Before watching (no spoilers)
Wow, alright, The Matrix is topical again. I was almost ten years old when the first movie came out, and although I can remember – with some clarity – my initial thoughts, I can’t really remember being a person who hadn’t seen The Matrix. Yet, I never really dove into the franchise with the same fanboy zeal that I had for Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Warcraft, and so on. I suppose that I never really had to intentionally seek out engagement with The Matrix because it just kept coming up incidentally. It was always just there, either in the center or on peripheral of pretty much anything else I was interested in.
I loved Max Payne. If I were to describe the games now, I don’t know that I’d even think to mention The Matrix: I’d talk about the over-the-top noir detective pulp, the voice acting, the music, and the awesome bullet time mechanic. It’s really not until we get to the bullet time that I would have to bring up that Max Payne is pretty much a matrix spin-off. Once we have bullet time, I’d also recall that I spent about as much time clearing out the chateau in the fantastic Max Payne 2 mod as I did playing the actual game.
I loved bullshit early internet memes. Foamy sticks out – I don’t want to make this post about flash videos, but this example should suffice. When I made my own clumsy stick-fighting animations, I honestly can’t remember how consciously I was thinking of The Matrix.
I loved hacker and cyberpunk fiction. Neuromancer and Snow Crash. Johnny Mnemonic. Hackers. Serial Experiments Lain. Ghost in the Shell. Sharon Apple. I should make another post just on this topic… but for now, what matters is how glamorous it all seemed and seems. There’s deep meaning in there somewhere, beneath all the kung fu, robot girls, otherworldly digital vistas, and music. There has to be. Something so goddamn cool couldn’t possibly be pointless. I’m not building up to a contradiction here. It’s all so cool and it all feels so deep: that has to mean something, even if much of the philosophical reference falls flat. I’ve yet to really grok this, but I’m still trying to figure it out after decades of mulling it over: if nothing else, the journey has some weight to it.
I couldn’t imagine reasoning about my own career in tech without The Matrix. On this topic, it’s more interesting to consider how it influenced me, particularly in how I’ve identified as more like Neo or Smith at various points in my life. Both characters are cool. When I was staying up all night, chugging mountain dew and trading anime subtitle files on IRC, I felt like a hacker. In my mom’s basement in Wisconsin I imagined myself dressed in all black and frequenting esoteric hacker dens hidden in night clubs. I listened to a lot of Rob Zombie on my Mini Disc player at an unhealthy volume. On long walks at night I imagined myself a radical individualist and a rebel. It took me longer than I’d like to admit to gain any awareness that this was all nonsense fantasy, and not even a unique fantasy at that.
When I was writing code, getting my CS degree, or starting my job at Microsoft, I was Agent Smith. I was strong: in charge. I was going to make all the money, gain all the power, and do it all without regard for anything but productivity. Looking back at it, it was really just a secular crusader fantasy: a fascist fantasy, comprised of the symbols of strength and power but without much substance behind it. Sacrificing emotion (the self) to gain apotheosis by becoming part of some divine impetus. Lots of bad religious metaphors based more on Neon Genesis Evangelion than anything approaching real philosophy or religion. I idolized the power of American corporate invention; stories about the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs stick out even today.
Either way, I would be privy to esoteric knowledge and I would probably know kung fu. I would have secrets and power. I’ll never forget my nerdy uncle fixing my computer when I was very young, then boasting that his kung fu was better than mine. I thought he was so cool in that moment. I still think it was cool.
I don’t know if that all means anything, and there’s no real conclusion here – not yet, at least. The Matrix has had a lot of meaning for me, but most of it is unexamined. I’ve never been entirely comfortable with leaving something that feels so big within me unexamined, but it’s been fine – so far. With that in mind, The Matrix Resurrections almost makes me uncomfortable. It feels like an exam that I always knew was coming, but I never got to the reading.
Well, ready or not, it’s streaming on HBO Max. Better to jump in unprepared than have it all spoiled for me.
Let’s get into it (spoilers)
Alright, I’ve got a drink and my notes from watching the film. Let’s get into it.
The Matrix Resurrections knows it’s a sequel and leans into it. I love this. The film pulls things off that only work because it’s a sequel. This isn’t just “more matrix”, it’s a sequel in a way that matters. Much of the film echoes – either subtly or overtly – the original film. The entire opening scene sets this up right away: it’s the same, but different. The characters don’t look right and there’s extra stuff going on, but we’re still watching the opening scene of The Matrix again. This immediately brings William Gibson’s fiction, modern streamer culture, and vaporwave to mind. We’re watching people watching The Matrix, but they’re also interacting with it, and it’s not quite what we remember from the first film. Now I’m writing about it and imagining someone reading what I’m reading. So meta. My immediate thoughts after watching the first scene – everything before we cut to Keanu – was that I was 100% ready to see where things were going, even if I was a bit worried that the mystery threads wouldn’t resolve well. I liked Agent Morpheus a lot. I don’t have much to say about him beyond that: he’s a great character and there’s a ton of good shit in this movie that I won’t really go into here.
Actually, let me reiterate that: this movie has a ton of good shit. I’m not going to cover all of it: I’m only going to cover the stuff that really stuck out as interesting to me. I don’t necessarily equate “goodness” with “interesting”, so I’ll leave out a lot of goodness. If you just want a “review”, rather than a “reaction”, then my review is this:
The Matrix Resurrections is a really fucking good movie.
Then we cut to Thomas Anderson and his business partner, Smith. He’s hit rock-bottom as an award-winning game developer. I love this. Going back to my thoughts on Neo and Smith from above, this feels like the perfect synthesis of my identification with these characters. Youthful fantasies, filtered through decades of work, results in a petty Smith, pleased with his little fiefdom, and a depressed Neo, struggling with his mental health and abusing alcohol to pass the time.
I’ll need to post the email I sent to my office when I quit, but I mentioned The Matrix. As a young man, I didn’t think much about Thomas Anderson. As an adult, I find myself identifying with him far more than with Neo. Looking at him here… christ, I’m glad I got out.
We quickly learn that The Matrix is a trilogy of video games, made by Anderson and Smith. Smith delivers the news: their parent company, Warner Bros., is demanding a sequel. The Matrix Resurrections is a movie about being forced to make a matrix sequel that nobody asked for.
Major flashbacks to the USS Callister episode of Black Mirror throughout this whole scene between Anderson and Smith.
We get little hints that something is wrong, as if we didn’t already know. Thomas and Tiffany have reflections much less cool than themselves. Downright ordinary, even. Their reflections look like the sort of people who would live the regular, if successful, lives that they’re leading. Tiffany even has kids and a husband (his name is literally “Chad”), though she hardly seems all that interested whenever she’s talking to Thomas.
We meet Thomas’s therapist: his analyst. We can tell from the casting alone that Dr. Neil Patrick Harris is important, and it’s not a big leap to figure out that he’s our antagonist. I didn’t even bother to capture an image showing that Thomas’s prescription is for a bottle of blue pills. It’s funny… I could see someone arguing that the Analyst is a bit too goofy, but I really didn’t think so. He’s frustrating, but in a way that’s kind of hard to define. He has a habit for overusing buzzwords: “took away your voice”, “his violence triggered you”, etc. The analysis isn’t wrong, but the word frequency flags the conversation as disingenuous. His black cat’s name is Deja-Vu. He’s fucking with Thomas and he’s fucking with us. Well, fuck him too. Someone should kick his condescending face off.
Then we get my favorite part of the film: the early development meetings for the fourth entry in the matrix video games. This all felt… a bit too reminiscent of some design meetings I’ve been in. I mean, it’s not realistic, at least not for any meeting I’ve been in, but it’s a good caricature of a design meeting. The douchey tech-bros Thomas works with are just perfect. One of them refers to Tiffany as a MILF and tries to set Thomas up with her by letting her know how rich and famous he is. The top phrases associated with The Matrix’s brand are “originality” and “fresh”, it says so right in the packets that are handed out. There’s a fantastic montage of brainstorming sessions with a remix of White Rabbit playing. “People want us up in their grey space.” What is The Matrix about? “Obviously The Matrix is about trans politics” “Crypto fascism!” “Capitalist exploitation.” “We are so far down the wrong rabbit-hole here people.”
“One word: bullet time.”
This bit is just fascinating. Putting a caricature of commentary about the sequel right in the sequel is just great – I’m not even sure I fully grok it. This really feels like a reflection of streamer culture and commentary tracks. Can I get a Hololive watch-a-long of this bit, just to fill out another layer? Part of me wants to reject this as facile, memetic “deepness”: a Rick and Morty parody of meta commentary. But, this feels more full of meaning. The Matrix really is about all of these things. Boiling it down to just one of them feels like a bad joke because it’s not just one of them. Having multiple meanings doesn’t make something automatically good or even deep – maybe The Matrix is just a shallow collection of vague references to deeper things – but trying to reduce it to just one or two is even worse.
I scoffed, condescendingly, as the designers talked about needing guns and action. Obviously I’m better than that. I just want deep ideas, philosophy, and high art.
Then we have the repeat of the office scene from the first movie, only with more guns and violence. Agent Morpheus is badass and I loved it. Okay, The Matrix is definitely at least a little bit about bullet time, guns, and violence.
Can I just point out here that I love how music is used to indicate callbacks to the original film. It’s been happening all along, but it just keeps happening, and it’s great.
Thomas hesitates to get out of the matrix and winds up back at his analyst’s office. We learn that the alternate, less-cool versions of Thomas and Tiffany are due to their “Digital Self Images” being altered to hide them. The matrix can recode how a person presents to others. “Obviously The Matrix is about trans politics.” We find out that, although Thomas feels like it’s been twenty years, it’s actually been sixty.
“Nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia.”
Thomas gets out. We see Trinity’s pod near his. Him awakening is pretty much the same as in the original. The ship’s name is “Mnemosyne”. We all remember this. We’ve all seen Johnny Mnemonic, right?
Agent Morpheus kicking Neo’s ass to cure his withdrawal is great. The callback to the dojo. Neo’s going to die: due to withdrawal of the matrix’s shackles or due to starvation for real freedom? A good fight clears things out. “Are memories turned into fiction any less real?”
The robot buddies are cute. They don’t add much of substance, but I thought they were neat. That we have synthetic beings on the same side as some humans is a neat idea: it’s not people versus machines, but more complex. I always loved how The Matrix, particularly the second and third movies, vaguely hinted at a rich machine society that we only ever get glimpses of. The Animatrix extended this some too.
Niobe locks Neo up. We learn that things aren’t going great: there’s a new war with machines on both sides. We don’t learn about much of it, but Niobe blames Neo and Morpheus. Were they the cause of the current issues, or does Niobe merely blame them? Everyone but Niobe completely idolizes Neo, though Trinity has a fangirl of her own which was a nice touch. Niobe was always a skeptic, and perhaps she’s just given in to despair. As we later learn, despair and hope are nearly identical in code.
Shepherd has a great line. “Everything was simpler back then… people wanted to be free.” I think we’re meant to like this character, but this feels like an all-too-familiar appeal to a golden age. You know, back when we all knew who the enemy was.
Niobe is pissed. “This is not independence of mind, it’s mutiny.” Well, she was always a skeptic. Good thing we have an excuse to ignore her and get back into the matrix.
One of the crew comments on Neo: “I was kind of worried at first because he’s so much older. The bear, the hair… it all totally works for me.” I think that pretty much sums up what we were all thinking.
Alright, now they get jumped by a bunch of renegade programs: The Merovingian and his crew. Agent Smith shows up too. Neo still knows kung fu.
The fights are good and having multiple fights going on at once is fun. The 1-on-1 duel with Smith is great (listen for that musical callback again.)
The Merv’s crazy rant is really something else. At various points he blames Neo for… texting, Facebook, and wikipedia? When the fighting is done he shouts that his “sequel franchise spinoff” isn’t over yet. I honestly can’t tell whether this whole bit is just a joke or if there’s something more to it, but it was really entertaining.
Okay, back to the actual plot. Neo’s going for Trinity. The Analyst is 100% the bad guy. Neo and Trinity were literally resurrected: their bodies rebuilt. That’s neat sci-fi and it explains how Trinity survived, given that she was pretty dead.
The Analyst tells us that humans don’t care about facts, only fiction. Timely.
We learn that “the one” was always Neo and Trinity together. I mean, we learned it if we didn’t already get it from the original trilogy. Neo died in the first movie until Trinity revived him with a kiss. In a sense, she got to choose whether Neo was the one: he died not really buying it and she asserted, against all odds, that it was him. If anyone says that this is a retcon then they weren’t paying attention the first time around.
The girl from the train station is back, and we get an invisible machine bird. Neat, but I didn’t see much depth to it.
In the course of a single scene, Niobe chastises Neo for robbing Bugs of her agency by saying not to blame her… then tries to rob it herself by telling Bugs that she can’t volunteer because she’s being given a command. So, Niobe’s just kind of a dick, but we already knew that. Still, Niobe always makes the right decision when it’s important.
Alright, let’s keep this moving. Honestly, I liked the whole movie (rewatching it as I type this up), but I definitely feel that the bits in Io and the renegade program fight scene carry less meaning than everything else.
The Trinity heist is cool though. Good callback to the Morpheus heist. This really is a remake, rather than a sequel, isn’t it? I’m fine with this. I have to say, I like this remake/sequel a lot more than how FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE did it.
I really like how the Analyst uses bullet time against Neo here. It’s a fun gimmick.
I really like that Trinity gets to make the decision. It’s built up like she has the agency “this time”, but again, she kind of had the agency the first time too: it’s just more explicit this time around. There’s a moment where we fear that she’ll make the wrong call… but, nope, Trinity is still a badass. Awesome.
Smith jumps in to incidentally save the day, like the rex in Jurassic Park, but then quickly turns things again. Neo’s flight fake-out was funny. Overall, I really like the little bits of humor sprinkled throughout the movie.
Trinity really gets to be a badass for the rest of the film. I didn’t feel like anything was taken from Neo for this: he wanted to get her out and he still gets to fly, just with Trinity. Neo gets everything he wanted, and Trinity gets to be a badass again. Bear in mind that she was kicking agent ass before Neo was even freed.
“I think I heard a shot” – Wake Up, with female vocals. Awesome.
Roll credits – “Catrix” joke post-credits – and we’re out! I’m still trying to figure out what this all means and what the impact on society will be. I really feel like this is a better sequel than the second and third films. Those were kind of just “more matrix”. I mean, they were fine – I liked the DBZ fight scene in the third film. This feels like a real new matrix movie to me. I doubt that it’ll be as big as the original, but I really hope that it’ll make a bigger splash than the other sequels. If nothing else, between this and Cyberpunk 2077, Keanu is definitely making a big comeback.
Maybe I’ll finally get around to reading Simulacra and Simulation, or diving into some more cyberpunk fiction.