The Matrix Resurrections - Development
Thoughts On: The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
The One must be pulled from a new upload of the Matrix.
The Matrix is an icon of late 90s and early 2000s sci-fi cinema for all it, originally or not, managed to capture within a complex tale of freedom and destiny. Having re-watched the original trilogy multiple times over the years, I always settled with the first being the most watch-worthy, and the general Matrix iconography being a collection of great moments, primarily from the first movie, rather than a collection of great films. The second and third, as stand-alone films without their few great sequences such as the Smith swarm fight, the highway scene, and the final battle, are a little insipid. That's to say, again, what makes The Matrix as a trilogy or collection of stories (including the Animatrix and more) so iconic are a conglomeration of moments that seed the idea and concept underlying the world it brings to life rather than the totality of the developed story.
The general narrative of The Matrix, its near-biblical exploration of One destined to save the world, always felt a little empty to me. The end of the first Matrix promised that Neo would free the entire world; this never happens, and Resurrections tries to deal with this. Neo, as the One, only feels meaningful to me as the 'first one of many'. Resurrections shows an awareness of the fact that the Matrix had its great collection of moments, revisiting and condensing them into a new narrative similarly structured to the first, but chooses to emphasise a binary as a new saviour as opposed to finally exploring the enlightenment of the collective human race. This is the tease I have felt the Matrix to be a bit empty for. It's all about saving the world, but never quite gets there; and such leaves every movie following the first to lack punch. We see Neo become the One in the original, and that concludes that narrative satisfactorily and with punctum. No other conclusion of a Matrix narrative since, including Resurrections, lives up to the first simply because they end on a promise already made by the original; that Neo will transform the world, teaching humanity, figuratively speaking, to fish for themselves.
We still are withheld this 4 films in, but now Trinity has powers that I would have liked to have seen her have since the second film; she can just fly and use forcefields now - couldn't Neo have taught more people that long before? Maybe an opinion of impatience, but I'd like to have a real and proper conclusion to the Matrix narrative feel approachable, or at least see a definite evolution in the story that takes us away from this simmering process in which we see links between characters and potential in the world-building while new versions of the same philosophical evils replace the last with little more to say. In short, The Matrix world needs to find its 'Super Saiyan Blue'; it always notes that characters upgrade and evolve, but it is not visualised in a way that truly expands the world or transforms the narrative; Neo and his evolved entourage should be battling mechanic gods in alternate synthetic universes by now in my view. So, though an engaging jump back into the Matrix universe, I don't feel Resurrections to be at all re-watchable or a particularly notable development of the first film. Its timid revival of the Matrix world results in small steps forward in a narrative that claims to be grand, but only lives up to its grandiosity in short bursts - unfortunately never with a whole narrative. It's all too easy to feel that Resurrections is merely the start of a new trilogy that won't end much more interestingly than the first, but let's see.
