Review of The Matrix Resurrections (2021) by The_General — 30 Dec 2021

Just like the recent Star War “re-boot” sequels, this is another example of Hollywood digging up their most loved and famous franchises, and utterly destroying their legacy and memory in order to remake the central themes, characters and archetypes for a modern society social agenda.

This goal seems to be much more important that staying true to fans, a series, and even money — as I doubt this film will do well at the box office and highly doubt two additional movies will be made from this content.

From the very beginning of the movie, we see whole sequences that simply re-hashes of the original film, only with slight alterations to make way for the new characters. B-roll from the original trilogy is intercut extensively through the whole movie to remind us these scenes and sequences are supposed to be familiar.

But these scenes are not nearly as well done or enjoyable as they were the first time and beg the question: were there no new ideas? Just like in the new Star War franchise, we see a new cast of characters that seem far too young and fresh faced to be believable in their roles.

They have about the “grit” of armchair gamers sitting in a cyber cafe — not the charisma and gravitas of Lawrence Fishburne as Morpheus in the original films, who you believe has fought his whole life in an underground war against the machines.

Unfortunately, even Keanu Reeves delivers a tired performance — with no fire of his previous character (which is already understated due to Keanu’s style as an actor) I’m a big fan of Keanu Reeves and I really came to see this movie for him, and was sad to see such a lack of enthusiasm or development of Neo.

Story-wise, we pick up with Neo (as Thomas Anderson, his Matrix-world, blue-pill personality) as a game designer who is internationally known — get this — for his game franchise “The Matrix.” Yes, the entire first 3 movies in their entirety and exactness, exist within this world as a video game that Thomas Anderson wrote.

He thinks he wrote it all from his imagination (stay with me) but they are actually repressed memories of his previous life as the real Neo. It’s a bit hard to follow, especially because it sometimes feels like this is a movie about Keanu Reeves as an actor, famous for the Matrix, and not a reprisal of his role in a new trilogy.

What I found ironic is that Thomas Anderson’s company is working on a new game trilogy, a sequel to the Matrix, and we see scenes of his creative team talking about what would be needed in a sequel to have the same impact on the world that the original Matrix had (funny).

They bring up ideas like “challenging people’s perception of reality” and “iconic action sequences” — all true, and clearly meant to communicate to the audience what they want to add to this movie.

Except, none of those elements are actually in the movie. They completely missed the boat. Once the slightly confusing, winks to the audience and original trilogy are over and we get to the “red pill moment” of our main character the film completely collapses as a compelling story or having any sense of high stakes or consequences for failure.

They make Neo and Trinity’s romance from the original trilogy the central theme and motivation of Neo, which was probably the weakest narrative of even the original movies. It’s even more lazy this time around.

If you’re at least hoping for some innovative action sequences or a re-imagining of “bullet time” I have more bad news — nothing but gimmicks and nothing memorable. The final action sequence at the end is downright laughable at it’s total absurdity.

I wish that I could say even one good thing about this movie, as I had every hope of enjoying it even as mostly mindless entertainment. But I honestly cannot think of one redeeming quality as either an action movie, an addition to a franchise, or even as a hard-core Keanu Reeves fan.

Skip this one to send a message to Hollywood that we won’t accept such lazy, worthless sequels. I promise, you will miss nothing here even if you are a huge fan of the series.