Laurence Fishburne finally files his review of The Matrix Resurrections
Laurence Fishburne’s reaction to the old crew’s new adventure was, well—let’s just say he’d opt for the blue pill
Aux News Laurence Fishburne
Much to the dismay of fans and the actor, Laurence Fishburne did not reprise the role of Morpheus in The Matrix Resurrections. This makes sense because, you see, the Morpheus in Resurrections is actually a computer game character escaping a matrix created by the character Neo (Keanu Reeves), and as such, is not the same Morpheus we know from the original Matrix trilogy. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s interpretation of the character is a bit more flamboyant, having recently escaped the confines of being an Agent in Neo’s video game, Binary. Freedom has that effect on computer programs.
But we digress. Fishburne’s stoic Morpheus, the one who throws caution to the wind and removes the arms from all his sunglasses, was sorely missed. He is, after all, an irreplaceable icon of cinema history, along with Hugo Weaving’s Agent Smith. Still, Fishburne wasn’t too bothered by his absence, mostly because he didn’t think the movie was particularly good.
Speaking to Variety (via EW) on the red carpet for Paul Feig’s The School For Good And Evil, Fishburne revealed that he did, in fact, see Resurrections and that he didn’t really miss being in the movie. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” Fishburne said. “And it wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be. But I thought Carrie-Anne [Moss] and Keanu [Reeves] really did their thing.”
Both Reeves and Moss reprised their roles as Neo and Trinity for the fourth movie, doing their thing by having a nice little coffee date in the middle of the movie. Morpheus wasn’t the only recasting; Jonathan Groff took over Agent Smith for Hugo Weaving, and Priyanka Chopra played the computer program in charge of the weather: Sati. In August 2020, Fishburne said that he was not “invited” to return for Resurrections. “I wish them well. I hope it’s great.”
For his part, the new Morpheus Abdul-Mateen said he enjoyed playing this new Morpheus. “I was fortunate enough to play a character who was aware of the history of the Matrix but also growing into his own, he had a growth and a rebirth to go through for his own self,” he told EW in 2021. “I looked at that as an opportunity to create a character with some freedom and expression and to really find out what it was that I, as Morpheus, liked about myself and what I had to contribute to the world and what I had to say in this universe. That was something that I really enjoyed.”
“[Resurrections] was an opportunity to learn more about the world and also to pay homage to the performance that Laurence Fishburne presented to us and then to really add onto that in my own way.”
Yeah, well, Fishburne didn’t think it was all that hot.
37 Comments
It was a mistake to not include him, even if it was to play the character Yahya played.
Celebrities: The[ir opinions about mediocre legacyquels a]re just like [o]u[r]s!
*legac]y[quels
Damn, you’re right. No way to get the apostrophe in there, sadly.
The movie suffered from a number issues, which includes his absence. Had he been in it, the movie would have been at least 5% (10%?) better.
“But I thought Carrie-Anne [Moss] and Keanu [Reeves] really did their thing.”Is that supposed to be a compliment? Cause it’s rather ambiguous.
No, that would be a Fish burn.
*applause*
Beautiful. Please take all the stars.
I think it’s pretty clearly a compliment. The love story is probably the best part of the movie, with most of the Matrixy stuff feeling sort of tacked on. Moss and Reeves feel like mature versions of their old characters, especially since the character work in the original movie was not particularly great.
Lol no it isn’t.
It’s a compliment, and the whole comment is kind of the perfect review of that movie: it could’ve been worse, but we were all hoping it would be better; regardless, it was good to see Reeves and Moss as those characters again.I seriously don’t believe Lana Wachowski cared about making a good movie with Resurrections. It feels like she just wanted a more satisfying ending to the series, and to make sure no one ever asked her to make a Matrix sequel again.
There must have been some bad blood there – they not only didn’t ask him back, but they make Morpheus the scapegoat for the eventual destruction of Zion, ignoring his arc in the sequels.
To be fair he was canonically killed off in the MMORPG video game.Though I’ve still not seen Matrix 4 and apparently some other person was playing Morpheus? So maybe that game didn’t matter after all.
They say it in the article: there’s an AI character named Morpheus, played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, that was created by the Reeves character based on Fishburne’s character.I love Abdul-Mateen as an actor, but the whole idea was stupid and the movie didn’t do nearly enough to justify having another character named Morpheus in it. OG Morpheus dying in the video game shouldn’t have been that big a deal, since the movie also brings back Neo and Trinity, who were definitely dead at the end of the the third movie, and there’s been indications that Wachowski tried to bring back Hugo Weaving, whose character was dead twice over.
They say it in the article:You expect people to read the things they’re commenting on? In this economy?!
Well, I liked it.
Dozens of us, etc
The movie was complete dog shit. But… Escaping “Binary” to become more flamboyant has to be some of the cringiest nail on the head obvious as fuck writing I’ve seen in the last decade.
Honestly the greatest tragedy of Matrix Resurrection, to me, is that it was kind of forgettable. The first movie is just an amazing thing. Very of its time but genre defining as well. The next two sequels will forever be debated about. Are they really that bad, were they just disappointing after the first one, were they secretly really good. But Resurrections just sorta fell out of my brain after seeing it. I remember after watching it with my wife we were both fairly meh about it but in the months since then, I barely can remember what it was about.
Pretty much my exact feelings on it. I kept trying to watch it with my family around the holidays. Started and restarted it like four times, never getting past 20 minutes. Then finally watched it and it was… meh. I don’t know why I decided to get excited for another Matrix sequel after the last two, but I was more disappointed that it was just meh. I actually thought about rewatching it just to see if I was distracted by the extended family and missed some stuff, but… nah.
My take was the gonzo first half hour (Reeves in ennui taking baths with a rubber ducky on his head and whatnot) was at least interesting and engaging, if very weird. But it’s fatal flaw was that the action sucked. It’s unfair and unrealistic to expect a near 60-year-old Reeves to be able to move like he’s 30 again, but I felt the fight scenes were unimaginative across the board, even with the younger actors.
Say what you will about the first two sequels (which I think were mostly bad), but the action managed to be interesting in most of them.
60-year-old Reeves is doing just fine in the John Wick movies. I agree that there were serious issues with those action scenes, but the problem wasn’t in front of the cameras.
I’ve never seen a movie so ambivalent about its own existence. It was a Matrix movie, but also an anti-Matrix movie, and so as a Matrix movie it had big action set pieces, but as an anti-Matrix movie those scenes were created with none of the care or passion that went into the first film. I was just disappointed that Keanu and Carrie-Ann didn’t have a better send-off, because the first time they appeared together, it was electric. This one was more of a wheeze.
It was essentially Lana Wachowski fulfilling her agreement to make another Matrix sequel for no other reason than the fact that WB was going to make one with or without her but not giving two fucks about any of it so much as to insert the meta of just how little she cared to make another Matrix movie.
What bothered me is that there was a bit at the end of the trailer where Neo uses his Force powers to boomerang a missile back at a helicopter, and it was made to seem like just a little tease of the amazing action we’d see in the movie.But then it turns out that those four seconds were the climactic set piece of the whole goddamned thing
It also didn’t feel like it justified its budget. It looked cheap and a major downgrade from the previous 3 films, in spite of costing the most out of the franchise.
The part of Resurrection that will forever stick with me is the first half hour about how making a new Matrix sequel is a creatively bankrupt exercise whose inherent soullessness is draining the life out of the people working in it and the heroes must try to rescue Neo from. It’s far too long to be a winking aside, and much of the criticism it raises is valid, but no one was contractually obligated to do this, so it’s really fucking bizarre.
No one was forced to make it but from what I understand the WB owns the Matrix rights not the Wachowskis so they were basically told that a sequel was getting made with or without them so Lana stepped up. It’s interesting, they never were very big on doing press but from the few interview and such they did do, I always felt Lana was the philosopher of the siblings and Lilly was more of the “Explosions are awesome” sibling. The Matrix Resurrection feels very much like half a Matrix movie. All the heady philosophy but not nearly enough action to balance it.
I’d heard that, but press at the time also has Lana going into some pretty specific, personal detail about how she was inspired by the death of her parents to get back into this as a way of working through the trauma. It doesn’t seem like you’d invoke the memory of your dead parents to explain your commitment to something the studio forced you into while simultaneously undermining it in the film itself. Reeves also said he’d only come back for the Wachoskis, and unless she plans to make a Matrix movie every ten years until she dies, she has to have known that eventually, the WB is going to start doing its own sequels anyway, so why lend them that legitimacy? And on top of that, the studio presumably saw a script at some point, and apparently, no one asked her to cut the half hour spent complaining about the movie even though most of it isn’t strictly relevant once the plot gets rolling.
I can’t tell if she’s deeply conflicted about all this or if really is just a huge blockbuster action movie that opens with an extraordinarily long rake gag, but it’s one of the weirdest things I’ve seen in a film of its stature.
But did Alan Moore like it? That’s what inquiring readers are apparently dying to know!
/Spike Lee angrily sends blue apron to Lana Wachowski
i find Resurrections to have rewatch value but i miss Yuen Woo Ping’s fight chorography.
I agree with Fishburne. It wasn’t terrible, but not great. More forgettable. I really did want to love it, but it’s a one time watch at best. I did like the beginning, the whole freeing Agent Morpheus from the video game in the Matrix kind of deal I guess. I did love the Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne Moss trying to reconnect. I did like the concept of trying to bring back Agent Smith, but hated it’s execution. Respect points for the actor trying to emulate the character, but I felt he was miscast. In the end the movie was…it was there. It felt like they took pieces of different stories and stitched them together to make a single feature. Only it was more of an uneven mess. I’m sure everyone would have better ideas on how things could’ve been done differently, but it is what it is. I guess it’s better than Matrix Revolutions, but not as good as Matrix Reloaded. And I wasn’t biggest fan of Matrix Reloaded.
I really enjoyed the moral of this Matrix movie which was: your therapist is your enemy and you should commit suicide.
I’m more happy Resurrection exists than I am interested in ever rewatching it. I like that humans are more chill with robots now, I dug the “moving portals” concept, I like the switcheroo they pulled with Trinity and Neo, I liked the extended “fuck WB, fuck legacy sequels” first act. But Fishburne and Weaving were two key ingredients this weird little stew was sorely missing. And unfortunately, the whole “violence is meaningless, action set pieces are dull” angle Lana was clearly taking also meant that large sections of the movie were…dull! With nothing else cleverly underpinning those sections!
The press from Lana, which I read after watching the movie, almost says it all. She was forced to write this movie – not directly, but WB jumped on the Salable Franchise bandwagon and was going to pump a sequel out of it’s colon with or without her. The death of her parents pushed her back to writing but the movie itself is pretty clearly about her transformation – the world sees you as someone else except for a precious chosen few who see you as you truly are? Apparently the world see Neo as Jeff Bezos. The rest was the tacked-on love story that overshadowed the other sequels. Everything else, including the supporting characters, felt like they were added during a rewrite or a series of script edits based on studio notes.