The Matrix Resurrections: More Icy Hot than Blazingly Cool
The Matrix Resurrections is the fourth, and Warner Brothers’ willing, the final installment in the Matrix franchise. I am not a Matrix superfan. I greatly enjoy and appreciate the first movie because, first and foremost, it has a tight plot with a clear narrative purpose. What made it great is how it redefined the action movie genre while simultaneously being an homage to the films that inspired it. The subsequent films in the trilogy get lost in their own myth along the way, but the first installment is a beloved piece of cinema. This review does not harp on plot holes or fandom. Instead, it focuses on the lacking construction that makes a movie whole: pacing, production, and authenticity. The most charitable thing I can muster to describe Resurrections is “it ends.”
In the original Matrix, we follow Thomas Anderson as he discovers he is a prophesized messianic figure known as “The One”. Throughout the film, Neo is given plenty of reasons to doubt his destiny, not fully believing it himself, yet he continues to act against all odds in order to save the people he cares about until finally fulfilling his destiny at the end. The Matrix develops these plot points with an astounding mix of top-shelf wire-fu, beautiful cinematography, and a dash of body horror. They treat the audience with respect, never undermining the tension with Disney-style one-liners or gags. The original never loses focus; it is a story about opening your mind and refusing to accept a system that treats you like a slave. It also, critically, never forgets that under the hood, it is a thrilling action movie. Literally, none of this is present in The Matrix Resurrections. Contrived and poorly paced, Resurrections meanders between Lifetime movie drama, corporate satire, and fanfic. None of these elements are done well. The Matrix Resurrections is the Attack of the Clones for the series, but worse. Imagine if AOTC was just 2 hours of Anakin and Padme dating on Naboo, with the peak of the action being the part where Anakin rides that cow thing in the fields and pretends to be hurt — that’s The Matrix Resurrections.
I want to address a few elements that I did appreciate to show that I am not just a frothing mad hater of this movie. First, the philosophy, that love will set you free, is a strong and timeless idea. It’s present in the original and is a reasonable evolution of the philosophy from the original films. At the outset of the movie, I liked that they wanted to tell a love story between Neo and Trinity. It was fresh and I was excited to see how they would develop it (they didn’t). I like how the machines updated their simulation, as we were told they do, to enhance their ability to control their subjects. This was demonstrated with mind-control mechanisms that used a softer touch; instead of anonymous federal agents threatening you, Neo is kept in line by a slew of personal cheerleaders, including a seemingly compassionate therapist that patiently and politely helps him stay present in “the real world.” It is a modern twist on our softening attitudes towards mental health and self-care and demonstrates that we can be trapped within any system we create, no matter how progressive it appears.
I also appreciate that they did not undo the progress or myths that the original trilogy was built on. Neo unambiguously saved humanity and set them free from the Matrix. We witness the next generation of humans that have gone on to build a new, enlightened society that lives in peace with an equally liberated faction of “sentients”, machines that have freed themselves from Deus Ex Machina. Because they didn’t pull the rug out from underneath us and just go, “lol Neo failed humans are still slaves”, the new movie respects its own history and creates space to tell a new story arc for Neo. My favorite element of the film was the advancement in the technology used to hack humans into the Matrix. Creating portals to enter and exit the matrix instead of using phone booths, and operators being present in the Matrix as a “ghost” that only the jacked-in heroes can see were great additions that made sense within the rules of this world and, most importantly, were fun to watch. Unfortunately for the movie, none of the above elements, even combined, carry this film.
Critically lacking in the storytelling is, “Why?” Why is this story happening? Why is it important that Neo be freed? Why does the Matrix even exist anymore? The movie is utterly unconvincing in its explanation. We learn that the new architect, dubbed “The Analyst”, who “shockingly” turns out to be Neo’s therapist, has created this special, super-secret Matrix just to keep Neo and Trinity under his control. But it’s about as clear as mud on a windshield what the machines gain by this. The original trilogy makes the stakes clear: the machines need to harvest humanity to power their society. Whatever has happened since the end of Revelations, that is clearly not something the machines require to function. We learn there are no other humans in this matrix. If there are still other humans in the Matrix, I never saw them. Every random we see in the Matrix, including the fan-favorite Chad, are just bots. The result is the entire premise of Neo and Trinity being in the Matrix is a contrived explanation just so they can feature a Matrix in the film. Unlike the original trilogy, the Matrix’s digital simulation serves no grand purpose in this world any longer. It comes across as Neil Patrick Harris’s pet project.
The movie is, above all else, contrived. They give us Morpheus, Agent Smith (technically two versions of him for absolutely no reason other than to confuse the audience), the dojo, a white rabbit; the list goes on. But all of it is contrived. Morpheus and Smith, especially, have no reason to be in the movie beyond blatant fan service. They serve no function that is unique to their characters. Morpheus in Resurrections is basically a drug dealer pushing red pills on Neo like he’s trying to break his best customer’s sobriety. Agent Smith exists so they can use a few quick shots of Hugo Weaving from the original trilogy. Smith, in no way, resembles the character we know except for a moment when he picks up a Desert Eagle, which magically turns him from a corporate prick into the actual Smith as he shouts, “Mr. Anderson!”, never to use this moniker again. After dispensing with the grim and sardonic “Mr. Anderson”, he uses the extraordinarily obnoxious “Tom” when speaking to Neo. It must have been a critical software update to the Smith code that he now abhors titles. Jonathon Groff, who plays Smith, does not behave like Smith in any way. It is a confounding creative choice made either by direction or by Groff himself. There is no piece of the old Agent Smith that is present neither in cadence, language, or posture. Truly all they share is the name and the writer’s wink-and-nod that Smith totally still hates Neo and his machine masters. Meanwhile, Yaha Abdul-Mateen II plays a caricature of Morpheus in every manner, including his personal style and role as kung fu dojo master. All that’s missing is the original Morpheus’s compassion, zeal, and ferocity–which are his most important attributes. It’s another jarring example of the discombobulated direction in this movie. For no reason, we have one resurrected character (Smith) behave nothing like himself while another (Morpheus) endeavors to be like his old self, even if it’s two-dimensional and on the nose.
A note on the supporting cast of heroes that appear inside the Matrix. They are there. That is it. There is absolutely nothing fascinating about any of them, such that their names completely elude me even though I watched the movie barely 10 hours ago. All these characters accomplished was accidentally demonstrating how uninterested the creators are in intricately choreographed fights that defined the action sequences in the original trilogy. These bland side characters spend their entire time jacked-in the Matrix standing still and shooting their guns limp-wristed at zombies. A complete waste of the creative freedom that being a superhuman in the Matrix could have provided for these action sequences.
The weakest part of the whole movie, hamfisted storytelling and contrived components aside, is the pacing. There is simply not enough action to drive the story, especially for a Matrix movie. I’m not griping about Neo never shooting a gun or his general pseudo-pacifist demeanor. Those are fair symbolic and developmental choices to reflect an aging Neo. The issue with the underwhelming action is that it shows the creators forgot that it’s these sophisticated action beats that made the original films entertaining. The original is timeless because the moral and philosophical components are carried by the break-neck pacing and spectacular action sequences. If you could pop the hood on this movie, in place of a massive Hemi engine you hoped to find, you’ll instead discover crumpled scraps of paper with things written on them like, “love is power” and “what do we do if we can’t get Hugo Weaving to appear?”
There is a sequence in the beginning that utilizes wire-fu and gun kata but it is short and poorly choreographed. The movie then grinds to a halt, leaning on heavy exposition to address the characters’ desires and where the plot needs to go. Rather than creating compelling scenes to convey these details, it comes off rushed as a series of quick scenes that exist just to show off other fan service elements, such as the liquid mirror and red and blue pills — so many blue pills. Neo’s love story takes center stage in this movie, which in itself isn’t a bad thing, except it’s handled with the care and nuance of a Lifetime Holiday special. When we finally get back to the action, it’s lazy and boring. Visually spectacular sequences of gravity-defying martial arts are replaced with our heroes standing still, themselves bored at the hoard of zombie-bots they need to dispatch. The reliance on action that involves hordes of enemies getting unceremonially gunned down by yawning protagonists sucked the oxygen out of the room when it needed it the most. They even bring us to the dojo, teased endlessly in the trailers as the place we all recognize as one of the coolest sequences of the original film, but use the setting to engage in a prolonged sequence of elder abuse. There are so many other features of the action and the pacing that I could go on about, but the gist of it is that it was uninspired and boring. Instead of aiding the pacing, the action miraculously slowed the movie down even more.
I did not walk into The Matrix Resurrections with high expectations. I know better than to have high hopes for nostalgia porn. Despite this, the movie proved to circumvent my expectations. Rather than merely stepping over the comically low bar set for this movie, they attempted to limbo under it, throwing their back out. The amount of Icy Hot I imagine Keanu needed after witnessing the small amount of rigid kung fu that made its way into the movie was probably a massive part of the overall budget. No amount of post-viewing fan theories can resolve the underlying issues with the movie that supersede fandom: the plot lacked tension, the dialogue and needless gags were cringey, and the action was boring. The Matrix Resurrections stands firmly as the fourth-best Matrix film.
