Shooting its way into theaters and HBO Max before Santa chutes his way down our chimney, comes Lana Wachowski’s return to the Matrix in, The Matrix Resurrections. 18 years removed from The Wachowski Sisters concluding the Matrix trilogy with The Matrix Revolutions, Lana returns with Resurrections in hopes of giving us the finale we’ve been waiting to see. Although it works more as an epilogue, The Matrix Resurrections is a welcome fourth entry into the mythology that immediately puts to rest all of the questions asking, “Is this movie necessary”? In fact, Resurrections reflects on that very question in hopes of finding the answers in a climate dominated by nostalgia trips, remakes, reboot-quels, and pre-sequels. It doesn’t take very long for Resurrections to find those answers it’s looking for, and how it chooses to share its findings is as unsubtle as it is poignant. With sequences of images embroidered with relics of the past, Resurrections is unafraid to use these as weapons of nostalgic deconstruction to explore the freedoms of artistic expression and the lost arts of film-making.
The Matrix came out at a very specific time, and it’s divisive sequels left fans wondering if the trilogy was a sneaky stroke of genius, or if the Wachowskis were lucky with the original in 1999. With The Matrix being considered amongst the best films of all-time for it’s game-changing visual effects, wire work, and fight choreography, any follow-up had a difficult task in matching what the original accomplished. How the Wachowskis succeeded in telling the story of Neo and Trinity, was tightening the tension, expanding its philosophical purpose, and broadening the themes of free will. The Matrix freed the mind, Reloaded freed the body, and Revolutions freed the spirit from an infrastructure meant to oppress the feelings of love in a predominantly digital age. A superficial reality where existence is defined by codes and keyboards. The world outside of the Matrix is sweaty and physical in how it explores the bodies of it’s characters. Most notably Reloaded when Morpheus energizes the people of Zion into an aptly titled, “Sex Rave”, being a grander exploration of Neo and Trinity’s sex scene. This showcases how unafraid the Wachowskis were in being intimate with their characters, and how so many movies since forget how important it is to keep us emotionally tied with them. In a virtually sexless age of art, and the commodification of nostalgia by way of shameless pandering, the Matrix trilogy felt like the last breath of blockbuster film-making we haven’t seen since. Resurrections is an attempt to reckon with that subjective proposition by addressing how it inspired an entire generation of moviegoers, by defying the wants of the audience in service of the needs of the story.
While we’re often finding many blockbusters taking a while to get to the meat and potatoes of it’s narrative, Resurrections familiarizes the audience with the uncertainty of the Matrix in the blink of an eye. We’re led to observe recognizable moments that are supposed to mean something to us, but the surplus of it feels like the meaning has been hollowed out of it. Busts represent iconic moments from previous entries, statues litter the peripherals of an otherwise lifeless office building, and anyone caught pointing at the screen has fallen into Lana Wachowski’s trap. The corporate infrastructure has purposefully resurrected these icons to service us, because they mean so much to our nostalgia, but at one point they were distant from nostalgia. They meant something to the purpose of it’s narrative through dramatic beats pulsing with life and visible depth that serviced the story of free will. Corporate representatives frantically try to uncover how they can force their artists to reconstruct what made The Matrix a smash hit that personalized the unimaginable. There’s this precedent of abiding by binary codes, floating around in think tanks, and over-analysis that tries to reapply meaning where there wasn’t any. It’s something worth laughing at because it’s played for jokes, but Lana understands how silly it is to contractually obligate people to art. How absurd it is to threaten the financial income of it’s creators if they don’t return to their creation to favor the studio, before they ship it off to an everyday journeyman to bastardize the world and its characters. We’ve seen examples of this dating back to the sequels of Steven Spileberg’s Jaws, and to see that nothing has changed in nearly 50 years, is frustrating. These digital representations of our world go beyond the silver screen and draw us into the bubble of meta-textual references and callbacks, but it’s furious that it has to do it at all.
Audiences have spent years theorizing what could come next in the Matrix franchise after Neo saved Zion from the machines, and a film that completely defies their expectations is the last thing anyone anticipated. Especially when you consider how aggravating the analysts and critics have been for years as they tried to erase Reloaded and Revolutions from the history of the Matrix because it didn’t meet their expectations. This time around, Resurrections is no different, but it’s strengths ride on the backs of it’s performances, minimal action sequences, stellar visual effects, and hefty dramatic undertones that should satisfy most viewers. It defies many structural norms as it weaves between a remake, a reboot, and a sequel. In an age where it’s rare to be surprised by narrative developments on this scale, Resurrections sprinkles in many surprises that prove to be bountiful from the beginning. There’s subtextual meaning etched into the effects, that greatly benefit from the structure, and accented by its cast of characters in some of the year’s most exciting performances. Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss return as Neo and Trinity, and they give us some of their best work in their respective roles yet. The addition of Jessica Henwick and Yahya Abdul-Mateen as Bugs and Young Morpheus are a welcome addition that adds an exciting element to the mythology of the Matrix. It’s not often where legacy sequels can manage to incorporate new blood into the franchise and have them immediately stand out and become a fan favorite that flirts with the levels that Neo, Trinity, and Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus managed to achieve.
The Matrix Resurrections is a breathtaking achievement. It’s a film that is unafraid to challenge itself and the boundaries it can push in the same ways that the franchise did 22 years ago. Lana Wachowski returns headstrong, eager, frustrated, and roaring with passion to uproot studio mandates infringing on art and the vehement obsession with resurrecting the past. The existence of Resurrections contradicts every unsubtle line of dialogue, but it services a theme that’s been present since the beginning. The Matrix franchise was never exclusive to Neo, it’s a Neo and Trinity love story. All great science-fiction finds exciting ways to allow personal emotions to boil over the dystopian future. The Matrix’s way of finding that is in the characters and how they believe, hope, and feel in each other. None of the heroes act on anything in favor of themself. Every action or reaction is in hopes of benefiting everyone else around them, because they’re motivated by empathy for the human spirit living on. Resurrections continues that trend, but in the prison of the Matrix for most of the runtime. It’s a present day dystopia littered with everything they think people want to live a happy life, but they couldn’t be more emotionally distant from their prisoners. Digital, lifeless recreations to fill the buildings and offices with bots that end up being no more than ammunition to prevent Neo and Trinity from succeeding. This chastises the digital overlords who plead they work in service of the human condition rather than prevent people from feeling real emotions by turning prisoners into mindless drones. It’s a critique of these artists who are afraid of letting palpable emotion infiltrate their stories, because the spectacle matters more than the meaning of it.
In 1999, at the height of fearing the impossibilities of the Internet, The Matrix acted on those fears, and allowed it to inspire their art. In 2021, The Matrix Resurrections, is acting on the fears of the digital content era and how the personality of art has been suffocated by the machine. Every inch of Resurrections interrogates how studios and corporations have commodified the emotion that built their houses and decorated their halls. Stripping it down to iconography, quotes and callbacks, to make the audience point and clap. Morpheus’ dramatic entry in The Matrix is reflected in a bathroom stall here. It’s funny, but it’s taking a jab at how their art has been aped, copied, bastardized by the people that funded their work. They created an entirely new form of visual language with “bullet time”. Dressed their characters up in trenchcoats and frameless glasses. Utilized the limitless potential of CGI to establish lore and construct setpieces. It came at a time when movies, no matter what people might say, were made when creativity held as much value as the dollar bill. Since, the landscape of movies has devolved into an endless cycle of slates and services. Loosely knit cinematic universes that dictate story, and force the eyes of the director to wander in the path of the studio rather than their own. The Matrix Resurrections is an exercise in resuscitating a bygone era of blockbuster film-making so rare, that something like this feels revolutionary. The only reason it feels revolutionary is because it’s difficult to tell when a director is realizing their vision, and not someone else’s anymore. The landscape has become so disengaged with human emotion in front of the camera and behind-the-scenes, that Lana’s direction here feels worthy of being amongst the year’s best. Very few directors can address the audience while trying to understand their place in the current climate, and firing on all artistic cylinders that remind us how magical and meaningful movies can be.