There’s no glitch in The Matrix to be found in Resurrections; only déjà vu.
The original 1999 movie is a classic which everyone should see, a distillation of the dreams and anxieties of the dawning digital age which has had a tremendous impact on popular culture. Its immediate sequels were, unfortunately, a convoluted and forgettable mess, and remain difficult to recommend to anyone but the most diehard franchise fans.
After two decades on ice, The Matrix Resurrections had an opportunity to do something fresh and bold with the franchise. The trailers looked promising, hinting at a film which leans into exactly the kind of self-aware meta-commentary which might justify another sequel as more than just a cynical cash grab. So many people, myself included, really wanted that film.
Unfortunately, that’s not the film we got, though its first hour (by far its strongest section) does put up a pretty good pretense of meta-ness before abruptly departing into a rote retread. By the time it’s given us a shot-by-shot remake of Neo’s pod-birthing scene - his face once more aghast in shock and horror as he looks out, with the audience, over the endless human battery farm, an iconic establishing shot which somehow lacks the same impact after three films in its now well-established and much-imitated setting - that pretense has worn pretty darn thin.
From thereon out, it’s a paint-by-numbers Matrix film; gun-fu action set-pieces interspersed with lengthy villainous monologues explaining their nonsensical plans by way of techno-mystical word salad. None of its plentiful action scenes stand out from anything offered by the previous trilogy, and the film passes up almost every opportunity to subvert audience expectations.
It insists on exhuming and recasting beloved characters who are presented to us as versions 2.0 of their namesakes - sensibly, the new actors don’t attempt to emulate their predecessors, but nor are they given enough room to breathe as new iterations of the characters. As is, they serve only to desperately tick a studio wish-list.
The few fresh ideas the film introduces - the Human-Sapient alliance; the idea that Neo could be seen by some as merely a pawn of the machines - are left woefully underdeveloped.
Given its tortured production - and how many times the Wachowski Sisters had previously turned down Warner Brothers’ requests for another sequel - perhaps Resurrections slyly self-effacing opening act is better read not as a manifesto for what follows, but as an apology.
