Director: Lana Wachowski
Distributor: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Duration: 148 minutes
The Matrix Resurrections (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
It’s hard to believe that it has been over twenty years since The Matrix was released. Many that watched the original trilogy will remember Keanu Reeves’ iconic performance as Neo, who was ‘The One’ who could fight back against the machines and liberate humankind. This trilogy spawned a lot more memorable characters, such as Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus, Carrie-Anne Moss’ badass Trinity, and of course, Hugo Weaving’s creepy Agent Smith. After the trilogy ended in 2003, we never imagined a new installment to be released. Now, however, we received a Blu-ray review copy of The Matrix Resurrections in which Neo is seemingly alive and well, albeit once again in The Matrix.
The Matrix Resurrections takes us back into The Matrix, where Neo (Keanu Reeves) is inexplicably still alive. For him, the world has progressed twenty years, and he was made to believe that his experience revolving around The Matrix, Zion, and him dying outside of the digital makebelieve world was all in his head. Nonetheless, he is still not completely accepting his current way of life, and sometimes he feels as if he’s going insane. When he suddenly gets approached by a stranger who tells him that everything was real, he will have to make up his mind if he wishes to go down the rabbit hole once again.
As expected, he makes the leap, and also learns that Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) is still trapped in the machines’ world. He will be assisted by a digital version of Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and a new crew of resistance fighters. That being said, the world outside of The Matrix has changed a lot, all because of what he did in the past.
The flow and pacing of the movie are somewhat predictable. The movie revolves around the fact that Neo is once again trapped in The Matrix, and he has been conditioned to believe that his past experiences were actually figments of his imagination. Due to this, the buildup of the movie does take quite some time, and it’s actually all about him escaping the make-believe simulation once again. There is a nice balance between action and information, but sometimes this movie has a totally different atmosphere than that of the original trilogy. We found the plot to be interesting, but it also felt like it was trying a bit too hard to win the original audience back. That being said, the overall idea is fun, and there’s never a truly boring moment to be found. The movie also has an open ending, meaning there is room for even more movies in the future.
Even though the cast is fairly expansive, it’s mainly still Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss who are stealing the show. We regretted the noticeable absence of Laurence Fishburne, who played Morpheus in the original trilogy. Nonetheless, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II does a very good job filling in the role of the ‘new’ Morpheus. Supporting roles are also handled with grace, but we found Jonathan Groff’s boyish charms not to be the right fit for this movie’s version of Smith. Jessica Henwick plays an interesting new lead character, Bugs, but her character remains rather one-dimensional throughout the movie’s duration. Neil Patrick Harris is also an interesting casting choice, especially as he grew on us as the movie progressed.
The extras included on the Blu-ray disc are fairly interesting to watch. You can view in length how this sequel was made, and what the idea behind this ‘resurrection’ was. Most of the content revolves around the creative process behind this new film, but we also get to learn a bit more about the original trilogy as well. As a whole, the extras are quite fun to view, and they do add a lot of value to the physical copy of the film.
Conclusion
The Matrix Resurrections is a fairly fun sequel to the original trilogy, but it also feels like a slightly useless one. Heavily banking on nostalgia, this sequel proves to be fun to spend one evening with, to then probably forget it. The film had some interesting moments, a few flashy action scenes, and an overall okay story, but it failed to recreate the feeling we had when we first watched the original in 1999. If you have an open mind and don’t mind the franchise going in a new direction, then you’ll probably still enjoy watching this new Matrix movie.
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