The Matrix Resurrections

[Marcel Birgelen]

The almost spoilerless review in one word: Yawn!!!

You may remember this pretty interesting movie back in 1999. That one made by those two brothers that nobody really heard of before? It combined some pretty deep philosophical themes, some pretty neat action with a style that didn't even have a real name yet back then. What followed was years of people wearing long coats, no matter the weather and sunglasses even at night. Heck, what a pity nobody ever made a sequel to this movie... The End!




Well, that's what happened in that other universe... but in this one, we could at least pretend those two sequel movies never happened... Until today, because someone decided it was a good idea to add just another movie to that list...

Yeah, I really wanted this to be good, I avoided most of the reviews and ignored most of the stuff in the trailers... Sometimes, magic happens... Sometimes.

The Matrix Resurrections is probably the biggest pile-o-shite I've seen in a cinema since a long long time... Without revealing anything about the storyline itself: It's obnoxious, boring, pretentious and just completely unfunny. While most effects look pretty OK, Voxel Morpheus looks like a Doom character from 1993. If exposition would be radioactive, after this movie, you'd glow so strong, you could read the prescriptions on the drugs you need, to get some sanity back into your head, in the dark.

Ah, and YES... there is an AFTER CREDIT SCENE! OMG!!! That's so funny, my gawd, you'll have trouble keeping your masks on... Hahaha, and stuff.

Sorry Lana, maybe it's time to hang up your hat, shirt or dress and call it a day. Whatever magic there was some 20 years ago, it's long gone and it won't be coming back, at least not with this franchise. This franchise will forever be remembered by hitting peak ingenuity at stage one, every attempt to extend onto it has been in vain. Some stories are better left short and the details to your imagination...

[Jon Dent]

I finally watched this in our theater (we found a week to fit it in). It isn't bad overall, but parts of it are pretty goofy and the entire ending feels very truncated and sloppy.

For a supposed 190 million price tag, parts of it look really cheap. The CGI shots of the machine power plant don't look all that better than Matrix Revolutions, which is either a knock on this movie or proof of just how far ahead if it's time Revolutions' VFX were in 2003.

On top of that I thought the 'new matrix' was far too colorful, especially compared to the established green palette of the original trilogy. They kept the previous blue color cast for the 'real world' scenes, so why change the virtual one so much? I'm sure Lana Wachowski can run circles around me justifying it, but it just felt weird.

The acting wasn't too special either aside from the new Morpheus and OG Neal Patrick Harris. They were having a good time and it showed. Keanu seemed like he just wanted a nap. Jonathan Groff was clearly trying to channel Hugo Weaving and seemed to find Woody Harrelson instead. Everyone else (including Carrie Anne Moss and Jada Pinkett Smith) faded into the furniture. A big hook in the plot is how Neo and Trinity supposedly care for each other, and Keanu and Carrie didn't sell me on it at all.

The editing was universally bad during most of the action scenes. As opposed to the original trilogy (and virtually every other Wachowski film) where you could clearly see what was going on, extreme close up shaky cam and quick cuts take over here. The train fight in particular was impossible to follow.

Things the movie did right: it is very self aware of just how dumb the whole thing is. While it got a bit too cute with that feature out a few times, it helped deflate the pretentiousness a bit. It was also nice to hear the distinctive Matrix sound effects again. They're still unique even after 23 years, and I never get tired of them. Lana Wachowski still has a flair for action staging, and this leads to some geeky 'cool' shots, at least when the editing slows down enough for you to make sense of them.