The Matrix: Resurrections (2021).
“I still know Kung fu.”
Directed by Lana Wachowski
Written by Lana Wachowski, David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon
Starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, and plenty of clips from the last three films
The Stage.
This is normally where I write about the plot of the film, but the whole entire thing is so bogged down and convoluted that I don’t even know if I want to attempt it, but here goes nothing. In the final Matrix film, Neo agrees to die to kill Agent Smith in a truce with the machines. When that happened, the Analyst, basically a new Matrix architect, saw that Neo was an anomaly based on how he interacted with Trinity, so he kept them both alive somehow. Some of the machines went to help the human race in the real world, but others were not having that, so there was also a machine vs. machines and humans war, which the all machine team won. So there’s a new Matrix that is run on fear and desire. Neo is in this matrix as a video game programmer. I think that’s pretty much the crux of it. Oh, and, there’s also a new Morpheus who was programmed into the game and real life or something, and he’s also part Agent, but there’s also a different looking Agent Smith who’s also an Agent and he doesn’t like the Analyst I guess. Honestly, I don’t even know, and I don’t care, because this movie is fucking terrible.
The Review.
I think that the original Matrix film is an absolute masterpiece. The fight scenes and innovation on display were breathtaking in 1999 and they still hold up. There is genuine emotion, surprise, incredible sequences and the film may have the most exciting third act ever made. The second wasn’t great, but the Chateau fight to the freeway chase is exhilarating and still holds up as one of the better action sequences in the 00’s. The third movie sucked, and still sucks, but it doesn’t kill the preceding films. It’s safe to say that I have a pretty decent knowledge of how the world of The Matrix works, but even so, in preparation for this film I watched the first two again and then watched a recap of the entire series so I wouldn’t have to spend two hours of my life watching the third. Now I wish I’d spent my two hours watching this one watching that one.
As usual, I have to start with the good. There’s a cool idea buried in here somewhere in that there were machines and humans co-existing. There’s also an interesting scene in which a new Agent move called The Swarm is used and people start dropping out of buildings. Now, I’m trying really hard to pull other positives out of this new Matrix film, and to be fair, I could be forgetting some of them because it took me four tries to watch the entire movie as I stopped thirty minutes in the first time because I was bored and confused, fell asleep a second time, and had to stop the third time because of kid stuff (which, if we’re being honest, was more fun anyway), but I don’t think I liked anything else.
As for the bad stuff…first of all, it’s confusing. And don’t toss this, “You’re not smart enough to get it.” shit at me, because like I said, I got the Matrix mythology up to this point. It’s a non-stop barrage of incoherent monologues and plot points that go absolutely nowhere. “What happened to Zion?”, Neo asks. Guess what, we never find out. What happens to new Agent Smith? Who knows. Zion is gone, so we get to head into Io, a city with what looks like ten residents who either grow strawberries with the help of virtual assistants or light candles at the base of a deformed Morpheus statue. The city is run by Niobi, who now looks like Grandma Jack Sparrow and has basically all of the ‘get off my lawn’ traits minus the dish of hard candy as you walk in the door. Then there’s some stuff about swapping Trinity’s body with another person but if things go wrong, who knows what’ll happen and the world as we know it hinges on something, oh and there’s Pokemon like creatures too.
If you were confused by the first Matrix trilogy, the good news was that there were some kick-ass fight sequences every so often to kickstart your stupid brain. Unfortunately, the action scenes in this film are tired, boring, and lazy as fuck. We barely see any hand-to-hand fights from Neo, who’s relegated to using his forcefield power over and over again. The choreography was bad and the absence of the original fight choreographer, Yuen Woo-Ping was sorely missed. I’ve seen better fight choreography in Frankie Muniz films. And don’t even get me started on the gun play, which was horrendous. There’s a scene in which six Agents are three feet away from a character named Bugs and she’s able to run a good twelve feet to get around a corner as they’re all unloading their clips at her, but she miraculously escapes without a scratch. I could arm six random kids from my child’s day care with Nerf guns and they’d at least graze a limb.
Like most modern sequels, this has an element of meta commentary around, “BLAH BLAH BLAH, SEQUELS SUCK, WHY DO STUDIOS KEEP WANTING TO REHASH THE PAST, MERP” while doing exactly what it appears to be lampooning. This film is worse, however, because it literally keeps showing clips from the first three movies. The only thing the film is missing is a voiceover by Hugo Weaving saying, “Last time on The Matrix…”. We’ve all seen the movies, we don’t need you to literally show us dozens of clips from that movie just to show them. Within the first act, it’s already reduced the movie into a joke, so how do you expect us to take the last two thirds seriously? It feels like the Wachowski’s version of Gremlins 2, except Gremlins 2 rocks and this sucked.
The film ends with an air of misplaced female empowerment that clearly mirrors the Wachowski sisters’ journey since making the first film. Since they’ve transitioned into females, we see this switch to a female version of ‘The One’, complete with a female led Rage Against the Machine cover playing over the final shot that feels as out of place as the rest of the film. Listeners should realize that I’m all about strong female characters by now but the transfer of power didn’t feel earned and it certainly didn’t feel epic. There’s a shot in which our female character kind of…learns she’s The One, but the moment feels so stale, and instead of just zooming out of there, the character just sort of…floats away like my kid letting go of his balloon at the zoo. The big difference is that I’d feel a lot more emotion from my kid losing his balloon.
The End.
I wish that, presented with the red and blue pills, I’d stuck with the blue one. The Matrix: Resurrections is a steaming mess with sub-par visuals, and despite a few good ideas, nothing comes together like it should. Everyone looks kind of bored on screen, there’s never a sense of danger for anyone, no stakes, and everything about it just rubbed me the wrong way. If you’re disliking it thirty minutes in, you can turn it off because it only gets worse.
There’s a thirty second post-credits scene that shows our tech-bros sitting around a table lamenting that “Movies are dead, video games are dead, narratives are dead.” and then pitches an idea for a cat video collective called ‘The Catrix’. Yep, that’s part of this film. Was the entire thing a ‘Fuck you.” from Lana Wachowski to Warner Brothers? Because it felt like it.
