The Matrix Resurrections – What It Is (And Is Not)

Though not a hardcore fan, I still caught the new installation of the Matrix trilogy on its first weekend of premiere. Some said The Matrix Resurrections arrived 20 years too late. Others said it might as well not be made. For me, whether or not one loves the movie depends a lot on who we are and what we’re expecting.

Diverse Fans

If you’re able to start a conversation about The Matrix trilogy with anyone who claims that he’s a Matrix fan, you’d be surprised how the conversation would be different from fan to fan.

The entire trilogy was everything: cutting edge CGI, awesome cinematography, jaw dropping fight scenes, commentary on philosophies and religions… and the list goes on. Fact is, The Matrix trilogy cuts across many genres. It was precisely why it captured so many hearts. But ask anybody why he liked the trilogy, the reason would most likely be just one or a few aspects mentioned above.

In the original trilogy, deep conversations about choice, options were had. Religious references were uncovered. Fight scenes had since been imitated and improved upon.

People who loved the original Matrix trilogy loved it for being the start of it all. It was an emotional attitude towards the trilogy. If you ask them to rate which movie has the best action sequences or most thought provoking scripts, their answer will most likely not be The Matrix.

Therefore, it’s unlikely a 4th Matrix would invoke such a vast reaction as that of the original film.

People who loved the original Matrix trilogy loved it for being the start of it all.

Generation Gap

It’s very revealing when one says, “I’m a Matrix fan.”  The current generation is so “well fed” with entertainment that it’s unlikely that they would have watched a 20 year old movie. Conversely, the youngest lot of us who watched, understood and loved the original movie would have been in our late 30s.

The reason why we loved it was because the original Matrix re-defined action sci-fi films. Imagine the greatest hits before that were either a 3-hour slow paced Titanic or the senseless explosions that is Die Hard. We lived to see a great shift, so we knew such a thing was possible, which made us look forward to see if The Matrix Resurrections would do the same.

On the other hand, if you belong to the generation that grew up after The Matrix trilogy, you would have grown up watching the results of the changes brought about by the trilogy, starting from Shrek. You would have no expectations for the next Matrix film. Granted, cinematics and CGI had improved so much over the past 20 years that it’s impossible for any film, a Matrix sequel or not, to surpass.

One who didn’t watch The Matrix back when movies sucked will find it hard to appreciate this new installment 

What The Matrix Resurrections Is NOT

This addresses the biggest elephant in the room: The Matrix Resurrections is not another movie that will transform the movie industry like how the original Matrix did.

True enough, the original Matrix set off a whole new style of cinematography and CGI manipulation. It was so successful that the next 2 sequels, despite higher budgets, tighter storytelling and more intense action scenes, ended up as a great disappointment.

Yes, had The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions existed before The Matrix, they would have been hailed as classics.

It was one of the reasons that the Wachowski sisters refused to film another sequel (a topic that was re-visited in The Matrix Resurrections). Therefore, a sequel will not aim to surpass the original Matrix (though fans would not lose out on their fair share of intense action sequences). Instead, the 4th movie is meant to be a closure for fans.

The Matrix Resurrections is a Closure for Fans

A major theme that ran through The Matrix Resurrections was anguish – of desire and the pain of not fulfilling the desire. This was exactly what many Matrix fans felt after the last 2 movies of the Matrix trilogy premiered. This was exactly why there was so much longing for a 4th Matrix movie.

To me, The Matrix Resurrections did just that: to provide closures to fans who were disappointed 20 years ago.

One would have noticed that there was a disproportionate amount of time, compared to the previous installments, spent on one-to-one dialogues. Lana Wachowski had made use of such dialogues to speak specifically to fans – if you get it, you get it.

The most poignant dialogue was between Neo and Tiffany near the end of the movie. Neo was trying to convince Tiffany to leave the Matrix, without telling her that she was in the Matrix and that she was in fact Trinity.

Tiffany described the familiarity she felt with regards to The Matrix, and how she had longed for an answer during the 20 years after The Matrix’s success.

Neo agreed with Tiffany, and replied how difficult it was for him to return to The Matrix, for personal reasons and for fear that The Matrix would no longer meet the expectations of fans.

Tiffany had assumed the role of Matrix fans while Lana was Neo. And yes, (spoiler ahead) The Matrix that they were referring to was The Matrix game that was developed by Neo’s character 20 years ago while he was trapped in the new version of Matrix. (Talk about Matrix-ception!)

The Matrix Resurrections is a personal conversation from Lana Wachowski to Matrix fans who had looked forward to a Matrix sequel in the past 20 years.

The Matrix Resurrections is an Updated Commentary on the State of Current Affairs

The Matrix Resurrections talked about a Matrix within a Matrix. The infiltration of social media (and the consequential social commentary) also took the same form in the movie. 

Like when Neo’s team was brainstorming for the sequel to their successful Matrix game – their commentary about past success and what the next installment should be was a reflection of the online chatter that took place for the past 20 years regarding the Matrix trilogy and a possible successor movie.

Or the showdown in the garage between Neo’s entourage (the “Gen Z”) and Merovingian’s exiles (the “Boomers”) – Merovingian added to the effect by babbling away (like a Boomer) on how the new Matrix had abandoned the “good old times”. At the same time, the exiles had hoped to kill Neo, so as to force the Machines to revert to the older version of Matrix where they enjoyed life as it was.

The 2 most memorable commentaries that struck a chord in me were the ones involving Niobe.

Niobe talked about how war had desensitised all parties to the extent that they only cared about the destruction of whoever was not aligned with their own beliefs – very much like the polarised society we are in today. She believed that peace was the only way to improve the quality of living, a belief that was justified by her success in building Io.

Shortly after, Niobe had an altercation with Bugs, the latter of whom expressed her disdain with Niobe for only “caring to grow fruits” than to save humankind. We see many of such debates in public these days, with either camp being right in their own way. On one hand, we have to start tackling climate change. On the other, we have to make sure we don’t wreck whatever we have created already, losing quality of life while we save the earth. The recent string of massive blackouts resulting from trying to move away from fossil fuels without a reliable alternate source of renewable energy is one negative example of such a dilemma.

The Matrix Resurrections is a sequel to tell Matrix fanboys to stop clinging on to the past and to move on.

The Matrix Resurrections is an Exploration of Human Emotions

The most striking element of The Matrix Resurrections was that of love – love between Neo and Trinity. As we learned from the Analyst, the entire new version of Matrix was reliant on their love. In turn, Trinity was revived because of Neo’s love for her. This was a continuation of The Matrix Reloaded, when Neo chose Trinity over returning to the Source, because of his love for Trinity.

Beneath the love, also as revealed by the Analyst, were the emotions of anguish, which was a result of desire for something and the fear of losing what we have now in order to pursue what we desire. 

There were also plenty of acts spent on discussing nostalgia. The scenes where Neo’s team was brainstorming on the new Matrix game was one. The Merovingian fight scene was another. Bugs bringing Neo to meet Morpheus by entering the stage through a split screen where an old footage of The Matrix was projected on was of course the most iconic. Morpheus explained that invoking nostalgia will help one to move on. I was quite certain that these scenes were Lana Wachowski’s way of telling the Matrix fanboys to stop clinging on to the past and move on!

Of course, the Analyst’s revelation that he kept the Matrix powered by making Neo and Trinity miserable was telling of how consumers were hooked on capitalism through the manipulation of their emotions. In fact, he observed that humans chose emotions over reality and facts. He reiterated this notion at the end of the film, by telling Neo and Trinity that the other humans wanted status quo and didn’t want to leave the Matrix (sort of ironic, since I mentioned that Lana had tried to tell Matrix fanboys to let go, but she knew they won’t).

Parting Words

We are just a week into the premiere of The Matrix Resurrections. Already, the reviews were mixed. Somehow, the positive reviews I heard were from the fanboys (or those who were familiar with the Matrix trilogy) and the negative ones were from those who vaguely remembered the trilogy, and were expecting the 4th installment to be an action film similar to the DC/Marvel movies that we had grown to be familiar with in the past decade.

20 years ago, The Matrix brought people of diverse interests together to marvel at a movie that broke new grounds. Today, the movie proved that it is not possible to get a diverse group of people to agree with each other all the time. Where the Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions were attempting to tie loose ends of the original Matrix (and of course to milk the franchise), The Matrix Resurrections is meant to tell us outright that the first Matrix will never be removed from its legacy status. Not by other movies, and not by its own sequel.

The cleverest thing was that The Matrix Resurrections itself had incorporated this notion, along with other commentary on the trilogy, the current state of affairs and how, despite our advancement and love for technology, we’re continually sucked into the vicious cycle that it brings.

I believe that like the original movie, The Matrix Resurrections will continue to spark debates as fans and critics dig deeper and uncover more hidden references in the movie. Only time will tell if this movie is a success, just as how it took us 20 years and 4 movies to be convinced that the original Matrix can never be surpassed.