Review for The Matrix Resurrections

Introduction

I was always going to buy this. The Matrix franchise has been an ongoing process of disappointment. The original 1999 movie was an exercise in perfection, a brilliant and original exploration in cyberpunk that rewrote the rules of action and sci-fi cinema in much the same way that Blade Runner did twenty years prior. The first spin-off, The Animatrix was a pretty decent anthology that bridged the gap between the original movie and the first sequel, although more an exercise in style over substance. But then the sequels happened, and the sinking feeling that came with The Matrix Reloaded was only countered with the hope that the final film in the trilogy would redeem it. When it came, The Matrix Revolutions was even worse. And the experience has gotten even more dispiriting with each re-watch.


Yet the love of the original film holds to this day, to the point that when a fourth Matrix movie was announced, I still got excited. After 18 years, director Lana Wachowski was returning to the franchise, although this time without sister Lilly. You can see in the extras how this become a personal, even cathartic process for the director, and that results in some fundamental differences from the original films, again, reason enough for me to be enthused about the film, and that enthusiasm hasn’t been dented by some disappointing reviews. Here I am, ready to be let down by another Matrix movie...


Thomas Anderson is a famous videogame designer, working for a company that has been surfing the wave of success from the trilogy of games he produced years ago. Now a major movie company is knocking on the door with ideas for a fourth game and movie. Success doesn’t do much for Anderson, despite the woman he’s drawn to in his local cafe. Tiffany is married with children, and has a passion for motorcycles, but she’s drawn to Anderson as well. They never talk to each other though, and it’s understandable given that Anderson has long been struggling with his mental health, and is a suicide survivor.


The game got so popular that he started conflating it with his reality, and started to believe that he was living in a computer simulation. It’s only with the aid of his analyst that he’s been able to restore his grasp on reality. Only now that the company is making a fourth game, the pressure is beginning to distort his perceptions again. But when he encounters a blue-haired girl named Bugs, who sports a tattoo of a rabbit on her shoulder, he starts to realise that he may never have been delusional to begin with.

The Disc

The Matrix Resurrections comes with a 2.40:1 widescreen 1080p transfer with the choice between Dolby Atmos English, DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround Italian, and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround English, English Audio Descriptive, Spanish, Czech and Mandarin, with subtitles in these languages plus Bulgarian, Cantonese, Chinese, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Romanian. There are no nits to pick with the transfer, pixel perfect video and a kicking surround track that makes the most of the action while keeping the dialogue clear. The annoyances will come with the creative choices, and the absence of Don Davis as composer certainly harms the film, leaving it more generic than iconic when it comes to the music. The Matrix Resurrections was also shot digitally, as opposed to the film of the trilogy, and you might not expect that to make a difference at this point, but this film’s version of Bullet Time looks awful, as if it was shot on turn of the millennium digital cameras instead of the latest kit. There’s ghosting and softness, and I thought my TV had suddenly switched itself to soap-opera mode.

Extras

You get one disc in a BD Amaray style case, wrapped in an o-card slipcover. The disc boots to a static menu, albeit with an animated side panel that lists some of the extras, or your audio options if you select the appropriate menu. The following extras are on the disc.


No One Can Be Told What The Matrix Is (8:52)
Resurrecting the Matrix (30:44)
Neo x Trinity: Return to the Matrix (8:16)
Allies + Adversaries: The Matrix Remixed (8:27)
Matrix 4 Life (6:19)
I Still Know Kung-Fu (4:56)
The Matrix Reactions x9 (48:38)

Conclusion

I quite liked The Matrix Resurrections. It’s easily the best film in the franchise since the original, although that could be seen as damning with faint praise. But I can’t argue with the negative reviews that this film got. I liked The Matrix Resurrections despite all the things that it did to disappoint me. Maybe it was because I was expecting it to be terrible that I wound up being pleasantly surprised. That’s no way to live though, expecting everything you watch to be terrible; eventually you’ll just stop watching movies.


I’ve tried to be circumspect with the film synopsis above, although given what fans will obviously know from the original trilogy, it’s only minutiae of plot that can be spoiled at this point, certainly not the whole movie itself. It is a Matrix movie, the nature of reality is questioned, there are gunfights, there are explosions, and there is kung-fu, and given years of John Wick sequels, Keanu Reeves is still in good enough shape to make it look really good. But the stylised, hyper-choreographed wire-fu of the original trilogy is gone, replaced with something rougher and more improvised, and that feels like a loss. No Yuen Woo-ping on this one. I also feel the absence of Don Davis when it comes to the music.


They’ve taken a different approach to the effects, with a lot more in the way of on location filming, a lot more natural light, so this iteration of the Matrix looks ‘more realistic’ than the original film, but the effects are variable, especially the new bullet time. But given 20 years of effects movies, and comic book movies, and sci-fi movies, there’s nothing in this film that blows you away in the way the original Matrix bullet time did, or the highway chase in Reloaded did, or the battle with the Merovingian’s goons in Revolutions did. There’s a rematch with the Merovingian in this film, and it’s the weakest action sequence in this movie.


I also find that this film refers to the original trilogy a little too much, to the point of tedium. There is a sight too many flashbacks and reminders of the original trilogy. Given the nature of the story, especially in the first act, it’s understandable, and when it’s in universe, it makes sense. But too often the film just throws in a flashback for the sake of it. We’ve seen the original trilogy, many of us have re-watched it just before watching this film. We don’t need the reminders.


Having said all of that, the strongest aspect of the film is that which I expected to fall flat straight off, the meta-fiction nature of the story in the first act. They finally implement the idea of layers within the Matrix, which brings forth a very interesting change in the Morpheus character. Thomas Anderson now lives in reality where The Matrix exists as an entertainment property, “our universe” for want of a better description, and this allows Lana Wachowski full rein to comment on the entertainment industry, and on human nature in general. Companies want to milk franchises beyond their creative lifetimes for that extra dollar, and care little for the welfare of the creators whose ideas they rely on. And people prefer fiction to reality; they want comfortable lies instead of painful truths. We all live in a Matrix of our own making. Okay, the film takes the meta element too far with a goofy and infantile post credits sting, but in the film itself, this aspect of the story is its strong suit.


It really should have taken up more of the film, the philosophical ‘action’ in this film is stronger than its kung-fu. Alas we’re back to normal service far too soon, the Matrix and the real world that we have come to expect, although the story does develop naturally from where Revolutions ends. We get to see the world that developed after that film, and it’s satisfying for fans (it’s nowhere near as annoying as the non-existent story between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, which just left fans asking questions).


Given where the story is at this point, this Matrix movie is not some epic battle for the fate of the world. Instead, it allows the Neo Trinity love story to have greater agency in the narrative, and that makes it a much better film, really holding the attention and getting the audience more emotionally invested.


The Blu-ray is as you would expect in terms of technical quality, but when you come down to it, The Matrix Resurrections is a wholly unnecessary sequel, just as the first two sequels were. It is the best sequel though, and it contrives a happy ending for fans that might have thought the ending of Revolutions was too bleak. But you know what? Maybe we need more happy endings.