Name: Movie Review: The Matrix Resurrections
Item: The Matrix Resurrections
Author: @chekohler

2021 has been a funny old year for movies; literally, nothing that came out this year was worth watching, and it just seems like Hollywood is on its last legs. 2021 is the year where we took trilogies of yesteryear and gave it an unnecessary fourth one—Ghostbusters, Candyman, and now, of course, the beloved Matrix.

Now I am a huge fan of the Matrix; I went into the cinema in 99 not knowing anything about it, only going on a friend's recommendation, we were about ten boys in the cinema and our minds were completely blown.

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The Matrix was mind porn, geek porn, conspiracy porn, sci-fi porn, action porn, and tech porn all rolled into one juicy ass blunt that you could hit time and time again and totally space out on it.

The acting was fresh, the story was well written and contained, the characters were well fleshed out, the action and visuals were groundbreaking, and the movie stands the test of time.

The Wachowski's were able to capture lightning in a bottle, and when Hollywood sees this, they aim to milk it for all its worth. The success spawned 2 sequels that were not as good but many fans gave it a pass. They are definitely better than 90% of movies coming out since then, that's for sure.

Now 20 years on, we get another crack at it.

Trailer for the Matrix 4

Plot

Sixty years have passed since the war with the machines and yet nothing has changed. Thomas Anderson wakes up every day going through his daily routine, but something feels a miss. A suicide survivor and famous game designer starts to question his reality

As he digs deeper he finds that reality is not a physical but a mental construct, Mr. Anderson, aka Neo, will have to choose to follow the white rabbit once more.

Neo has walked the path before but the illusions seem to be as vivid and real as ever. He has two fight his handlers and embraces his urgers. Neo already knows what he has to do, but what he doesn't yet know is that the Matrix is stronger, more secure, and far more dangerous than ever before.

He eventually makes his way out of the Matrix and back into the real world, where time has passed far longer than he had imagined. He then returns to the Matrix to free his love interest trinity despite the obvious risk to not only himself but all free-living unplugged humans.

Visuals

This immediately pissed me off, the fact that the scenes in the Matrix did not have the green tinge and the scenes, in reality, didn't have the blue just annoyed the hell out of me. The 99 movies had more about it in the visuals department than this movie, you would think 20 years later with more budget you'd be able to give me better than crappy green screen scenes and bad CGI robots.

In a movie where everything is a computer program, you'd think they could be more creative with it and show off some really cool new concepts instead of rehashing bullet time and giving NEO half the powers of Sue Storm only to reuse it 100 times in the movie.

Acting

The acting is a pretty deadpan experience, nothing against Keanu and Carrie, you can see they simply don't want to be there and sleepwalk through the film. They hardly even carry themselves as the NEO and Trinity of old, the body language, the delivery, it just isn't there.

None of the new characters are even worth mentioning so I won't bother, they are cardboard cutouts there to make scenes look busier than they are.

Jonathan Groff as Smith was awful, he tried too hard to imitate Hugo Weaving but failed in epic fashion and just shows his acting ability isn't near the levels needed for the role.
Neil Patrick Harris is the most neutered soy boy-esque villain you've ever seen and hardly brings any sinister intent that should be oozing from a computer program devoid of empathy.
Jessica Henwick is basically a rehash of Jada Pinket's character Niaobi but with blue hair.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is a fake ass Morpheus with zero charisma

Action

Don't bother there is none, if they are not cutting away to the previous movies, then you're stuck with long monologues rambling on but never developing the story, the world around it, or the characters. It's as if it's a poor parody of the matrix franchise.

I feel like the action is seen as pandering to toxic masculinity so now instead of the let's sort it out with our first approach of the 90s we have to talk about our feelings in therapy and hope there's a naturing female character to help these men find their place in the world.

ITS A MOVIE, we want to see people fight

The final rant

I feel like the script for this fourth movie was rushed and not proofread at all, to see if it makes sense and everyone went along with it because they don't care. It's like when you had a group assignment in varsity that the team put off and then you pull an all-nighter the day before the due date and find out its too much work for one day so you decide fuck it I'm going to hand it in as is and see how much we get, no time to do any better.

The rationale for making this movie is like when you had a busy day and finally get to take a satisfying dump and instead of just living in that moment, you think man this was such an enjoyable dookie, I wonder if I eat said dookie, can I replicate the feeling.

The theory loosely makes sense but the reality is you're eating your own shit, that is the resurrection I suppose.

Sadly it looks like we will be feasting on another edition, as the movie is left open for a 5th installment. While the director may have distanced himself from the project, it's only a matter of time and money before they drag out this IP and beat it into submission once again.

People have short memories and outrage will fade with time and Hollywood will see this as permission to rinse and repeat another cash grab.

My final score

The best part of the movie was the flashbacks to the old movies so that you can remind yourself even more of how awful this is, don't waste your time boys and girls. Accept that this is fan art and nothing more and isn't canon, same with the last star wars trilogy.

I have to give this movie 4 blue pills out of 10 and I hope I never wake up from the Matrix again, plug me in and blow my mind to mush. If this is the truth, I don't want it.