Before The Matrix Resurrections started playing in Nashville or on HBO Max, there were pieces of opinions on the film. Messages poured in before the film stream started, besides the different reviews from cities where critics could watch the movie before its HBO Max/theatrical release. The films of The Wachowskis have long been about not only refuting the notion of humanity but also showing that its reaction to art is monolithic. Therefore, it is obvious that the new Matrix sequel would emphasize that. It is Lilly Wachowski’s first film without her sister Lana. She has made a sincere, bright and maddening film that will polarize opinions.
According to some internet memes, it is to Lana Wachowski what New Nightmare was to Wes Craven. Other memes compared it to Rob Zombie’s film Halloween II and Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It is worth noting that the comparisons were made from a business point of view rather than a cinematic viewpoint.
A good part of the movie plays out as a metatextual experience allowing for the feat of extending the tale in unexpected paths as well as talking nonsense about surreal and real situations. The audience of a certain vintage may find it satisfying.
Keanu Reeves’ video games developer Thomas Anderson has been depending on his successful Matrix game as a source of income. The game has given him not only fame and fans but also unyielding attention from the public. Anderson does not tell his enemy and friend that a case of losing touch with reality caused the alternative world that he envisioned. He talks about his weakening sense of reality only to his therapist, Neil Patrick Harris’ The Analyst.
The Neil Patrick Harris character gets to wear the kind of glasses that let the audience know that the film has a cool set of accessories. In terms of the cool quotient, Morpheus 2.0 is also a formidably impressive person. The Analyst puts Anderson on a range of pills and makes him do many different mental exercises for better health when the latter clings to stasis. That is until Warner Bros., the corporate overlords of Anderson’s company Deus Machina, decide that it wants a sequel to The Matrix to build on the trilogy, without or with his involvement.
The Anderson character is following a path that would collide or conflict with destiny if it continues unchanged. Then, everything starts to become weird for him. From the start of the movie, we know that a new generation of people is infiltrating the alternate reality that is created with the help of computers. The start of the movie is an improvisation on the opening sequence of the 1999 Matrix film. There are characters in the movie who know the tales of Trinity, The Oracle, Morpheus, Neo and so forth. Therefore, the movie does the obligatory task of dealing with how that new generation processes past texts. It is obligatory for this legacy sequel.
The plot of the film is slightly labyrinthine. With the help of her writers Aleksandar Hemon and David Mitchell, Lana Wachowski explains why different actors play some characters now, why The Matrix parameters have shifted, and why dead people live in the movie well. The Matrix from The Wachowskis made an impact thanks to its conceptual rigor, quality characters and visuals rather than narrative innovation or clarity. It is a fact that Many viewers regard David Cronenberg’s Existenz as a better science-fiction film of 1999 than The Matrix. The early portions of The Matrix Trilogy have some subtle and good acknowledgements of the above-mentioned fact.
Some sweatier beats in the story slide away with no derailing things in the new Matrix sequel. If anything, one wishes everything had veered into the fully-developed operatic space of The Wachowskis’ film Jupiter Ascending to a greater extent.
Actor Carrie-Anne Moss is the best performer in the movie. Moss used wigs in the 1999 film that led her to roles in numerous movies that had little idea how to use her skills or unique presence. Moss makes the movie feel alive as she brings out the kinds of emotions that mainstream cinema usually downplays or ignores. Thus, she makes a franchise that seems consigned to its past interesting.
Emotions have been a distinctive feature of Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s cinema for a long time now, and The Matrix Resurrections is no exception. Many recent films have all kinds of phenomena, creatures and visions. Take Meryl Streep as a US President in the latest Adam McKay satire Don’t Look Up, for instance. The character of Streep gets an arc that will shock you to bits if you watch the whole movie. However, those cinematic experiences pale in comparison to watching iconic singer and actor Telma Hopkins play a scientist in The Matrix Resurrections.