In 2021, we were largely defined by our past. Instead of a year benchmarked by new industry advancements, pop culture moments, or even cable news headlines, in 2021, what was old became new again. Whether we’re discussing a new wave of COVID, gossiping about Bennifer, or watching Spider-Men of yesteryear swing on screen, it’s hard not to look around and wonder: Am I experiencing déjà vu?
After this mindfuck of a year, it only feels fitting that we close out the film side of things not with the simple joys of resurrecting comic book characters, but with the more mind-bending and existential experience of wrestling with a revisit to The Matrix.
A Strange New World
If you weren’t there in 1999, chances are you’ve still felt the pop culture reverberations of the original film and is predecessors, which haven’t been revived on the big screen since the final two chapters of the trilogy in 2003. 18 years later, The Matrix Resurrections is here. And, appropriately, it’s all about balancing opposites. Whether that dichotomy is fan service vs. innovation, self-awareness vs. self-indulgence, or corporate greed vs. profundity, The Matrix Resurrections displays an intensely appropriate level of duality, one that is likely to generate a similar level of mixed reactions from its viewers.
Instead of pulling us into the past, The Matrix Resurrections pulls itself forward into our own timeline. Set in present day, Resurrections sees Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) living his life as a video game designer in a hip corner of San Francisco. He’s a modern-day everyman: he goes to work, gets depressed, sees a therapist, overpays for coffee, looks for life’s greater meaning. He also blushingly attempts to work up the courage to talk to a woman named Tiffany (Carrie-Anne Moss), to whom you’ll be unsurprised to learn he is mysteriously drawn. His life turns upside-down when Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Matteen II) and Bugs (Jessica Henwick) show up at his work to tell him his life is a lie, forcing Anderson to decide if his video game fantasies are reality or if his fantasies are taking control of his world.
Anderson’s world looks a lot like ours, to the point that it even has its own version of The Matrix in pop culture. That mirrored reality, which gets incredibly self-referential, makes it even easier to identify with Anderson’s plight to identify and hold onto truth. Put plainly: The Matrix Resurrections forces you to reckon with its existence in a way that borders on difficult. Writer and director Lana Wachowski has put off returning to the franchise for years, and her co-creating sister Lilly Wachowski chose not to return at all. Both have stated in the past that there wouldn’t be a 4th film. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that meta-commentary in the first half of the film suggests, even as we screen the final product, that Lana had mixed feelings about delving back into the world again.
But no risk, no reward. I haven’t engaged with media this much since watching Twin Peaks: The Return.
The Illusion of Choice
Resurrections is a tale of two films, from a couple of angles. First, from a plot point: I had an easier time digesting the story components of Resurrections when I viewed it as two stories sewn together. The first half is the story of Anderson/Neo making a choice about his reality, and the second is the story of Tiffany/Trinity making a choice about hers. That first film delves into what feels like new territory for the franchise, introducing a level of meta commentary that makes you wonder if you’re even supposed to want a 4th Matrix film at all. But the second half, Trinity’s half, finds the grooves of what made the first film work so well and rehashes them with just enough flourishes to make it all feel new again, sans guilty pleasure.
From a point of purpose, there are again two films to digest here. The first is a non-stop nostalgia fest. Resurrections doesn’t hold back when it comes to revisiting the beats of the first film. Neo utters “I still know Kung Fu,” a line that reeks of cash-grab sequel schlock, while scenes from the first film literally play out on the screen to conjure warm and fuzzy memories of what came before. But a second film winks at you from beneath that slick veneer, pontificating about the way we receive information and how it controls us, among other things.
In a way, it’s frustrating. Can you have your cake and eat it too? Can you be a massive commercial vessel, one created with the intent of lining the pocket of Hollywood heavyweights and big wigs, and also be that Cool Kid everyone knows who waxes poetic about rejecting capitalism? I want to say no, on first blush, but based on this year’s box office receipts, I’m inclined to say this is the only path left to us. The choice between focus-tested feel-goodery and uncharted creativity is a false one on the blockbuster front. So maybe you take the next-best thing: something new wrapped up in an old package.
Love is Patient
However complex my feelings on what Resurrections is or isn’t, one thing I know for sure: Resurrections is a love story at its core. This could be said about all Matrix films that came before it, but the biggest difference for me is that this is the first time I felt palpable chemistry between Neo and Trinity. The first film pushed love as destiny, and the second and third pinned the love story on a physical chemistry I never really felt between the two. But this time you feel two old lovers and friends reuniting after years apart, and it just works. Maybe Reeves is a better actor now, maybe it’s that they really are reuniting off-screen after all these years, or maybe I’ve just seen them together enough to finally get it. But for whatever the reason, the core relationship that has tried to tie every film together finally came together for me, here, at the end.
That said, for all its complexities and intricacies and layers that I’m so excited to explore again, the dense nature of Resurrections also creates some glaring messiness. On the superficial nostalgia-fest level: I wish I understood why Laurence Fishburne wasn’t asked back. Abdul-Matteen never gives a bad performance, and he doesn’t here. But his presence only makes the lack of Fishburne all the more glaring.
On the less superficial level: The first Matrix film felt tight-lipped. Other than explaining the clear rules of the world and the game, the commentary was a straightforward show, don’t tell. The second and third films were a mixture of show-and-tell. If this newest entry has any weakness, it’s that it’s a lot of tell-and-tell. Lots of exposition, monologues, and information delivered rapid-fire, some of which feels like it could have been more deftly shown on screen instead of discussed by characters. Unlike the first film that showed you the state of the world with its action, Resurrections chats about the state of the world and then has separate, unrelated action beats. There’s action, and there’s talking. Because that chatty delivery mechanism is so dense and hard to sort out, I left wondering about the rules of the world and what forces were even at odds with each other in the bigger picture sense.
Still, all told, there are worse things to feel when leaving a movie theater than: I need to see it again. I’m excited to see what unfolds in second and third viewings of Resurrections. After a litany of same-y Disney fare, it feels both natural and bizarre that this Warner Bros. blockbuster behemoth could serve as a measure of hope for the monopolized and grim future of filmmaking, but here we are.