BLUF
Meta jokes are our fav and when Matrix’s newest on the block pokes fun at Warner Bros. and The Matrix franchise itself, we are kind of home.
What are the highlights?
Resurrections is an immediate follow-up to 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions, continuing the story of Neo, Trinity, and others in the Matrix trilogy.
The plot precisely answers years of people evaluating everything from The Matrix’s bullet sequences to its transgender subtext.
It lays out the premise of a new milestone in the franchise where the virtual world is explored and the premise of how people can still feel connected to other people even when they reside in a virtual world.
THE MEAT AND THE POTATOES
Neo is now a world-weary man who’s sick of being a visionary for creating a concept that he now finds profoundly silly even as it nearly wrecked his life. Consider Keanu Reeves in a bathtub. Wait!! Stop that imagery. Let’s spoil it for you. He has a rubber duck on his head. Moss presents a more human version of Trinity and explores what relationships can mean in a virtual world.
The premise of Matrix so far was to chronicle a youthful, disaffected recluse, but Resurrections sets out to explore how to find sense in a world that is essentially created to be fake.
Morpheus’ redux is a treat. He dons a good amount of self-consciousness in this new edition of Matrix.
IN THE KNOW
Many of the Sense8 cast is here as well including Purab Kohli, Max Riemelt, Brian J. Smith, Freema Agyeman, Eréndira Ibarra, and Michael X.
Priyanka’s Sati has all of less than 6 mins of screen time and does not make her appearance till 1:46 of the 2:28 minutes run of this movie.
From the start, the writing of Resurrections often feels weak. Where The Matrix hankered on big ideas of the future combined with liberated thoughts of free will and the concept of reality, Resurrections is a sequence of tear-ups about tech bros, infatuated fans, the media peeps, enthusiasts citing movies thinking it makes them look uber, and other slighter fashionable baddies.
While the other movies in the series were fundamentally trendsetters in defining virtual reality utopian worlds, it was a cultural moment encapsulated in the narration. Why it matters that Neo is the chosen one to control the Matrix is never established. And why are we even there?
While Matrix paints a bleakish future of humanity ready to be enslaved and the ones who are not live in the perpetual fear of being on the precipice of slavery. Resurrections do not bother clarifying what transpired because of The Matrix Revolutions’ conclusion when Neo’s powers ultimately assisted him in brokering peace between humans and machines. We also were confused about some of the new characters’ (including villains) motivation with being obsessed with Neo.
This movie makes the Neo-Trinity love story the main plot. However, the plot is narrated in a manner where Neo seems either selectively amnesic or disturbingly indifferent about the future of humans. His disconcert about anything except Trinity also makes the plot lose several opening subplots.
The flaws in storytelling are gaping and it slices off its own story’s strengths by being unfocussed on them.
WHAT WE LOVED:
Actors
Keanu
Moss
WHAT WE MISSED
A credible story
