THE MATRIX
RESURRECTIONS

		Review by E.C. McMullen Jr.
THE MATRIX SEQUELS, PREQUELS, AND REMAKES THE MATRIX MOVIES SCIENCE MOMENT THE MATRIX - MASH THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS - 2021 USA Release: Dec. 22, 2021 Village Roadshow, Warner Brothers Pictures Rated: Australia: M / France: Rated U / Germany & Netherlands: 16 / Hong Kong: IIB / Italy: T / Norway, Sweden, UK: 15 / Spain: 18 / USA: R

THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS begins in a familiar way. It's a nearly identical reenactment of the original THE MATRIX, reenactment being the key word here.

The problem is, the entire thing is being watched by a woman hidden within the walls. Her name is Bugs (Jessica Henwick: DR. LIEBENSTEIN, SERIAL THRILLER: ANGEL OF DECAY [TV], THE HEAD HUNTER, GAME OF THRONES [TV], THE DEFENDERS [TV], IRON FIST [TV], UNDERWATER, LOVE AND MONSTERS, BLADE RUNNER: BLACK LOTUS [TV]) and she can't believe what she's seeing. She is an outsider from The Real, plugged into The Matrix, and as she observes, Bugs knows that she is witnessing a history that cannot be true.

Meanwhile, a hologram of her Operator, Sequoia (Toby Onwumere: SENSE8) stands next to Bugs, imploring her to leave. The Machines are closing in and nothing is right about the feed he is seeing with her. It may all be a trap.

Thanks to the disruption they caused, technology has advanced since Trinity and Neo died. Humans living in The Real no longer need phones to move in and out of the machine world.

Thanks to the Keymaker, soldiers from The Real can travel in and out of The Matrix through "Doors".

Of course, in The Real, human technology is still several steps behind Machine technology. We still build from the junk, feed off the scraps of the Machines. Whatever "Peace" was brokered when Neo died, is gone.

So much has changed since Neo's death.

The Matrix is stronger than ever. But the fallout of the disruption and the infection from the virus, Agent Smith, had unforeseen consequences. The Oracle was a software that rebelled against The Matrix, but now many machines have found their own freedom and some work with humans living in The Real.

Yet with all of that said, if Neo is dead, how is he still living in The Matrix? This older Neo believes he's Thomas Anderson. He's back to working for a software company, this time as a successful celebrity software designer. He created the wildly successful game, THE MATRIX.

That was a while ago, though, and these days Thomas spends his time working on game construction logic Modals, making minor updates to THE MATRIX game world to keep the players happy. He's more than bored with his job and life, he's been working on the endless iterations of the game for so long he's slipping into thinking it's somehow real.

To keep his head together he has sessions with his Analyst (Neil Patrick Harris: STARSHIP TROOPERS, THE MESMERIST, DR. HORRIBLE'S SING-ALONG BLOG, BEASTLY, A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS [TV]), and lately, Thomas is hallucinating. He's found a woman he only saw in dreams. The Trinity he wrote into his game. Only this Trinity looks exactly like he originally imagined her.

Except her name isn't Trinity, it's Tiffany.

She's happily married with children, a husband, a life.

Thomas' boss, Smith (Jonathan Groff: MINDHUNTER) has great news. Their parent company, Warner Bros (wink! wink!), owns the rights to The Matrix game and wants a new one. A whole new sequel. It's time to not simply shepherd the old game alone, but make a whole new one with new adventures.

Thomas isn't into it. He's happy with his position and the money he made. But CEO Smith tells Thomas that Warner Bros. wants the sequel bad enough, that if Thomas doesn't make it, they'll find find someone who will and take it away from Anderson forever.

The Dicks!

So it's time to go "...back to where it all started. Back to The Matrix!"

Obviously this exacerbates Thomas's anxiety and hallucinations. So much so that his therapist renews his prescription. Soon Thomas is taking his daily pills: His Blue capsule pills.

Meanwhile in The Real, word is out that Trinity, or at least "A" Trinity, was found. The Matrix seems to be playing back ancient history, but why?

Further, if there is a Trinity does that mean there's a Neo? Are they alive?

Gossip and Rumor goes wild. Some say Neo and Trinity have returned because IO needs them. ZIOn is gone. IO was built from its ruins.

Yet that was 60 years ago in The Real. Few who met Neo are still alive.

Moreover, nobody actually saw Trinity and Neo die. They left and never returned. The fact that the machines didn't utterly wipe out humanity was believed to be the work of Neo and Trinity, but nobody really knows.

There are also suspicions. It is said that Neo was able to control the machines in The Real. Nobody can do that. It's impossible. Unless the machines obeyed Neo because he was on their side the entire time.

If Trinity is somehow alive, and she is, the soldiers of IO have to search for Neo too and find out if The Matrix Neo has a real body attached to the mind, or if he's nothing more than software.

The only way to be sure is to get the Matrix Thomas Anderson to take the Red Pill again. So just as The Machines want Thomas Anderson to return to THE MATRIX, the soldiers of IO want Neo to return to The Real.

Neo is once again faced with the choice. All the more surreal because he and his analyst have spent all of this time affirming and reaffirming that a real "Matrix" is a delusion brought about by working too hard and too long on the game. But even if Anderson does take the Red pill and returns, how can anyone be sure it's really Neo in that body?

At the center of all the questions is one of the few people who were alive when Neo left: Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith: TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT, SCREAM 2, THE MATRIX RELOADED, THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS, GOTHAM [TV]). The Machine had 60 years, more than enough time to clone another Neo and give it the Neo identity The Matrix has had ever since Neo was born. Programs can inhabit real human bodies.

Plus, even if he is the real Neo, why has he spent 60 years living in The Matrix? And what's going on with Trinity?

So there's a whole lot going on and, fortunately these are not disparate questions. All questions are the threads that make up the fabric of Neo and Trinity's lives and any hope that they can stop the coming war.

Remember, to THE MATRIX, Neo is a reoccurring anomaly: a glitch that repeats.

While we're on the subject of computer glitches, let's repair with a...

!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
A misstep in THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS is how it's made clear that the machines operate on a binary system where the foundation of all computer "DNA" is 1s and 0s.

Since 1998 humans have been making and testing Quantum computers until finally, in 2021 we are on the razor edge of having them move into consumer models, which will take us away from binary computing forever. How sharp is that edge? 5 years from this writing you'll probably be reading this on your quantum handheld and the only reason it will be about 5 years is because (barring another pandemic - or possibly because of one), that's about how long it will take for marketing and consumer adoption.

In fact, binary computing was obsolete back when the first THE MATRIX came out in 1999.

Why?

Continued at THE SCIENCE MOMENT/The Matrix Resurrections.

Disgustingly, a significant number of news websites out there leapt at the chance to divulge everything about THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS as if being first SPOILER would win them something.

There are plenty of SPOILERS out there and I'll have nothing to do with it.

What I hope you came here for is to find out what I thought of it.

I adore the original THE MATRIX, warts and all. It's vision, action, and storytelling far outweigh its negatives.

Then I saw the trailers for THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS and, while the unveiling of this new world to the music of Grace Slick's White Rabbit was intriguing, the guy at the end (Smith) who (being out of context) makes the seemingly On-The-Nose grand statement, "I have to say I'm kind of excited. After all these years, to be going back to where it all started. Back to The Matrix!"

It's a poor trailer. Terrible. In fact, I haven't seen a Warner Bros. movie trailer choke on its own spittle that bad since their trailer for THE IRON GIANT kneecapped the movie's theatrical release.*

*Okay, truthfully, Warner Bros. trailer for 2021's MALIGNANT was really bad too.

While watching the movie, however, I was relieved to see that this same line, in context works without a hiccup. The sly self-effacing humor in Warner Bros. being villainous in the exchange was a nice touch too.

In fact, as I walked out of THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS I enjoyed it so much I could call it Excellent!

Isn't there a lot of revisiting the old territory?

Of course. Any franchise picked up a decade or more since the last has some backtracking to do and we've seen it and accepted it in everything from PSYCHO II to JURASSIC WORLD to HALLOWEEN (2018). It'd be too weird for the much older characters to blithely ignore it all as they started a new story. Nobody forgets the past that brought them to the present.*

*Sure Pixar didn't do that with THE INCREDIBLES 2 after their 13 year gap, but cartoons don't age unless you want them too.

Yes, I was ready to call this movie Excellent. Except...

Except to be honest I had to admit that the audience with me loudly groaned at the Neo vs Agent Smith fight scene.

Every MATRIX movie except for ANIMATRIX has the Neo vs Smith fight scene and, except for the first one, each sequel fight scene is more pointless than the last.

It's more pointless and it goes on far too long.

THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS many fight scenes between Neo and Smith are more than pointless, within the context of the story they're entirely meaningless: they don't simply go on for too long, they have no reason to exist.

Smith pretty much says he has no reason to fight Neo, but then he does anyway. Smith admits that Neo liberated him from his enslavement to THE MATRIX, and Smith loves the freedom.

But Smith is going to kill Neo anyway... because. That's all, just... because.

There were so many wonderful ways that THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS could have the fight scene they wanted without Smith's involvement. Instead, the director or someone at Warner Bros. felt it was absolutely essential to the sequel that they bloat the movie with the very thing that crippled THE MATRIX RELOADED and THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS. The Bloated "Burly Man" fight scenes are always referenced as a major contributing factor to the failure of the first and second sequels and they did it yet again despite that knowledge.

Granted, Lana Wachowski tried new ways to have Smith "infect" people and otherwise take over their bodies, but when the WORLD WAR Z, Battle Royale of endless anonymous bodies went hurling themselves after Neo and Trinity (as we see in the trailer), it became more of a tedious marathon to be endured than an exciting action sequence to be enjoyed.

Apparently the preposterous and punishingly long alley fight in John Carpenter's THEY LIVE has a long reach into Lana's heart.

One Shriek Girl off for that so I still give THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS a healthy 4 Shriek Girls.

THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS is the Best MATRIX since the first!

This review copyright 2022 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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For those who scroll -

Diminishing Returns
Wow. Some movies are so great that you can watch them again and again. Other movies, which for me include SPIDER-MAN 3 and this one (there are more), get worse with every viewing. Memory brings the club lights up, the richness of the story (or lack of) are revealed and all of the minor blemishes grow into cancers before my eyes.

I can still watch and enjoy THE MATRIX. But RESURRECTIONS? Whew! Today I'd give it a two.

It's rare that I movie I nearly loved on first viewing I would wind up disliking upon returning, although I've had that happen with many a song that the radio played just too damn many times (I once adored the ostentatious impunity of LaTour's People Are Still Having Sex!).

Rarer still that a movie I hated on first viewing ever became a movie I loved (I can't think of one), although there are a few movies I merely didn't like, that - on repeat viewings - got better until I at least, liked them.