The Matrix Resurrections R 2021 ‧ Sci-fi/Action ‧ 2h 28m

 

Okay first of all I have to say I liked Matrix: Resurrections.  Maybe I'm in the minority, but I can really say I enjoyed the film.  Lana Wachowski creates a hip, smart follow up to the Matrix trilogy.  It was inevitable that Warner Bothers was going to do a follow up to the Matrix with or without its creators.  When the studio learned that Ms Wachowski was interested in doing a 4th Matrix the studio didn't blink and so they gave it to her, and why not.  Lana Wachowski was one of its creators and in what better hands to have it in than one of the films franchise original creators.  Lilly Wachowski didn't want to participate and felt she had done that already and was not interested in resurrecting the franchise.  That being said I think Lana Wachowski came up with an interesting premise for the film.

I hear in many reviews that the film is "meta" and yes that is a good summing up of the film, but it does a disservice to the film.  The original film "The Matrix" was a film that blew the doors off the digital speak back in 1999.  The Internet was in its infancy and yet the movies creators saw something that we now know as "alternate reality".  The story was an allegory of the times we had just been through.  Everybody remembers the go-go 80's, and the consumer driven 90's and the film was set in that time or so we thought. The Wachowski's did something interesting, and just said that "what if" it all was all an illusion and that we were being controlled by our machine overloads because we were being used as batteries.  It was a mind blowing concept, and one that was ingenious.  By the movies popularity of the first movie we began to see the beginning of a franchise, and for two more sequels we saw the continuation of the story till the deaths of our hero's in "Matrix: Revolutions".  I find the two sequels interesting, yet I was disappointed in the end.  After all we want our hero's to survive and be victorious.  In the end their deaths were a bitter pill to swallow (no pun intended), but its creators felt that that was where they were taking the franchise & the franchise seemed to have run its course.  And for awhile Warner brothers could make money on the trilogy by packaging the films as a box set, and so everybody was happy, but like everything to a studio a franchise is a money maker, and they always looked to make more of these films.  I believe there were two animated movies about the Matrix world that the studio put out, but gained no traction.  So why not have one of its original creators on board.  It makes sense and all I can say is thank God they had that sense.

Lana Wachowski's film is brilliant, and NOT because it's a copy of the original film.  It's a derivative of the first film and its two other sequels.  It does NOT ignore the franchise.  It embraces it in fact, and flips it on its head.  It's a trip back to the Matrix, but it a different Matrix, and the one thing that Ms Wachowski does is add to the mythos of the film by including things that are representative in our world today and that would be social media, & gaming.  In the last Matrix film "Matrix: Revolutions" the machines called a truce between the humans & the machines and it is Neo who helps the "Deus Ex Machina" defeat the Smith's who are running rampage through the Matrix.  In the end there is a truce between the humans and the Machines.  It even opens the door that it is NOT the last time we have seen Neo.

Matrix Resurrections is a smarter re-boot of the franchise which I'm sure Warner Brothers wanted while still keeping to the original creators intent.  I do intend to see the film again and yeah I did see it on HBO Max, and it did not ruin it for me.  I am a bit curious on how it looks in the theaters.  The cinematography is not done by Bill Pope, but Daniele Massaccesi & John Toll share cinematography for the film.  Both do an extraordinary job and one where I did not notice a big departure from the original trilogy.

I could go into this film further, but there is one critic who did it a lot better and so I'll link his video here.  I agree completely with his premise, and he does a really good deep dive into the film.   So much so I think it needs to be seen more.  I enjoyed the movie and thought about it after seeing it  It had some interesting ideas in it, and after all it was quite entertaining with all the winks and nods it was giving to its audience.  See the movie for yourself and decide.  Please check out Screen Crush's review: