The Matrix Resurrections

The Doctor’s Diagnosis: D

               The Matrix Resurrections is almost impressive in its pointlessness. At this point, I’m running on fumes when it comes to expressing my frustration with the modern obsession with nostalgia and my only hope is that this movie will be the jumping-the-shark moment for this cinematic wave of redundancy. Who the fuck wanted this movie? The original Matrix is a classic and one of the defining films of its era, for better or worse. Both sequels are hot garbage and the public’s interest in the franchise (which never should have been a franchise) was waning by the time that The Matrix Revolutions was released in frigging 2003. I was in high school the last time that a Matrix move was released, for fuck’s sake. Those two sequels were pointless, so you bet your ass that a fourth movie made 18 years later screams of nothing but corporate suits desperately trying to wring one last dollar out of a dead intellectual property. Resurrections is a boring, redundant, soulless film that serves as nothing but an unnecessary epilogue to a story that had already gone on for way too long.

               On the bright side, if you like the original Matrix, then you will get pretty much the same exact story in Resurrections. Going into the film, I wasn’t sure if Resurrections was a remake, a reboot or a sequel and the answer is….yes. Yes, it is somehow all of those things, but in the least interesting way possible. We open with the revelation that Thomas Anderson is now a video game designer and his most famous creation is a trilogy of games called The Matrix. But Mr. Anderson is haunted by suspicions that his games aren’t just games, but actual memories and that The Matrix is real. He’s right, of course, and (through a convoluted series of events that bear a striking resemblance to the first movie) discovers that he’s living in a rebooted version of the Matrix.

               The most striking thing about Resurrections is its mind-numbing recreation of the first movie. Beat-for-beat, point-for-point, the plot is just a self-aware recreation of the original. Thomas Anderson must be dragged out of his corporate job and made to believe that he’s living in a simulation, he meets the rest of the human rebellion, he becomes the prophesized Neo, his powers become humanity’s great hope, etc. The movie even ends with the same frigging shot as the original. I thought that no line would get a louder groan out of me in 2021 than “I’m something of a scientist, myself” but “I still know kung fu” managed to do it. Much like Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Resurrections is basically just a remake masquerading as a sequel, simultaneously reminding you both of how soulless modern cinema has become and how much you would rather be watching the original instead.

               The one bright spot is that the movie is aware of how unnecessary it is. In the film’s only amusing sequence, Anderson is told that Warner Bros. is demanding a sequel to his original trilogy of games and that they will do it without him if he refuses to participate. Then we get some scenes of executives discussing everything that needs to be included in such a sequel (“we need bullet time!”). I find it somewhat endearing for a film to openly mock its own existence and acknowledge that it is only a product of creative bankruptcy and greed. While I normally don’t like anything meta, there is an earnestness to that. It sucks and shouldn’t exist, but it knows that it sucks and shouldn’t exist. I can oddly kind of respect that.

               I’m not going to go deep into plot details or the lore of the series because 1. It would take too long and 2. I’m not sure that I really understand it. However, Resurrections struggles with one of my biggest issues with the original trilogy: the plot never goes anywhere. Despite all of the battles and convoluted explanations in the original trilogy, there isn’t any payoff. The story concluded with the Matrix being rebooted and humanity basically being in the same boat as it was at the beginning of the first movie. It felt pointless and anti-climactic. Resurrections tries to give some sort of validation for that ending (something about some of the robots being inspired to help humanity at the end of the third movie), but it ultimately amounts to very little. The mere continued existence of the Matrix in this film proves that nothing has been accomplished prior and nothing is accomplished in this movie either. While the third movie basically brought us back to the beginning of the first movie, Resurrections essentially ends in the same place that the first movie ended. This series never fucking goes anywhere, it just recycles itself with minor differences. Either save humanity or destroy it, I don’t even care anymore. Just fucking do something, anything, that would lead this narrative to anything resembling a goddamn conclusion.

               This movie just kind of made me sad because it oddly made me reflect on life. The original Matrix was released when I was fifteen. I actually went on my first date seeing The Matrix Reloaded (and I was so nervous that I got us to the theater so early that the previous screening was still ending and I wanted to crawl into a hole and die). But, at that time, I thought that the narrative would make sense and go somewhere. Now, in my late 30s, I’m cynical and realize that life is an endless cycle of drudgery and you need to just cling to the few people and things that bring you joy while you wait for the machines to finally kill you. That’s The Matrix Resurrections. I’m going to have a beer now.

Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_Resurrections#/media/File:The_Matrix_Resurrections.jpg