Neo and Trinity were dead, but they got better.
Yes, it’s The Matrix Resurrections, a movie that absolutely no one asked for. Granted, sometimes movies that no one asks for can be great like, say, Toy Story 4. The Matrix Resurrections, however, is not a good movie. It’s not even a mediocre movie. It doesn’t even have the decency to be bad. It’s just a movie that exists.
It’s been 60 years since the last Matrix movie disappointed us and Neo has been reborn inside the simulation, only now he’s a game designer who, twenty years ago, designed a trilogy of video games called The Matrix that “revolutionized” the industry (Try not to break your own arm patting yourself on the back, Ms Wachowski). Now, he’s being forced to develop a new Matrix game, something that he doesn’t want to do.
This is all complicated when a resurrected Morpheus/Agent Smith program contacts him to let him know that he actually is in the Matrix. This makes Neo demand the release of Trinity who has also been reborn and… there’s a lot. Let me just say, there’s a lot.
So, yes, The Matrix Resurrections is a big non-event. Something too self aware to be clever and something too unnecessary to be important. This movie is a slog… an uninteresting chore to sit through. This movie is simply an object, something that was seemingly born not out of love, but out of simple studio directive.
What’s worse, Resurrections bears little to no semblance to its predecessors on a stylistic level. Where even the worst Matrix movies were slick and smooth, Resurrections is full of post-production slow motion that is jarring and jerky. To be honest, Resurrections is an ugly movie as a result.
Even worse, the self awareness is particularly annoying. The antagonist – who I won’t spoil even though it is stupidly obvious – refers to his ability to show down time as “bullet time” and you just want to slap him.
Where Spider-Man: No Way Home is a warm, nostalgic blanket you can roll up in and smile, Resurrections is like finding a candy bar you loved as a kid and then realizing it just wasn’t that great.
Basically, Resurrections lands with a deafening thud. This is a movie so unessesary and so uninteresting, it doesn’t even merit hatred. At least, if I hated it, I would have some kind of emotional investment.
Jason Gaston 