Review of The Matrix Resurrections (2021) by Solear — 22 Dec 2021

The viewing is fresh, so the review might be a bit chaotic but might adjust later as more things settle down. My first fear when I saw this was "please gods just don't let Neo be castrated and all the woman kick all the ass and save the day". Unfortunately, that fully happened. For that alone the move worth a few scores off. Neo did some ass kicking, but there was a clear agenda there that Woman have all the choice, Woman save everything and women are the bestest ever.. I think they should have added Neo a bit more agency. The fact that he was not able to get it up (the sky, when he was trying to fly) was showing everything about his character in this film..

Regarding the Ani-Neo, Smith - Well, I think that's also a botched effort, the first films were in equilibrium, Neo had Smith in strength equalling their own, here it just felt empty. "The Smith-Morpheus hybrid" was not really a great choice especially since they had a separate "Smith", who was there only to deus ex machina the failure situations and then left.. This would be a great opportunity to introduce a female antagonist to the story to keep a balance, if they made Trinity the new Neo, they should make a new female Smith or similar also. But I guess, it's 2021, you cannot have a female portrayed anything less than perfect nowadays, let alone be an antagonist.. The fight scenes I felt were pretty forgettable. I still remember when Neo was fighting 100 agents, or when they fought in the subway, with great detail, but for some reason none of the fight scenes in this move were memorable at all. I cannot recall a single instance of a fight scene that was "organic", or got enough focus. Fight scenes felt that they happened in their mandated time, and they sort of tried to make every fight a grouphug. Lot of people fighting a lot of people, mostly in places which are not really meant for fighting.. This was especially obvious with the Merovingian fight with the rainbow brigade.. Unmemorable, chaotic, and ultimately pointless, The Merovingian's character was a pointless callback with no substance, just to have a fight scene.. Like at the end in the coffee shop.. Neo's fight scenes were felt like he was bullied auntil he had a nerd rage. Not really though through, just sort of like "Ehh I don't like fighting at all, but ok let's fight" All in all I enjoyed the movie more than I have not, I liked how they painted the line between video games and the Matrix. The cooperation between machines and men are natural and was not bad at all. CGI was better than expected. Regarding design of characters, Eh.. Seen better.. I know you cannot go around the SJW aesthetic, still it was quite bad in some places (there was one character who's hair was soo ugly, I was like uhh.. You can have any hairstyle in the world, and you went with THAT??).

The character of Morpheus was coming out as worst I think of all, felt like he was having too much fun with it, it wasn't as serious as the original (or not even as close to the rigid Smith).

I want to give props to editing and cuts that were comebacks to the original films, sometimes mid sentence, that was executed well, but I must say the callbacks to the original movie was almost too much.. Almost.. I need to think about the movie a bit more, but I fear every time I do, the score will go down more. I guess we all should just say thanks that it was not more agenda fuelled than what it already was or what most people expected..