I never expected going into Matrix Resurrections that I’d be watching and reviewing possibly the worst film of 2021.
This movie should have stayed dead.
In preparation for the new Matrix movie, I finally cracked open my Blu-ray trilogy boxset and watched all three films and the anime since you almost need to watch it for the setup for events in Reloaded and the backstory of the annoying kid character they introduced.
You also need to play the Matrix videogame if you want Niobe’s whole story when her character goes missing in the movie.
But it turns out I really didn’t need to do any of that stuff since half of Matrix Resurrections is just a clip show. The 2 hours and 28 minute runtime could have been a solid 2 hours if you took out all the clips from the previous three movies.
I don’t remember a single clip for the previous movies being in the original two sequels. Which proves where the mindset was when making this tripe.
This whole sequel reeks of a cash-in, playing at your nostalgia and love for the first film. Cause let’s face it, we only ever tolerated the other two sequels.
Hell! The movie itself openly admits this is a cash-in, by being meta and self-referential. To your face they admit that WB was going to make a sequel to The Matrix with or without The Wachowskis, so to appease the corporate overlords, they just shat this thing out.
It comes off as what it is, a soulless, cynical money grab. Hell, it felt like Lana Wachowski made this at gunpoint or this is some angsty diary entry.
For all I know the other Wachowski was being held hostage by WB that’s why she agreed to make it.
There is so much in this that makes absolutely no sense, too. Like for example, why can Trinity fly now? For Neo it made sense since he is basically a program in the system that retained a physical body. But Trinity is still human. So, why can she fly? Because girlboss? Is that it? 2021 girlbossing gave her the ability to zoom around like The One?
And why the hell did they save Agent Smith? You know, the demented agent that almost wiped out the whole Matrix system. Plus, wasn’t he deleted from the mainframe?
Nothing makes sense.
There was so much you could have done with the story. Hell, off the top of my head, giving a reason to bring back Agent Smith, maybe this isn’t really Neo, maybe it’s another Agent Smith clone, the one that took him over at the end of Revolutions but it’s him struggling to come to terms with his identity. Giving us that hero’s journey the first film gave us so damn well.
I don’t really know why he’s in this. In name only of course, hell he doesn’t even act like Agent Smith. He’s also about as intimidating as a kitten. Speaking of unintimidating, who thought it would be a good idea to make Neil Patrick Harris the main antagonist?
He isn’t menacing or scary or intimidating… he’s just Neil Patrick Harris. And here we all thought that the baby face of the machine overlord was silly.
A thought that just came to mind, I wonder if they had to use so many clips from the other sequels to maintain the rights to them. I have no idea if that’s how copyright works but it would make sense. This movie had that Fantastic Four feeling to it, the one that was made in 1994, that was never meant to be released, just made to keep the film rights.
Maybe this film was just an excuse to bring back the cast of Sense8. Characters in this are so interchangeable, there’s really no reason to care or remember anyone in this. And you won’t, I’m not even sure if they lived at the end. They kind of just disappear while Neo and Trinity ride off on a motorcycle.
Who am I kidding, no character actually dies in this thing. Hell, not even Neil Patrick Harris our main villain meets an untimely end.
Remember in the first film when just about everyone on the ship dies? Even the one who managed to survive we learn in Reloaded succumbed to his wounds.
After rewatching the other two sequels, yeah, they clearly have some issues story wise. But the action was always solid. In Resurrections, I don’t know what the hell happened. It’s so flat and poorly shot most of the time.
It will have some okay ideas, but the execution and the telegraphed fight scenes are so bad. It felt like they didn’t have time to train the actors, Neo for example, he is basically just there to stop bullets.
That seems to be all he does in this movie, people fire at him and he just stops the bullets in midair. He does this a good 3 or 4 times in the movie. Possibly more since I wasn’t keeping track.
I will say the fetish stuff is toned down this time around. You watch Revolutions and their whole kink is right there on display.
Speaking of, I found it interesting to learn Lana married a dominatrix who makes fetish porn, stealing her away from Buck Angel a trans porn actor who she was married to.
How is any of this relevant to Matrix Resurrections? It’s not.
Oh, and the sunglasses. Oh boy the sunglasses. I forgot how many people in the Matrix films just stand around wearing sunglasses. There’s no reason for it either and they all look ridiculous.
During action sequences with a lot of gun play, I can see the need for it, as you blink a lot when you fire a gun, which looks equally as dumb. But if you’re just standing around talking, but everyone is dressed in their finest latex, wearing the dumbest looking sunglasses, what’s the point other than they think it looks cool.
Do I even want to bother with the story to Resurrections?
It’s about 60 years later after the events of Revolutions.
There was a peace with the machines and humans, even coming together to form their own nation together where they live in harmony. Okay, but why? Why would machines care to live with the humans? That doesn’t make any sense.
This new place they live in is called IO I think and is run by Niobe who is now a very old woman and possibly a lesbian, I’m not sure. That kiss in the Matrix videogame must have awoken something.
Her old lady makeup was terrible by the way, almost everything out of the Matrix simulation is kind of terrible. I felt like skipping almost all of it, but then the little sense this movie made would be even more nonsensical.
So, for 20 years in Neo’s mind, he has been in a new Matrix, as a game developer whose name to fame was The Matrix. At one point they even show clips from the first Matrix film, trying to pass it off as footage from his game.
And I guess from that he is found. Bugs, this new character introduced that is quickly sidelined and forgotten about finds the Matrix game, but real agents track her down.
And mixed with these agents is a programmed version of Morpheus. But like our Agent Smith character, he acts absolutely nothing like they’re pretending to be.
One thing I noticed while watching the other Matrix films over again is just how quiet everyone is. They all basically whisper throughout the whole franchise.
Now in Resurrections it’s like they’re tiktok versions of themselves.
Neo of course has no idea who he is or what the Matrix is out of the game he made himself. He does have psychotic breaks from time to time, which is where Neil Patrick Harris comes into play as his therapist or The Analyst as he’s called.
He supplies Neo with blue pills to keep him in the Matrix. But then he meets Trinity, whose new identity is Tiffany a married woman with three kids and a husband named Chad.
There’s also this thing where they don’t look like themselves to other people. When looking at Neo, all you see is the old man. Not sure what you see when you look at Trinity. Though maybe he was the only one who looked different, not her.
Bugs and now the Agent Morpheus track Neo down at work, trying to convince him to take the red pill and leave the Matrix behind.
But things don’t go so well and Neo flips out, thinking it’s just another one of his mental breakdowns.
Eventually they get him onboard by recreating the scene from the first Matrix film when Neo took the red pill.
Once he awakes, he sees his pod is in a special location with one other pod. Trinity’s pod.
But he is rescued before he is able to do anything.
He is then taken to Bugs’ ship the Mnemosyne where he meets her crew of forgettables and some machine folk.
They take him to IO where Bugs and her crew get reprimanded by Niobe, who arrests Neo. She tells him about 20 years in his matrix world is about 60 in the real world with a lot having changed since then.
Returning is Sati, the annoying Indian child introduced in Revolutions.
She helps Neo figure out a way to free Trinity, which is basically walk up to her and tell her the truth, but it’s up to her if she wants to leave.
The Analyst shows up to get in Neo’s way and explain the plot like how they both managed to survive the events of the last film where they both died.
The Analyst saw an opportunity I guess to create his own Matrix, using Neo and Trinity’s love? I really didn’t get what he was saying. He used nanobots to repair their wounds and placed them in pods, making sure to keep them just far enough from each other that their love power works but not too well that he loses his control over them.
I guess the deal still stands that Neo struck with the machines, if anyone wishes to leave the Matrix they can. However, what The Analyst did was make it so no one ever wishes to leave the Matrix.
It’s also so weird that the final battle takes place in a tiny coffee shop. The Analyst has Neo meet Trinity there so she can decide if she wishes to leave with Neo or stay with his fake family.
Of course, she chooses Neo, but The Analyst tries to renege on the deal, tosses everything he has at them.
But nothing can stop bullet sponge Neo and Supergirl Trinity as they zip around the city.
One thing I noticed after watching the first Matrix film over again, the city they are in doesn’t have a name. Even their phone book is just City Phonebook. Actually, none of the places in any of the Matrix films have a specific location.
But now for some reason Japan exists as they get teleported there once trying to escape a bunch of Agents.
Eventually Neo and Trinity escape, Neo can’t fly anymore, so it’s up to Trinity to take the lead and fly them away.
Then the film kind of just ends with Neo and Trinity showing up at The Analyst’s place and beating the crap out of him, telling him they are going to take control of the Matrix now. And then the movie ends with a Rage Against the Machine song, like the other films, but this time it’s a really really bad female singer cover of the song that you’d find on YouTube.
So yeah, I hated this movie. It really took some hard work to make the original sequels look great by comparison.
The whole scene of the team working on the Matrix game sequel, self-referencing itself was so cringy and just outright painful to watch.
Which sums up the movie perfectly. Cringy and hard to watch. This stinker gets a giant SKIP IT. Do not see this movie. Like the last season of Game of Thrones, act as if it never existed.
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