REVIEW: ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ is a critical system update
Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss return to their iconic roles in The Matrix Resurrections, directed by Lana Wachowski.
It’s hard enough to make a sequel to a beloved movie. Setting aside the inevitable criticism of the creators selling out, it’s often impossible to recreate the exact magic that made a hit movie come together. Filmmakers and cast members get older, have different life experiences, and they want the sequel to reflect how everything’s changed in real life, and to expand the universe they created. Add the multiplier of a 20-year gap between original film and sequel, and it’s hard to say where we’ll end up. The landscape of the last five or ten years at the movies is littered with misbegotten sequels of popular releases from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.
For a series like The Matrix, I didn’t know what to expect from its new, fourth installment. Its second and third entries were already maximized versions of the original, and given the way the third film ended, it would be difficult to come up with a continuation that wouldn’t feel like a frustrating retcon.
The people behind the scenes are the same, but also different. Since 2003, writer/director Lana Wachowski emerged as a trans icon (along with her sister Lilly), and has made a sequence of sometimes fascinating, sometimes puzzling work since the initial Matrix movies. Stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss have (oh so subtly) aged, enough that Reeves was able to fully revitalize his own career in the intervening years. What could The Matrix Resurrections do to remain relevant?
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as a new, different version of Morpheus.
Quite a lot, it turns out. Instead of grafting a direct continuation onto the story as we left off, or merely remaking the original, Wachowski and her team decided to zoom way out, using their sequel to comment on what the whole series is, and in so doing, they preserve what made the original so interesting: the philosophical underpinnings of free will.
On the surface, The Matrix series might be known for iconic sci-fi action like Bullet Time and the choreography by Yuen Woo Ping. But the soul of the series lies in the ideas of Plato, Baudrillard and others about the nature of our minds and how aware we are about the systems that govern society. To see The Matrix Resurrections update its critique for the era of smartphones, the dominance of the gaming industry, and other post-2003 developments would be enough to put it on my best-of list for 2021. That it does this while offering a moving love story and some of the crispest action scenes of the past few years? It makes the steak even juicier.
As the movie opens, we’re plunged back into the titular manufactured reality, which seems to be as functional as ever. A hacker called Bugs (Jessica Henwick) is searching for Neo (Reeves); there are rumours among the free members of humanity that Neo didn’t die when he negotiated the truce with the Machines, as seen in The Matrix Revolutions. Bugs is determined to track down Neo and extract him from the Matrix once again, though not to act as a saviour, like he once did. Refreshingly, the world has indeed changed since we last saw Neo, and the actions of he and his friends aren’t wiped clean by the filmmakers to perpetuate the narrative of human-vs-machine war.
If there’s anything that might annoy fans of the franchise, it’s that Resurrections is definitely a talkier Matrix movie. The focus is no longer on some huge save-the-world plot, and there’s far more dialogue than in the previous films. Some of this chatter could be classified as textbook exposition dumps, though if you’re hooked on the universe of these movies, this might just be the hit you’re looking for. A tech-inclined viewer would indeed be curious what sort of hardware and social progressions would take places decades after the initial three films. Some of these innovations might read as silly, but they will be very familiar to anyone who’s kept on top of the Wachowski sisters’ work in Cloud Atlas, Sense8 or even Jupiter Ascending. They may be new to the fictional world we knew before, but on balance, they’re no stranger than anything we saw back in 2001 or 2003.
Neil Patrick Harris as the mysterious Analyst that Neo meets with inside the Matrix.
The core of the movie is, like the original series, the relationship between Neo and Trinity (Moss). Trinity was once the person who insisted on drawing Neo out of the Matrix, and in a classic role reversal, that task falls to Neo. Resurrections’ iteration of the Matrix, as a construct, acts like a stand-in for any of our modern-day obsessions: social media, cryptocurrency, gaming - anything that disconnects us from real, interpersonal interactions. The characters routinely remind each other that as humans, we can only take responsibility for our own actions. If one of us chooses to remain walled off by technology, there’s only so much others can do to encourage them to reverse that.
This cyclical argument about free will may frustrate some viewers, mostly those who feel The Matrix is about leather-clad superheroes spraying faceless opponents with automatic weapons. Instead, the Matrix series is, like many great stories, about love: supporting the people close to you, but being willing to let them go their own way if needed. This extends to the idea that even long-held grievances (in this case, between humans, machines and programs) need not last forever. It may be coming in a wholly unexpected and eccentric format, but there aren’t many other (geeky) movies this year with such an optimistic tone. Consider this unconventional sequel an unabashed success.
The Matrix Resurrections gets four stars out of four.
Stray thoughts
I love the more colourful, easier-going Morpheus played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.
No corners were cut with the production design on this; some shots would be worth framing.
The Machines’ new “swarm mode” doesn’t seem quite as creepy as Agent Smith’s viral abilities in the second and third movies.