I was so looking forward to revisiting the visual nirvana of the original trilogy with 2021’s THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS. The first ten minutes offers up a promising start with the music themes you remember, those dripping green credits and a killer, gravity-defying action sequence that delivers on your nostalgic memories of the groundbreaking franchise.
After the opening sequence, the film eases into an intriguing, if not all together engrossing meta view of reality versus the matrix.
Nearly 20 years after the last two installments hit theatres, the world has become a very different place, offering up plenty of heady ties between the Matrix and real life.
2021’s Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves in a game return to the role) is a very successful game developer that invented the Matrix trilogy. We hear his co-workers and his boss, the perfectly cast and oily Jonathan Groff talking about all the characters and events of the first three films as part of a game trilogy that Thomas invented. When Groff starts talking about Warner Bros wanting to make another installment, it all turns so quickly into itself that you’re left in a middle ground between clever and eye-rolling that slowly starts to slide downward into the latter.
Carrie-Anne Moss returns as Tiffany, a customer in a coffee shop that looks an awful lot like Trinity. Reeves and Moss have undeniable chemistry and their scenes together are strong.
What works?
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as a new upgraded version of Morpheus is excellent and steals every scene he’s in. As mentioned, Groff is excellent. Jessica Henwick (Game of Thrones) brings a ton of energy and fun as Bugs. Neil Patrick Harris has a blast as Anderson’s analyst. The action scenes are excellent but seem few and far between this time. There’s no one sequence like that mind-boggling freeway chase in “Matrix Reloaded” that stands out and after the film’s over, it does seem like the action sequences were all just recalls with today’s technology of ones you’d seen 20 years ago. Nostalgia is fine and can be enjoyable, but it feels empty here.
Jefferson Airplane’s song ‘White Rabbit” is used to great effect in the film, just as it was in the trailer.
The music score by Johnny Klimek & Tom Tykwer is good and references the past while making it all feel more modern. Maybe that’s what’s missing from the rest of the film.
There’s an awful lot of people sitting around talking about what’s going on. Did George Lucas write this screenplay?
The final scene feels more like a Disney ending than a Matrix film.
Meh.
Maybe this one should have been called THE MATRIX REHASHED. Resurrection seems like false advertising as this one rarely gets off the ground for more than five minutes at a time.
Don’t take the red pill, this one’s not worth revisiting. I’ll give it a C-.
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