lotus eater machine but it sucks?”) is *chef’s asshole kiss*anyway – i got a Community notification for this? meta meta.
“Don’t be surprised if this movie brings back tiny geometric sunglasses and longline leather jackets.”
Pretty sure Rihanna and Gen Z already did that.
This movie felt like fucking an old girlfriend while constantly thinking about the hotter, younger version of her you were once in love with.
This C+ is a clear sign of transphobia.
Ugh. “Taken 4″ would have more energy.