Desire and fear, baby.
Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) are dead. There’s no denying this fact. They sacrificed themselves for the salvation of humanity, traveling to a machine city to explain to the source code that Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) had gone far enough rogue to threaten the viability of the entire experiment and thus both of their species. Trinity passed first (but not before seeing the real sun for the first time in generations). Neo went next, his deal for peace with the machines being contingent on fighting Smith to finally earn his Christ-like moment of martyrdom. The Matrix Revolutions thus ended a wildly inconsistent trilogy that never could match the brilliance of its first chapter, the potential for more films within its world left to fate and greed.
One could argue the duo of Reloaded and Revolutions was similarly motivated considering it’s one film’s worth of story stretched into two while stripping the fun, tongue-in-cheek tone away to embrace a self-serious nature that flew straight into unintentional self-parody instead. At least Lilly and Lana Wachowski were still on-board and at the wheel, though. The same couldn’t be said for what transpired at Warner Bros. in the almost two decades since with multiple attempts to cajole the sisters into returning while also recruiting outsiders to take their place when the door appeared closed. And then the stars aligned with Lana agreeing to plug us back in with the help of her Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) and “Sense8” (Aleksandar Hemon) collaborators (Lilly bowed out after giving her blessing).
The question was thus: How? Bringing Neo and Trinity back to life isn’t necessarily a difficult thing to do in a far-off future ruled by machines with technological capabilities beyond our own limitations. For all we knew, the Neo and Trinity we saw in the cryptic trailers were nothing more than coded facsimiles being used in some elaborate game either at the hands of a new machine architect or human council member. With twenty years gone in reality and who knows how many in fiction, The Matrix Resurrections truly had a blank canvas with which to build something wholly new. And yet having Neo and Trinity back at all made it impossible not to wonder “Why?” Because this isn’t just a sequel. It’s also a second chance.
A second chance to bring back the humor. A second chance to extricate heads from asses and realize where the sequels went awry. A second chance to depict love as something more than a motivation for death. There was power in the dynamic shared between Neo and Trinity during The Matrix. It existed between Neo and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) too. These bonds went beyond prophecy and war and inevitability, but all that got lost in the machinations towards some grand gesture that couldn’t help itself from proving little more than a whimper when coupled with the dour severity of miserabilism. So, Lana and company went back to the characters’ roots. They asked themselves why the machines might keep their enemies alive and how it would look.
Cue a meta narrative that folds reality and fantasy in on each other courtesy of Thomas Anderson 2.0 (Reeves). No longer a hacker, this latest version is the world’s most famous game developer after wowing audiences everywhere with his breakthrough trilogy entitled, you guessed it, The Matrix. And now, while he’s still trying to crack an original system to be his follow-up, the suits above his boss (Jonathan Groff) are demanding he go back to what worked instead. Even thinking about that option is triggering for him after a mental break almost ended in suicide a few years back. His therapist (Neil Patrick Harris) has him medicated (blue capsules, of course), but the fractures are returning. Dreams, memories, and déjà vu are mixing and he’s considering jumping again.
Enter Tiffany (Moss), an attractive mother-of-three who frequents Tom’s coffee shop. Can he muster the courage to talk? How about the sudden appearance of a well-dressed, sunglasses-wearing stranger cracking jokes and calling himself Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) during a complete nervous breakdown? And Bugs (Jessica Henwick)? This young woman tells him all the things the characters in his game told Neo as if it were all real. Why wouldn’t Tom assume that he’s certifiably insane? How could anyone circa 2020 believe such nonsense? Our world has been irrevocably changed. They’ll either repress it or spin it into a commoditized entity for mass consumption to make them rich beyond their wildest imagination. Hackers are idealists now, not anarchists. Capitalists see the strings first … and how to exploit them.
It’s time for a new awakening, fresh and familiar with askew rehashes inside secret modules with glitches making everything seem like an insane fabrication. Characters we know and love are back, but with different appearances (some through casting, some due to age). Our own advances in internet and artificial technology become integrated to create more powerful “agents,” easier entrances and exits to and from The Matrix, and avenues able to turn the tables by using that which made Neo “The One” into a prison stripping him of those powers. Not that it will necessarily be enough when you bring the connection shared by Neo and Trinity back into the fold. What was motivation to save humanity is dialed back to push them towards a personal happily ever after.
They deserve it too. The last two movies transformed their love from an organic character trait to a narrative tool. Everyone’s love became that whether it was Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Morpheus or Persephone (Monica Bellucci) and The Merovingian (Lambert Wilson). Lana now massages everything back to its core by throwing out the notion of “The One” in order to remind her characters (and audience) that anything is possible in an artificial world if you’re embolden by the strength of pure emotion. Whether it be love or fear, nothing good (or bad) can happen without the yin and the yang. There’s something to be said about Neo versus Smith in that respect (Resurrections is unfortunately light on their dynamic beyond surface appeal), but also Neo and Trinity.
These two can move mountains together and will do so for the other if need be. But there’s also a level of respect wherein they’ll never force the other into doing that which they aren’t willing to do themselves. A lot of time has passed. Whether this Neo and Trinity are real or copies, they’ve existed apart for decades with experiences that may keep their eyes closed. In a reality more and more prone to manipulation and control, who’s to say anyone would take the red pill? Americans have been voting against their own interests since before this century began—at a certain point you must acknowledge that many of them are choosing to suffer while those they put in power ensure that those who aren’t suffer too.
The new Matrix is thus the same as the old with crucial tweaks pushing humanity into becoming its own oppressive force. It’s the perfect evolution of the concept mirrored by a reality striving for harmony between man and machine in ways that couldn’t work without Neo and Trinity’s actions in Revolutions. The philosophical progression is thus authentic, the choice to leave the rigid notion of destiny behind necessary to invest in the characters surviving this world rather than pretending to care about the world itself. Abdul-Mateen II is a brilliant addition—Morpheus with personality (not a knock on Fishburne, but the earlier writing). Groff brings Weaving’s over-the-top energy to breathe new life into an old friend. And Harris might steal the show as everything The Architect never was.
Does it work as a standalone? Maybe. Maybe not. Few fourth (fifth?) chapters do. You need to know the original trilogy’s story, but also its missteps to understand how good this latest installment is by comparison. A defeated Neo (Reeves is great) adds something to someone who was once a purely optimistic savoir and a contented and autonomous Trinity (Moss is also great) does the same for someone previously utilized as “brute force girlfriend.” Everything on-screen is an improvement on the last two films besides the action—quick cuts and uninspired choreography leave much to be desired on that front. Thankfully, Resurrections doesn’t need such flair to compensate for everything else. It can remain entertaining augmentation for a reborn Neo and Trinity poised to create rather than destroy.
photography:
[1] © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Village Roadshow Films North America Inc. – U.S., Canada, Bahamas and Bermuda © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Village Roadshow Films (BVI) Limited – All Other Territories Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures Caption: (L-r) CARRIE-ANNE MOSS as Trinity and KEANU REEVES as Neo/Thomas Anderson in Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures and Venus Castina Productions’ “THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
[2] © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Village Roadshow Films North America Inc. – U.S., Canada, Bahamas and Bermuda © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Village Roadshow Films (BVI) Limited – All Other Territories Photo Credit: Murray Close Caption: (L-r) YAHYA ABDUL-MATEEN II as Morpheus and JESSICA HENWICK as Bugs in Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures and Venus Castina Productions’ “THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
[3] © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Village Roadshow Films North America Inc. – U.S., Canada, Bahamas and Bermuda © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Village Roadshow Films (BVI) Limited – All Other Territories Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures Caption: (L-r) KEANU REEVES as Neo/ Thomas Anderson and JONATHAN GROFF as Smith in Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures and Venus Castina Productions’ “THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
[4] © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Village Roadshow Films North America Inc. – U.S., Canada, Bahamas and Bermuda © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Village Roadshow Films (BVI) Limited – All Other Territories Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures Caption: NEIL PATRICK HARRIS as The Analyst in Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures and Venus Castina Productions’ “THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.