Review of The Matrix Resurrections (2021) by Hinglemccringle — 23 Dec 2021

Unlike most people who only praise the first movie I love all three and have marathoned the trilogy every year or two since they were all available on DVD but I guess it takes two Wachowskis is create that secret sauce but it seems more likely they've just lost the top tier touch for handling action.

The choreography, cinematography, CG, wardrobe, and editing are on par with a cheap Syfy movie of the week; it's incredible that every single aspect on the visual side is worse than 20 years ago. There are far too many jump cuts to try and mask the poor fight choreography and every mildly interesting scenario is just a pale imitation of a sequence from the other movies. Neo now has a goofy looking forcefield/energy blast gimmick on top of his already OP The One abilities that removes the small amount of tension in combat because he can seemingly use it indefinitely to block any attack if he feels like it, I suspect some of it has to do with Keanu's age finally catching up with him; it was noticeable in John Wick 3 but it's very apparent here. The special effects, like bullet time and the agent's shifting into others are stylistically worse than the trilogy and there's a new VERY poorly done slow motion effect that is overused, especially by the new big bad, and the lighting is poorly done because the use of green/blue screen is always obvious. The weapons are just as atrocious; like a bad FPS game nothing feels like it has any weight to it and again looks cheap. There's also an introduction to friendly machine lifeforms that are named and designed like a throwaway Star Wars side character and it's all so tonally blind I couldn't help but laugh, one of them is a deus ex machina that just shows up and can solve half their problems.

Gone are the days of well researched and written philosophical quandaries and interpersonal experiences, now the dialogue is laughably bad and inappropriate for their scenes with plenty of hamfisted attempts at feminism. Instead of a clever wink and a nod to it's predecessors it is frequently and clumsily shoving references in your face while regularly showing clips from the trilogy, the first five times this happened I chuckled but when it kept on happening I couldn't stop from rolling my eyes. The machines have inexplicably become sexist towards women (the ending exchange is some of the worst writing I've ever witnessed) when they've always just put down the mankind as a species. Despite being humanity's saviour and knowing Trinity better than anyone Neo is constantly put down and told his opinions are inconsequential when requiring multiple attempts to her out even though the others needed multiple to save Neo, to paraphrase 'the most important choice of his life isn't his to make'. The One's code is also shared by two now, get it they're non binary huh huh you get it? It's very clever. This whole choice is strange because in the trilogy women play the most important roles human outside of Neo and Morpheus: Trinity saves Neo's life, helps him every step of the way, and kicks all kinds of ass throughout, the Oracle is one of the most key beings in the story, the council is half female, Niobe is the best pilot humanity has, they couldn't have defeated the Merovingian without Persephone, women stop the machine's drills, etc.

Oh, and on top of all that there isn't a single memorable piece of new music in the film.

TL;DR.

It feels like a bad fan-fiction that lacks any of the identifiable traits that made the trilogy so beloved, Resurrections is in no way worth watching.