The Matrix Resurrections

I read that co-writer/director Lana Wachowski had considered shelving the fourth installment in her MATRIX franchise, THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS, following production shutdown in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.   I read it on the Internets, so you never know.   If it's true, I have to wonder if Lana reconsidered the film's entire premise and decided maybe it really wasn't such a good idea.  Because to me, it isn't.  It's one of those "too clever by half" notions that flies out of the mouths of excited novice screenwriters.  Or any kind of writer.  I very occasionally like to dabble with short fiction and recall that time I was up all night developing a sci-fi story which involved a entire town that had been "reborn" as upper crusts.  My fingers couldn't keep up with my mind, racing with one absurd idea after another.   A good exercise, but a middling result that mercifully never got too far past a desk drawer.

Lana, working this time without her sibling Lilly (formerly known as Larry and Andy before their gender switches), has created another late sequel that really tries to be contemporary.  That concocts crazy explanations for the previous trilogy.  I will not rehash the plots of those films here, as RESURRECTIONS does, complete with multiple film clips.  But this time we learn "the Matrix" was in fact a video game created by a designer named Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves).  Or at least his version of it, based on his vague, troubling old dreams.  

One day Anderson is approached by a guy who calls himself Morpheus (played this time by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and a young woman called Bugs (Jessica Henwick) who inform him that he is back in The Matrix.   He is sufficiently convinced to take the red pill again.  After all, his life has become a repetitive drone of work/treadmill/eat/sleep.  The only thing to break the tedium are visits with his therapist (Neil Patrick Harris), who prescribes him these blue pills to help him maintain sanity. Mmmmm hmmm.

The early scenes of THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS were annoyingly meta.  Self-referential (even mentioning Warner Brothers) to the point of nausea.  Too cute.  Almost like an SNL skit.  The kind of thing high schoolers (or those whose chronological age belies their developmental one) find clever and cool.  I found it desperate.  And the film beats this idea into the ground in Act One (and in a brief scene after the end credits).  Once Anderson is again Neo, thought dead after the Machine War, and wakes up in a pod in the real world, the film becomes a blah retread.  An unsuccessful mix of nostalgic throwbacks and efforts to be "woke" and culturally sensitive.    You can read all manner of interpretations as to what the MATRIX films are about: Christian allegory, Buddhist allegory, transgender treatise, "It takes a village" mantra, but in the end if the film itself plays like a thin imitation none of the intentions matter.

And the film commits many sins.   The CGI is next level awful.  The fight choreography is dull.  The actions scenes are poorly blocked and executed.  Any attempted suspense is neutered.  The philosophical musings have a basis in the Interesting but are also muted.  There's even a bad cover of a Rage Against the Machine song during the credits.  I can go on and on.

RESURRECTIONS is mainly a love story.  Anderson keeps seeing this woman named Tiffany, who looks like Trinity (Carrie Anne-Moss) at a coffee shop in the Matrix, then finds her lifeless body in another pod and devotes all his energy to reunite with her.  Attempting to thwart him is The Analyst (Harris), said therapist in the Matrix and Neo's old nemesis Agent Smith (Jonathan Goff), his shifty business partner at the software company.  The new incarnations of Smith and Morpheus are lame, and Harris is just doing his usual shtick. 

But, the film is reasonably paced and still fun to watch.  I wish I shared the appreciation some have for this movie, behind which there are several fascinating, ahem, rabbit hole portals and humanistic tenets.  Apparently Lily did not wish to return to this world, due to being reminded of some highly personal issues.  

I was not a big fan of THE MARTIX RELOADED or THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS, but compared to RESURRECTIONS, they almost seem on par with the original film, which is still mind blowingly amazing on just about every level.  Either way, each successive film has become increasingly ridiculous.