Josh Reviews The Matrix: Resurrections
As The Matrix: Resurrections begins, we see that the man who was once Neo (Keanu Reeves) is now once again office-worker Thomas Anderson. Thomas Anderson is a video game designer famous for creating a popular video game called The Matrix. Now he feels lost, struggling both at work (where he is toiling away on a new game called Binary) and in his lonely personal life. He seems to be infatuated by a woman who he sees regularly at his coffee shop (called SimuLatte) named Tiffany (Carrie-Anne Moss). Thomas apparently had a severe mental break some time in the past, and he regularly sees a therapist (Neil Patrick Harris) and takes blue pills to keep himself regulated. But Thomas’ life is overturned when he encounters a young woman named Bugs (Jessica Henwick) and a man named Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II)…
Making a sequel is hard, and making what has come to be called a legacy sequel (a sequel made many years after the previous installment) is even harder. I have not been a huge fan of most of the legacy sequels we’ve seen in recent years (such as Ghostbusters: Afterlife most recently). It’s very difficult to recapture the magic of a great film, particularly after a break of many years.
A great sequel needs to do two seemingly contradictory things: it needs to be new and fresh and not a retread, but it also needs to give us everything we loved about the original film(s). That is very hard to do! I was impressed with the manner in which writer/director Lana Wachowski tried to square that circle with her return to The Matrix. The Matrix: Resurrections refers back to many classic moments from the original Matrix trilogy. The opening sequence recreates the great Trinity chase sequence that opened the original Matrix. The film, surprisingly, includes a ton of short clips from all three of the original Matrix films — something you don’t often see in films like these, but which I thought was a terrific device to help connect the dots between this new film and the old ones. The film is also stuffed with a number of tongue-in-cheek meta moments in which characters in the film talk about the original Matrix films. (In the context of this film, they’re talking about Thomas Anderson’s video game, but the device allows the characters to reflect on and react to the original Matrix films in the same way that we audience members have been doing through the years.) The film does what many legacy sequels do — it rewinds the clock and returns the main characters (in this case, Neo and Trinity) back to their original status quo. Neo is back in the Matrix living an “ordinary” life with no memory of his war against the machines. And so in some respect Neo goes through the same journey we already watched him go through in the first Matrix film. That could be seen as a weakness of this film, as it often is a weakness in so many sequels. At the same time, I was pleased that the story did not, in the end, discount what happened in the original Matrix trilogy or wipe out the journey Neo and the other characters went on in those films. This worked better for me than, say, what we saw in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (in which most of the characters seemed stuck back in the same place they’d been at the start of the first Star Wars film. Just to name a few examples: Leia was again on the run and running a rebellion; Han was back as a smuggler having run away from all of his responsibilities, as was Luke Skywalker; our heroes had to again blow up a Death Star-like thing, etc.).
There will be some SPOILERS ahead, as I dive into this film, so readers beware.
The best decision made in this film — and the main reason why I enjoyed The Matrix: Resurrections as much as I did — was the decision to focus the story on Trinity, as opposed to Neo. Yes, we’re following Neo/Thomas Anderson’s journey through much of the film. But in the end, the story is all about Trinity. It’s Trinity’s choice upon which the fate of the world winds up resting, and it’s Trinity in the end who gets to take control and kick ass. I loved that about the film. Carrie-Ann Moss is terrific in the film. She’s so compelling and so emotionally real that she helps ground this fantastical tale in actual emotion and human feeling. I love that this film really zeroes in on the Neo-Trinity romance (which was of course an element in the original Matrix trilogy but one that often seemed sidelined in the sequels in favor of all the action spectacle and other Big Philosophical Ideas).
The biggest weakness of this film, for me, is that I found it very hard to follow. Watching the film, I loved all the twists and turns and I enjoyed not knowing where the heck any of this was going. But looking back on this film after having seen it, I wish I felt like it made more sense. Frankly, this was my problem with all three original Matrix films, too (especially the two sequels). The film left me with so many questions. What exactly was Morpheus? When/how was he created? Why was he called Morpheus? What was the “modal” he was stuck in? How did he get there? How did Bugs find him? Did Neo/Thomas Anderson create this new Morpheus? How were Neo and Trinity brought back to life to get plugged back into this new Matrix in the first place? (I always thought that Neo might have still been alive at the end of The Matrix: Revolutions, but Trinity sure seemed to be super-dead.) How was the new Smith (played by Jonathan Groff) connected to the old Smith (played by Hugo Weaving)? Why does he look different? (Other than to surprise the audience as to his true identity, of course.) Are the machines who are running the new Matrix and the free humans still at war? Why or why not? Does Zion still exist? If yes, what is the relationship between Zion and Io? I could go on.
(I’ll also add that, just as I was when watching the two original Matrix sequels, I was very confused throughout the film as to what Neo could or couldn’t do within the Matrix. He sometimes seemed to be able to do anything, whereas other times he seemed to be at the mercy of Smith and his other enemies. It felt like Neo’s powers waxed and waned depending on what the plot needed, and that bugged me.)
Both Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss did a great job of leading this film, and I quite enjoyed the new cast assembled around them. I loved Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Watchmen, The Trial of the Chicago 7) as the new Morpheus. He did a great job at both recreating aspects of Laurence Fishburne’s iconic original portrayal while also making it all his own. I particularly loved the humor and jaunty energy that he brought to his interpretation of the role. The idea of Morpheus as a program is a cool one, but I wish I better understood his origins, and I wish Morpheus had more to actually do in the third act. (Again, the biggest weakness of this film is the plotting — too much of the story is too confusing for me, and rather than feeling like the film has a well-constructed plot that all comes together in the end, it feels more to me like they threw a lot of cool ideas up on screen but couldn’t tie them all together in a satisfying way.)
I always enjoy Neil Patrick Harris’ work, and he’s fun here as the new version of the Analyst (who we met in The Matrix: Reloaded). I also enjoyed Jonathan Groff (Hamilton)’s work as the new incarnation of Agent Smith. I love that these two gay men are the main villains in this big-budget franchise movie. Not so many years ago that would have been unthinkable. (Or, if a gay person was the villain, the film would have used that character’s homosexuality as a code for being evil, such as the unfortunate depiction of Baron Harkonnen in David Lynch’s 1984 Dune film.) The Matrix films have always felt relatively progressive to me gender-wise, and I think it’s cool that we have these two gay men able to play the role of the film’s main heavies. The only down-side for me is that, while I really dug both men’s performances, and I appreciated that neither was a chew-the-scenery, moustache-twirling villain, I don’t think either were quite scary enough. In the first Matrix film, Agent Smith felt like a true threat to Neo and our heroes. (Not so much for me in the sequels.) I think this film would have benefitted had I felt Neo and Trinity were in more actual danger. The one point that happened for me was in the truly horrifying sequence in which the Analyst uses “swarm” mode to turn people into human bombs, jumping out of buildings to smash down on a fleeing Neo & Trinity. That was a very startling, scary sequence. Sadly it was over very quickly (and the movie didn’t really take the time to explore the implications of what was happening: did we really see thousands of people, who had been plugged into the Matrix, all killed? Or were those “people” just programs?) and nothing else in the film matched that level of intensity for me.
Jessica Henwick was the best thing about the lame Netflix Iron Fist show. (I’m still sore that we never got to see her version of Colleen Wing and Misty Knight team up for a Daughters of the Dragon spin-off show!) We never got to see enough of her on those Netflix shows, and sadly I think she was wasted in her brief appearances in Game of Thrones (where she played Nymeria Sand) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (where she was an X-Wing pilot). I loved seeing her here but, once again, I wish she had been better used. Bugs seemed like a cool new character but the film didn’t allow her much actual character development.
I thought it was a fun surprise to see the grown-up version of Sati (glimpsed as a kid at the train station at the start of The Matrix: Revolutions), and I enjoyed Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ performance in the role. It was also a fun surprise to see Jada Pinkett Smith back as Niobe, under a heaping helping of old age makeup. As with all the other characters, I wish the film allowed us to dig deeper into these two as actual characters. (What does it mean for Sati to break from the other machines? What does she think about the other machines working with the humans? What has Niobe been up to, for all these years? Was she happily married to the other old woman we glimpsed her with? What did she think happened to Neo and Trinity all those years ago? What does it really mean for her to see Neo returned to life now?) But both women do strong work with what they’re given.
Visually I thought the film looked great. The production design and visual effects were very impressive. The action wasn’t quite what I’d expected; the original films were filled with lots of cool, exciting fight sequences, but other than the motorcycle chase/human bomb sequence I’d mentioned earlier, there wasn’t too much great action to be found here. That was a surprise.
While clearly I didn’t think The Matrix: Resurrections was a flawless triumph, I had fun watching this movie. I was a pleasure to be back in this world, and Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss were so great back in these roles. I loved how twisty-and-turny the film was — that mind-bendy aspect was one of my favorite elements of the original Matrix film — even though I wish the various story points and plot twists had been better explained, and I wish the many interesting new characters had been better developed. If this is our final visit to the world of The Matrix, the film works as an extended epilogue to the original films. If this is the start of a new saga of stories with new characters, it works as that, as well. I’m impressed that the film was able to succeed on both of those levels. Overall, I think Lana Wachowski did a very solid job bringing The Matrix back to life on screen. I wouldn’t mind seeing more!
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