Ya know, It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a marketing team do a better job marketing a film
than the filmmakers did making a film. That’s how I felt after watching The Matrix Resurrections at
least. I can’t say I hated the movie because it’s hard for me to hate a Matrix movie,
and if you loved it, that’s great, I don’t want to take that away from you. I still feel like
the world is super unique and full of interesting stuff, but for this one, after the credits rolled,
I just felt sort of… nothing. To be honest it hardly felt like a matrix movie at all.
The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions have their issues, but they definitely feel like Matrix
movies at least. The Wachowskis clearly had ambitions for those movies but this one felt
almost…phoned in? Critically it did ok, but fans seem somewhat divided on it.
Some going as far as claiming Lana Wachoski just didn’t care.
To me, It would be unfair to say that Lana Wachowski didn’t care about this
movie. Making a movie requires so much work, so much time and attention. People
that make those claims clearly have no understanding of the filmmaking process.
There is this theory floating around though, that is quite interesting.
Some are speculating that Lana Wachowski made this Movie intentionally bad, and believe it or not,
there is actually some decent evidence within the film that seems to back that up.
Spoilers ahead for those that haven’t seen the film.
In the very first scene of the film we meet a character new to the franchise,
Bugs, who’s watching a “Modal” of the opening scene in the original Matrix.
When she introduces herself to a coded version of Morpheus, she tells him her name is Bugs
like the Bunny. Some have interpreted this as her being a stand in for Warner Brothers.
Bugs goes looking for Neo to pull him out of the Matrix. In the same way Warner Brothers
has resurrected The Matrix, who’s characters are dead and who’s stories have ended,
Bugs finds Neo, unplugs him, and brings him back to the city of IO. When they get there,
Niobe is pissed, basically telling her she’s an idiot for messing with the balance of things.
If Bugs is an analog for Warner Brothers, then Nairobi is a stand-in for the Wachowskis,
annoyed that WB couldn’t leave the IP alone. They expressed multiple times that they didn’t want
to revisit the Matrix, and that they thought that there weren’t any more stories to tell.
This sentiment is expressed even earlier in the film when we are catching up with Neo.
In this version of the Matrix, Neo is a video game designer. He’s been fed a narrative that
all of his memories from the original trilogy are actually scenes in his video game,
and that due to mental illness, he’s been experiencing these scenes as actual memories.
During one scene with his business partner, who we later come to find is Agent Smith,
Smith tells Neo that “their parent company Warner Brothers
has decided to make a sequel to the Matrix Trilogy”, the game version that is,
and that they have “informed them that they will do it with or without them”.
It doesn’t take much interpreting to assume that Warner Brothers planned to reboot the Matrix,
with or without the Wachowskis, and that Lana Wachowski decided if they had to do it,
it was better for her to be involved so she could at least try and steer the ship. One
could even say that her choice to head this film was really no choice at all,
a theme that is heavily leaned on throughout the original trilogy.
So we’ve clearly established that the film is self referential. The matrix trilogy as a story
exists within the story of the Matrix as a story about the Matrix.
If your head isn’t hurting yet from all the Meta-ness just wait, it gets worse.
Following being told by Smith that they are making a sequel to the Matrix Trilogy,
Neo proceeds to go through a montage where a group of “creatives” try to break ground
on the new game. He sits through a series of marketing meetings where they examine
focus group data and discuss key words associated with the brand.
The leader of the meeting reminds them to keep all these things in mind as they begin working
on Matrix 4 and “who knows how many more”. We then cut to Neo who does a literally
cartoon-esque gulp in the face of these words.
Even if this theory turned out to be false. You can’t deny that Lana Wachowski clearly
felt like this reboot was a corporate cash-grab at least in the screenwriting phase. These people
who makes these films aren’t dumb. They read everything we say online. They are
completely aware of the corporatization of blockbuster movies. The thing is,
it’s all about the money to the studios. They are always looking for opportunities to make money,
and the suits, as they are called in the industry, call all the shots.
Funny enough, these “suits” run the Matrix as well. In another exploration of the
metaness of this whole film, the Analyst, Neo’s therapist who turns out to be the architect and
moderator of this new Matrix, refers to the machines who run everything as the “suits”.
The Analyst tells Neo he had to convince the “suits” to resurrect them and that it
was “crazy expensive”. He goes on to discuss the process of bringing them back to life,
and it is definitely a reference to how the development of this film went.
They worked for years bringing Neo back but were unsuccessful until they realized that the source
of Neo’s power was within the bond that He and Trinity shared. The two of them were placed in
pods near each other, and their power together was what produced the most electrical output.
In the same way that Neo and Trinity were the electrical heart of this new Matrix,
Neo and Trinity’s relationship was the heart of the original Trilogy. If you take one away,
you wouldn’t have what made the original trilogy, or at least the original film,
great. The matrix movie cannot exist without both,
just as this new Matrix simulation cannot exist without both being plugged into them.
Now to be completely honest, the more I think about this film,
the more I explore the philosophical ideas being expressed. It does grow on me. That’s
what happened with the second and third movies as well. When I was a kid I hated those movies,
but when I got older, I learned to appreciate them for what they were. But I will say that
despite having some really interesting ideas, I think what this movie failed on was the execution.
Every fight scene in this film felt lackluster and phoned in. Admittedly, it could have been a result
of Covid. Prepping choreography can be difficult when you have to adjust for Covid Protocal. Plus,
even though I think both of them are great actors still, Carrie and Keanu are getting kind of old.
They can’t move like they used to. Keanu is almost 60. In the real world it’s much harder to do full
out kung fu when your joints don’t move like they used to, and it becomes especially apparent when
you are supposed to be in a digital world where you don’t even need to breathe air.
I think the campiness of the digital Neo in the second and third movie made them a bit weary
of using digital doubles for the fight scenes and I definitely see where they are coming from.
The rawness of Keanu doing all his own stunts in the first movie
made every action scene feel intense. Him doing his own stunts now just feels slower
and a bit less powerful. It’s not a knock on Keanu nor Carrie, but age does have an impact.
In addition to the lackluster action scenes, the script, to me,
just fell kinda flat. It seemed like there was so much focus on telling this super smart meta story
that they forgot to craft a cohesive narrative that had clear stakes and engaging characters.
I could go on and on about all the problems I had with the film, but I don’t want this to be
a Matrix bashing video. Technically the majority of Matrix films have fallen below my expectations,
so to say that this one did would mean that it’s somewhat on brand for them.
What I do want to come back to is the idea that the movie was bad on purpose.
Clearly there is evidence that Lana Wachowski felt that making this film was a bad idea at
least initially, and I do think that this film was an attempt to comment on the industry as a whole
and reboots in general. But personally, I don’t believe it was bad on purpose.
Again, many fans loved it, and I’m not going to take that away from them.
If you enjoyed it I’m happy you did. I don’t want any movie to be bad. But I do think that
the problems that this film had just came as a result of many factors that go into the process.
Lana didn’t have Lily going into this film. She’s also older than she was 20 years ago,
and people do change, even filmmakers. It’s possible that her tastes have changed since
then. It’s also possible that Lana brought the philosophy and Lily brought the action.
The film also had to be made during Covid, and there were a lot of expectations riding
on this which can definitely make creating great work more difficult.
In general I think that once you’ve seen success you become less hungry. When the
Wachowskis made the first Matrix, it was their passion project. They believed in
it fully and probably over prepared to make sure the film would turn out well. I would
imagine that after having made several films, you start to develop confidence
in your abilities and ideas so you might not go quite as far in the preparation process.
There’s really no way to know what the filmmakers were thinking
when they made this movie. I’m disappointed that it didn’t live up to my own expectations,
but like I said, none of the other matrix sequels ever have either so shrug I guess?
But what do you think? Do you disagree that the movie was bad? Or maybe you believe the
theory that it’s bad on purpose. Were there any other hints that I missed in the film?
I’d love to see what you guys think, down in the comments below.
Thanks again for watching and I'll see you in the next one.
Peace.