Review: The Matrix Resurrections

*sigh*

That’s basically my review. That’s it.

Fuck this movie. Let’s backtrack a bit. After my car accident, I had a lot of free time. I used that free time obsessing about the Matrix universe. I watched the movies so many times, I could practically recite the lines. I spent hours on fan sites reading about different theories, studying the scripts for hidden notes, analyzing every scene. Did you know that all the visible license plates in Reloaded are references to holy books? Because I do. Sure, the action was cool, but I loved the philosophy. Reloaded was my favorite of the trilogy because of that. It’s even possible that the Matrix story is what inspired me to learn so much about philosophy in our world.

Hell, the digital rain is still my screensaver.

When I heard there would be a new Matrix movie, I was ecstatic. The Matrix Online was the official sequel to the trilogy. Would they be doing a live action version of that? I wonder what kind of new special effects they can do with the newer technology. Then I heard that Christina Ricci had joined the cast as a “Warner Bros. Executive” and the movie would be “meta”.

Meta. A word the meaning of which has changed from “self referential” to “obnoxiously up it’s own ass”. It’s film nerd speak for sucking one’s own cock. It’s a way of saying “I think I’m better than you, smarter than you, and more intellectual than you, and if you don’t agree, it’s because you aren’t on my level.”

It was at that precise moment that I had no interest in seeing this movie. The trailers didn’t help. They spliced scenes from the original movies in with identical scenes from the new movie. Um. I don’t want to see the original again. If I did, I could just, you know, watch the original. But fine. The matrix as a concept is essentially a loop. The machines control the humans and then some of the humans revolt, then the anomaly resets the prime program. Maybe this is just the seventh iteration of the matrix.

So let’s get into this. To catch you up with the story, Neo is the anomaly. Smith is a virus that has infected pretty much every program in the matrix. Meanwhile, the machines are about to breach Zion, the last human settlement in the real world. Neo and Trinity make their way to the Source, the machine mainframe. Trinity dies. Neo makes a deal with the machines where he’ll jack in, fight Smith, and allow the machines to reset the matrix. In return, the machines will leave Zion alone, and allow anyone who wants to leave the matrix to leave. Smith wins the fight, but when he infects Neo, Smith is reconnected to the machines, and they initiate the reset. In the Matrix Online, Morpheus is angry that the machines won’t return Neo’s body, so he starts setting of bombs in the matrix that show the blue pills that they are in a dream world. Morpheus is eventually killed by a program called the Assassin.

Now we’re at the Matrix Resurrections. While the original Matrix was a huge exposition dump for the first like 45 minutes of the movie, Resurrections assumes that everyone watching already knows the story. On one hand, I kind of appreciate that. I don’t need a character to tell me something I already know. On the other hand, this movie changes so many of the rules of this universe, that I was legitimately lost for a large chunk of this movie. The movie did give us answers eventually, but it still made no fucking sense.

I’m going to put this next section in chronological order rather than movie order, so it makes a tiny little bit of sense. The peace with the machines lasts for a while. Unfortunately, the humans don’t offer enough power for the machines, so a civil war breaks out between the machines. I’ll call these two factions the “machines” (who wanted to go back to the old ways) and the “sentients” (who wanted to make the peace last). The sentients helped Zion create Io, their new home. Not sure what happened to Zion, but whatever. Working together, they are able to grow real food again. Their technology expands. Some of the hovercrafts now have tails. They have magic dust imaging, so the sentients can talk to the humans like they did to Neo as the baby face at the end of Revolutions. In the matrix, the Architect is overthrown and replaced with the Analyst. Many of the old programs are purged, including the Oracle. The Analyst (played by a delightful Neil Patrick Harris) realizes that if he can keep Neo and Trinity close enough to each other that they are constantly longing for one another on a subconscious level, but still far enough apart that it’s impossible, the matrix runs more efficiently. Other changes the Analyst made increase the power produced from the humans in the matrix, so he’s on a roll.

Sixty years have gone by in the real world. The Analyst has “repaired” Neo and Trinity, but I have no fucking clue how that worked. Both of their memories have been mostly erased. Trinity is now Tiffany, a wife and mother and motorcycle repair person. Neo is Thomas Anderson again, a programmer famous for creating the Matrix Trilogy of games. So meta. Everything we saw in the movie trilogy happened in this world as a video game. Smith is somehow still alive… err… running. His memory has also been erased, and is now Thomas’ business partner. Because, sure. Why not.

Christina Ricci’s Warner Bros. Exec. is forcing them to make a Matrix 4 game. Get it? Because Warner Bros. forced one of the Wachowski’s to make the Matrix 4 movie. So meta. This causes Thomas Anderson to have some anxiety and freakouts. He has hallucinations and can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. That would be cool for this story, except it comes off as schizophrenia, instead of being aware that he’s in a simulation. The Analyst is Thomas Anderson’s therapist and keeps him on blue pills. Get it? Because the blue pills stay in the matrix. So meta.

For some reason, Thomas Anderson is running a “modal” which is this movie’s version of “OMG I LEARNED A NEW WORD AND AM GOING TO REPEAT IT FOREVER”. It’s basically a program inside the matrix game that allows the AI to improve. This modal is essentially the first scene of the matrix movie, but slightly different. In this modal, Agent Smith is a mixture between Smith and Morpheus. At this point, Resurrections takes some inspiration from Inception. There are three… four levels of reality. There’s our world, then the “real” world of the Matrix movies, then the matrix itself, then the game about the matrix, then the simulation inside the game about the matrix. Five. There are five levels of reality. Confused? Great.

Somehow, Agent Morpheus takes the red pill in the modal, and escapes into the matrix. Whaaaaaattttt? Now he wants to free Neo. This process basically causes Thomas to have a full on psychiatric break. And it also “activates” the real Smith. Who is played by a different actor. I assume because Hugo Weaving has self respect. Anyway, The Analyst calms Thomas down and has a black cat named Deja Vu. Get it? Because in the first Matrix, a black cat showed Neo that deja vu was a glitch in the matrix. So meta.

Blah blah fucking blah. Neo gets out. He visits Niobe in Io who is the new General. She wants to keep the peace. Neo wants to free Trinity. Bugs (a new character that really doesn’t matter in this movie) decides to help him anyway. He goes to talk to Tiffany and then the Analyst shows up, giving really, the only good scene in this movie. He explains all the plot points and he has this cool time pause thing where he’s faster than bullet time. It’s a great scene. It’s the only great scene. Neo fails, and goes back to Io.

Then an invisible bird thing comes to Niobe and they go to another simulation that isn’t the matrix. There they meet Sati from Revolutions. She grew up hot. Anyway, a large exposition dump later, they decide that they are going to free Trinity by… downloading her mind into the ship, and then… plugging Bugs in her place. I think. This movie doesn’t make sense.

They go back to the matrix. The Analyst makes a deal with Neo that if Trinity chooses to leave, he’ll let them, but if she chooses to stay, then he plugs himself back in. Let’s talk about Trinity. Or Tiffany. She’s a mother of three and is married to someone who is not Neo. She met Thomas Anderson at a coffee shop. They see each other around a few times. That’s it. She doesn’t remember anything from the previous version of the matrix. Though she does have dreams. Neo’s plan is to get her to leave everything she knows behind because he’s from another plane of existence, that she doesn’t remember. It’s an insane proposition.

So then Tiffany gets to the coffee shop that is packed full of cops in riot gear. Oh yeah. Instead of Agents taking over blue pills, the Analyst realizes it’s a lot easier to simply have bots who look like humans, but do whatever he says. Anyway, Tiffany arrives and has to walk through this crowd of cop bots, and Neo is all “let’s run away together”. Then Tiffany’s husband Chad, get it? Because Chad is a meme name about guys who are jerks to nerds. So meta. Chad and their kids come there and are trying to pull her home. Obviously, Tiffany decides to choose her family over some crazy person. The Analyst has his answer. So the cop bots grab Neo and it looks like they are going to execute him. But then. Just at the last minute…

Tiffany turns back to Neo. They splice in a similar scene from one of the other movies. Which, by the way, they do OVER AND OVER AND OVER again in this movie. I swear a solid 5 minutes of this movie is clips from better Matrix movies. Anyway, Tiffany looks back and then she remembers everything. Now it’s time to free her. Sati is still on her invisible bird thing. They have gone to the pod where Trinity’s body is. Fuck this scene made no sense. So like, Sati is in the bird simulation standing over a water well. She uses what I’m going to call a screwdriver, into the water, which somehow controls the invisible bird’s tentacles, which unplugs Trinity. Make sense? No? Cool.

They plug Bugs in. Trinity is still in the Matrix. But also Bugs is Trinity? And they try to escape the cop bots. Trinity. Or Bugs. I’m really confused. One of them touches Neo’s hand, and an explosion happens knocking all the bad guys out. Sure. Why not. Then the Analyst does his time pause thing again. Suddenly Smith arrives, who is not bound by the time pause, because fuck logic, and he says some things and shoots the Analyst with an anti matrix gun. Which is a thing that exists and wasn’t just pulled out of someone’s ass where they kept the rest of this movie.

Neo tries to fly but can’t. So Trinity… wait. Trinity is no longer plugged into the matrix. How is she in the matrix? If it’s Bugs using Trinity’s RSI, then why was she able to do that shockwave thing with Neo? Fuck, this movie makes no sense. Trinity and Neo ride a motorcycle. All of the bots rush them. Like throwing themselves out of windows and shit. It was like a zombie movie. It was terrible. This goes on all night, and finally Trinity and Neo are on the top of a building, and decide to jump off. Even though Neo knows he can’t fly. They do it anyway.

Then OMG. Trinity can fly. Well, more like hover. Which doesn’t make any sense because she’s not the One. But this movie does whatever the fuck it wants. Turns out the “anomaly” is the power of love. Now Neo and Trinity can change whatever they want in the matrix. They fly off and a shitty cover of Rage Against the Machine plays us out.

Fuck. This. Movie. The sheer lack of cohesive rules is what killed it for me. It’s sci-fi. I get that hovering ships don’t exist. But I understand that in this universe, they do. And they have rules. It has to be near enough to structures to work. But this movie just flat out ignores the rules it setup in the trilogy. There’s no internal logic here. There might be some interesting concepts, but everything is bogged down by over the top nostalgia. The movie spends far too much just winking at you, saying “hey, ‘member this?” Then when there is something new, it feels like a fever dream. The action isn’t even original. The first Matrix movie was so impactful on the effects, that everyone and their mother wanted to use them in their movies. Here, 15 years have passed, so they have all this new technology, and we get… what? Trinity melts into digital rain? Neo can push things with his mind? That’s it. The big battle at the end, could be from any zombie movie that’s ever been made. For a franchise that was so new and original, the fact that everything about this movie was a repeat and rehash, is so disappointing.

This movie offers you, the viewer, nothing. It isn’t eye catching. It doesn’t make you think. In fact, if you think too hard, you’ll enjoy this movie even less because nothing makes sense. It’s not even entertaining. The first half an hour is just a high school play about the first Matrix movie. Then it jumps into high gear and moves so fast and they pull plot devices out of their asses, so you can barely keep up. Then the ending is so overwhelming, yet vapid, that when the credits start rolling, and that shitty cover of Rage Against The Machine starts playing, you just sit there. Did I really waste two hours of my life on this? I wish I did take the blue pill.