“The Matrix” (1999) was, arguably, the most representative film of the year that ended the previous millennium. A rich mix of Wushia and anime movies (“The Wind in the Shell” by Mamuro Oshi is looted to the end) with computer games. Echoes of philosophical discussions from Plato’s cave administration to Jean Baudrillard’s simulacra. Religious references centered on “classical” Christian symbolism, but also Gnosticism and Buddhism. And if that’s not enough, and it’s really more than enough, congestion can offer (trending) readings that match interpretation according to the values of far-right forums (discussion groups of the “red pill”), and interpretations that belong to the other side of the scale – of queer reading retroactively supported by creators To the sisters Lily and Anna Wachowski. “The Matrix” is not a movie, but a Rorschach stain cooked all night on a wick.
“The Matrix: The Resurrection” – Trailer
This congestion is packaged in a sparkling and seductive shell of a simulation experienced as an alternate reality, with impressive dress and set design characteristics, an exciting space / time experience (the “bullet time” effect played quickly), the ability to acquire skills and powers, and a transformation that makes Neo the superhero Of cyberspace. The film not only enjoyed tremendous economic success, but also an iconic cultural status.
In 2003, the two sequels “Matrix Reloaded” and “Matrix Revolutions” were released, which made the plot too complicated for a large part of the viewers. Is it the viewers’ fault that the “architect”‘s monologue (a kind of male-rational side of the software that created the Matrix) was incoherent? In response to Neo’s question “Why am I here?” The Architect’s answer comes: “Your life is the rest of the equation with an inherent imbalance in the Matrix software. You are the inevitable anomaly which, despite my most sincere efforts, I have not been able to hide from what it is, beyond that, a harmony of mathematical accuracy.” Oh ok. That was the moment the trilogy stopped with a squeak of the brakes.
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Effects with the qualities of a film club in a community center. From “The Matrix: The Revival”
(Photo: .WARNER BROS)
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Gained iconic cultural status. From The Matrix (1999)
(Screenshot)
One can try to understand the intentions of the creators. The encounter with the architect was an attempt to eat the intellectual cake and leave it intact. To undermine the “one” scheme that Neo played in the first film for a more subversive cyberpunk idea about the way to achieve reconciliation between humans and technology. But even if we take seriously the pretensions of the Wachowski sisters, it is hard not to admit that the balance between pretension and the sensory pleasures of the blockbuster has been disturbed. There are those who kept faith in the two sequels, or at least in the invested action scenes that were in them, but the consensus is that the second film was disappointing, and the third was a failure. The Innocent Man would have guessed that this was the end of the trilogy (and Neo died at the end of the third film to allow for the reconciliation between man and machine). But time dulls memory, and an uninitiated spiritual asset is a disgrace in the balance sheets of the contemporary Hollywood studio.
In the face of the icons of the “Matrix” the continuation of the career of the Wachowski sisters is nothing more than a pale shadow. Every project they did since then had fans (maybe, even, of the grotesque “Jupiter’s Rise”) but they were always in the minority. The Wachaski can not be taken away from the ambition and attempt to create originality (or a decent mix of previous heterogeneous sources of influence), but they never came close to recreating the alchemy of the simple-sophisticated that was in The Matrix. The pressures to create a fourth part have not gone away. The sworn fans on the one hand, and the Warner Bros. studios on the other – but the sisters stood their ground. Now all that changed when Lana decided to co-write with the duo of writers David Mitchell (who wrote “Cloud Atlas”) and Alexander Hamon the script for “The Matrix Resurrections”. Lana directed and this time, and precedent-setting, without the involvement of her sister Lily.
Why go back to the Matrix? There are several possible answers to this. The positive possibility is to believe that there are important ideas that can be expressed through the characters and ideas that have been established in previous films. Yet 18 years have passed since the second and third parts of the series, and in those years far-reaching technological changes have taken place, making most of us voluntarily enslaved to the matrix of social media. Human batteries on whose life images Facebook’s algorithm system makes a round.
The second option is a production made with a gun to the temple. Whether Warner Studios reminded the nurses that with all due respect the rights to the series belong to society and not to them (an idea actually mentioned in the film itself), or after a streak of failures and disappointments, the sisters’ determined stance against returning to the Matrix was undermined by one of them. After all, it has been proven time and time again from the recent Star Wars trilogy, through retrospective elements in superhero movies like The Last Spider-Man, movies like “Demon Mowers: The Life After,” or “Bill and Ted in the Rhythm of Music” – the past is not dead. Characters return in their aging (or digitally rejuvenated) form. If it has an audience, then the nostalgia gland needs to be milked with desperate aggression.
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Unsuccessful attempt to milk the nostalgia gland to the end. From “The Matrix: The Resurrection”
(Photo: WARNER BROS.)
And maybe, and this is the interpretation I offer, these are the two things together. Lana has something important to say (at least in her perception), and this has to do with the very non-death of the Matrix trilogy in the world of media technology corporations. This is the basis for an attempt to give validity to the self-reference of the series through a meta-matrix, and at the same time an attempt to destroy it. While this may sound a bit conspiratorial, in light of the result I suspect Lana’s intention was to make a film so bad that the spiritual asset would continue to accumulate pixel dust for many more years.
The visual elements, surely the thing that interests most viewers, are a complete disappointment. I watched it in optimal conditions (IMAX) and it was still far from convincing. There is no new “bullet time”, and moreover, it seems that the previous films had more impressive and more polished effects. As I write these lines, less than 24 hours after watching, I have to make an effort to recall an action scene that left a mark. I do remember long minutes in which I was appalled by the poor quality of digital photography, by a particularly sloppy slow-motion effect, and by the use of a green screen reminiscent of the qualities of a community center cinema circle.
In terms of plot, there are too many details that can not be revealed. In short, as can be understood from the trailer, Keanu Reeves, in his older version, is “Thomas” – a depressed computer game creator who in his youth created a groundbreaking game called “The Matrix”, and whose plot is, in fact, the plot of the trilogy. His partner / employer is Smith (Jonathan Groff replacing Hugo Weaving) and it’s clearly a small part of a system whose job it is to leave Thomas’ forced identity behind which we all know who is hiding.
Thomas’ past has been a mental breakdown and suicide attempt, and he continues to regularly swallow blue pills. He regularly visits a psychologist played, rather annoyingly, by Neil Patrick Harris, and whose true identity will also be revealed during the film. Aside from the sense of disconnection from reality, and the vague and unresolved sense of lack, the thing that bothers Thomas the most is Warner’s intention, to which the computer games company belongs, to develop a new Matrix game. Thus the film holds a meta-cinematic discussion of the elements in the spiritual asset “The Matrix Trilogy,” alongside a techno-mythical plot that deals with the purpose of Neo’s return, and its necessary connection to reunion with Trinity (Kerry-Ann Moss).
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It is better to be silent already. From “The Matrix: The Resurrection”
(Photo: .WARNER BROS)
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“The New Morpheus.” From “The Matrix: The Resurrection”
(Photo: .WARNER BROS)
The analysis of all the layers that try to work together in a film requires a lot of space, time and patience to get down to the details. Thomas Yuval returns to the Matrix by a new “Morpheus” (Yaya Abdul-Matin II), along with the energetic “Bugs” (Jessica Hanwick). Alice’s Rabbit in Wonderland is connected to Bugs Bunny. The layers and referrals in which the film is flooded.
There is quite a bit to say about the film, but it is depressing how unwilling it is to do so. It seems like another attempt to produce something with real content, conceptual subversion, anti-blockbuster within a blockbuster. But it seems to mostly prove that if there’s one thing worse than a movie that’s an exploitative stunt of nostalgia, it’s a movie that tries to simultaneously be a critique of that type of movie, and still provide similar pleasures in reverse on an unsuccessful upside.
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