I don't know where all the negative comments are coming from. I loved this sequel.

The Matrix Resurrections keeps to the theme of the original movie, while leveraging plot points from the previous sequels to resurrect the Neo :heart: Trinity love story [spoiler] after 20 years (according to the movie timeline it's 60 years) [/spoiler].

The Matrix movie critics love to over-intellectualize the philosophy of the story arcs and characters. Over the last 20 years, I've heard critics trying to justify religion (ex: Buddhism) using the Matrix movies. Today, reading the comments here, this seems to have evolved into people trying to explain transgenderism using The Matrix (maybe because the creators of Matrix are transgender?).

I always believed that these movies oppose group think and are about breaking free from hive-minds and intellectual-echo-chambers (aka The Matrix). For example, Twitter today, with its Leftist cancel mobs, is a great example of a Matrix. Every time I read about a famous person getting "cancelled" or "de-platformed" by a social media platform, I picture an image of Neo being dragged out of the embryonic sac and getting violently unplugged by machines and thrown away (from the original Matrix movie).

For me, as a career software engineer, The Matrix movies are also about algorithms and logic. The unpredictability of a code base as it gets larger and complex. Eventually, leading to anomalies and vulnerabilities. I loved Neil Patrick Harris' performance as the new Architect of the Matrix. What a legend!

Is the franchise getting stale? Absolutely. It's a formula movie franchise. I watched all Fast and the Furious movies and the spin-offs too. I'm not the one to judge. :rofl:

Absolutely unoriginal and boring. Incredible special effects.


None of the new characters have enough time or backstory for us to care about them, but they're also not throw away characters - the writers seemed to think we would be too triggered if a single good guy died. In fact, nobody died the entire movie - 100% of the enemies are bots. There aren't even meaningful interactions with agents outside of the ones Neo simulates.

The entire thing was just a big callback to what they did in the original trilogy. Lots of allusion and direct rips. All with killer special effects, but no substance. They think they're being meta and hip by acknowledging it, but that doesn't make it better; their horrible post credits scene about "just needing to elicit an emotional response" and "uploading the catrix" makes it a lot worse.

Nothing in the movie has any deeper meaning. There are zero stakes. The new human city isn't at risk. The Matrix isn't at risk. Literally the entire movie is about Neo and Trinity needing to wake up and get out of the Matrix - if they don't, they will continue living, just inside the Matrix.

None of Smith's motives were clear. He went from being a very strong and interesting character in the original trilogy to a very weak and aimless character here.

Cheapening the power of the One is really detrimental to the film. The Analyst's idea that "Neo was nothing special by himself, he needed Trinity" is ridiculous. It's rather as the Architect said "Neo's attachment to humanity was very intimate." He was still the One with or without Trinity, and his powers were unique to that position. So the idea that the machines can somehow use Neo and Trinity to enhance power generation of the Matrix by keeping them close is both fundamentally flawed on top of being ridiculous. And then letting Trinity be the one to fly them out of danger at the end just steals everything from Neo.

Despite everyone assuring Neo that his fight mattered, it seems that the world is almost identical to where it was at the start of the original Matrix movie. The Matrix is a prison. The humans are hiding in a city to keep back the hostile machines. It doesn't seem like they're freeing many minds. The only difference is that now some machines are on their side - something that's never really explained. This new alliance has yielded the incredible result of.. fruit. Neo's entire fight gave humanity fruit. That's it.

The Analyst and the machines seemed incompetent and weak. The machine on machine violence was very interesting and could have been instrumental in explaining the resurgence in war and restoration of the Matrix as a prison - so naturally it was only mentioned once offhand.

The world wasn't setup clearly or interestingly in a way to support a story existing within it. There is no substance, no stakes, and no point.

Overall it's a huge disappointment. The fact that the Reloaded and Revolutions were better movies that were more coherent and added more substance to the universe is testament to the extreme failure of this move.

I did not expect much, and that's what I got. Neo and Trinity were mostly great, everything else was just horrible

[spoiler]
The story was mostly ok, nothing special. Too many flashbacks.
The effects are worse than in the first Matrix from 22 years ago
The fight choreography is just bad, no feeling of impact anywhere
The crew feels like a bunch of drama students in matrix cosplay
Morpheus was changed into a joke, the character was completely destroyed
Smith is very creepy, the whole essence of the character is gone
The Analyst is totally miscast.
You would fear the agents in other movies, here they mean nothing.
The movie could have been easily cut down to 90 minutes without losing anything. Just bloated
The movie lacks style. When you see a scene from the Matrix or even the sequels, you can see and feel the overflowing of style.
There is nothing like that here. They lost it completely.
[/spoiler]

I feel like behind the first Matrix, there was a vision. Vision to make something new, unique. And they were successful. Here they also had a vision. A vision of quick easy money earned through nostalgia. Nothing else.

After a while, I actually started to wonder. Did the Watchkowskis really make the first Matrix? The difference in quality is just so huge here.

While some will undoubtedly criticize the perhaps overly meta set-up that accounts for the first 30 minutes of this film, relative to the rest of the movie, that portion was actually my favorite part and I can't help but wish they had just gone all in on the idea. The story of a game designer who is losing his grip on reality felt fresh and unique. The rest of the movie... not so much. At the conclusion of the original trilogy, the Matrix lore was already an incomprehensible mess, but skipping ahead 60 years and dropping a whole new collection of buzzwords and exposition dumps only made things worse. All the more reason to cut ties with all of that baggage and tell some new story in which the Matrix is simply a series of videos games created by a troubled mind. Alas, that's not the movie we got, and after those first 30 minutes the film turns into an unsuccessful rehash of various elements of previous Matrix films. To make matters worse, the action is also not up to par. Even just finishing the movie minutes ago, I'm having a hard time thinking back to any memorable set pieces or sequences.

Luckily, things aren't all bad. The cast are pretty much universally solid, including both new and returning characters/actors. Jonathan Groff leans into his role as the new Agent Smith, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II sells his version of Morpheus, and Neil Patrick Harris delivers some fun monologues as the Analyst. Unfortunately, great acting can only take you so far, enough to sell hammy dialogue or even save individual scenes, but not enough to save the overall plot.

_Nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia._

If anything, Hollywood has boiled that concept down to a science over the past few years, as this film is basically a summary of everything that’s wrong with the industry in a neat, 148 minute package.
It thinks it’s meta and self-aware by pointing out how cynical and cheap franchise filmmaking is.
That might sound similar to _22 Jump Street_, but this film proceeds to be cheap and cynical itself without saying anything substantial beyond that set up.
Everything in this movie is structured as an excuse to show stuff you’ve seen before, there are little to no original concepts or ideas that push the franchise in an interesting direction.
It’s mostly a rehash of the first film (mixed with some stuff from _Reloaded_ and _Revolutions_ in the second half), except the action isn’t nearly as good, it’s more predictable and convenient, the performances are nowhere near as memorable (that’s what you get from replacing your 2 best actors), it looks uglier and more synthetic, the pacing isn’t as tight, and it’s a lot more dull because of how much it overexplains itself.
It also ditches the cyberpunk aesthetic, and replaces it with something a lot more bland and boring, stripping the franchise from a lot of its personality.
It’s honestly quite an accomplishment when you think about it: the original is one of the best, most successful, big budget films ever made that still maintained a strong artistic and alternative impulse.
This, on the other hand, couldn’t be any more lowest common denominator if it tried to.
It’s a parody of itself and modern blockbuster filmmaking.
I suppose that was Lana Wachowski’s goal to some extent, but it isn’t very compelling to watch.

3/10