Summary
A reboot with a foot in each camp plays like the greatest hits of the franchise while being unsure of its place in this brave new world.
In a year filled with nostalgic reboots, Lana Wachowski has quite literally set out to redefine that term. The latest film in the franchise harks right back to the original film in 1999, a year when Fight Club and The Phantom Menace polarised audiences for very different reasons. Now, eighteen years after The Matrix Revolutions, Wachowski presents something that is both a continuation and a reimagining of the original story.
Indeed, the opening scene of THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS is an almost shot-perfect replica of The Matrix’s cold open. As a representation of Trinity battles Agents, Bugs (Jessica Henwick) notices that old code is being used to send a message. It coincides with the appearance of a figure claiming to be Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Both share stories of having their eyes opened by a glimpse the long lost Neo (Keanu Reeves).
As the story slowly unfolds, it emerges that his alter ego Thomas Anderson is now working for a video game company, where he is the award-winning designer of a trilogy of Matrix games that mirror his past adventures. Retaining only dim memories of his former life, he is a suicide survivor who sees therapist (Neil Patrick Harris) to help him deal with an apparent mental illness. Yet when he meets Tiffany (Carrie Ann Moss), now married with children, an old connection reignites.
Lana Wachowski, working solo here due to Lilly Wachowski’s involvement with Showtime’s Work in Progress, appears to be stuck in a Matrix of her own. With co-writers David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) and Aleksandar Hemon, she attempts to examine what The Matrix has become in the last two decades. Multiple in-jokes about “our beloved parent company Warner Bros.” and the corporate nature of reboots at least acknowledges what they’ve got themselves into. It’s kind of like when Chuck Palahniuk revisited Fight Club and found himself incorporating fan and film canon into his metatextual graphic novel. After all, The Matrix been parodied in everything from Shrek to Space Jam 2, and recognising the role of the film in the pop cultural landscape is a clever move on Wachowski’s part.
So, it’s a shame that once this genuinely intriguing setup unfurls, THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS immediately falls back on old constructs. Although it acknowledges the ambiguous ending of The Matrix Revolutions, and resolves the presence of characters who apparently died in that film, many of the set-pieces follow the same path as the original. Neo still knows kung fu, there’s another Smith (this time Jonathan Groff) on his tail, and even a rooftop helicopter escape. Cinematographers Daniele Massaccesi and John Toll frame these shots with deliberate tips of the hat to Bill Pope’s 1999 photography, often replicating them wholesale.
Which isn’t to say that these sequences can’t be cool, as there’s a certain pleasure in returning to this world. The canonical video games notwithstanding, the universe that the Wachowskis created has always been ripe for further exploration – especially in an era where the lines between reality and fiction have become mainstream political discourse. Yet if you now consider the simultaneously shot Reloaded and Revolutions as the middle chapters of the overall narrative – ones that hold up remarkably well in retrospect – then RESURRECTIONS is an ersatz coda to a story that already ended.
There’s a scene where a group of game designers sit around trying to pitch each other ideas for the in-universe sequel, caught as they are in a cynical cycle of commercialism. The moment is meant to be satire, but it’s something of a microcosm of the whole reboot. Here is a film that still feels like it is workshopping ideas as the end credits roll, unsure why it exists but also determined to give the people what they think they want. So, in a way we really do get to experience exactly what it’s like being jacked into the Matrix.
2021 | USA | DIRECTOR: Lana Wachowski | WRITERS: Lana Wachowski, David Mitchell, Aleksandar Hemon | CAST: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Jada Pinkett Smith | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures/Warner Bros. (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 148 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 25 December 2021 (AUS)
