The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

5/10

 

Starring

Keanu Reeves

Carrie-Anne Moss

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II

Jessica Henwick

Jonathan Groff

Neil Patrick Harris

 

Directed by Lana Wachowski

 

The idea behind making this movie must have been, "Let’s sell nostalgia," because the amount of flashbacks in it should be a record. I’d say this was a bad idea, and the weak writing didn’t help either. We spend about 75% of the time searching for threads to connect the trilogy to why things are the way they are now. This could have been done better in a minute with a quick update on how things stand—and then moved on. Instead, it’s like watching a child tell a story: you have no idea where it’s going or how it will end. It’s long, incoherent, and you can’t wait for it to stop.

This new Matrix movie reminds me of the problem I had with the Star Wars franchise. The whole Skywalker saga dragged on for nine movies. The franchise has multiple animated series and game stories set in the same universe, but when it comes to the movies, it’s always about the Skywalkers. Then came Rogue One, and for me, that’s the best movie in the entire franchise. It runs perpendicular to the main storyline and doesn’t focus on the Skywalkers. That risk Disney took proved people craved other Star Wars stories, and from there, we got the hugely popular series The Mandalorian.

Why Warner Bros didn’t take a similar chance with this franchise is beyond me. If their plan is to launch another Matrix trilogy, I sincerely hope they don’t. This one was bad enough to warrant a serious rethink.

In the years after the events of the original trilogy, we find out that the machines kept both Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) alive by resurrecting them. They needed the pair to maintain their power. How that works is something you’ll have to watch the movie to discover.

The machines placed Neo and Trinity in a bizarre setup: always close, yet far apart. Neo is now a game developer, while Trinity works at a bike shop. Zion is no more—it’s been replaced by Io, a place built by some machines and humans working together. Yes, there’s a division in the machine world now, with some siding with the humans. Neo is stuck living a life he believes to be real while dreaming of the one he once had. This all comes to a halt when he encounters a game character he created. It turns out Neo subconsciously wants to be free, so he created a character that’s a blend of Morpheus and Agent Smith. Predictably, Morpheus finds him and helps him escape the Matrix—again.

Once free, Neo is determined to do whatever it takes to rescue Trinity.

The movie boils down to 75% “here’s what’s happened while you’ve been gone, Neo” and 25% “let’s save Trinity.” Nothing else really matters.

This wasn’t a necessary movie, and as far as Matrix standards go, it’s not worth anyone’s time. To make things worse, it was directed by only one of the Wachowskis.