'The Matrix Resurrections' Review Thread
Rotten Tomatoes: 67% (83 reviews) with 6.40 in average rating
Metacritic: 64/100 (35 critics)
As with other movies, the scores are set to change as time passes. Meanwhile, I'll post some short reviews on the movie.
Resurrections leaves plenty of things unexplored. For a movie that so loudly makes reference to the real world, its failure to address the place “red pill” symbolism has found in right-wing propaganda comes as a mild surprise. (The dialogue even contains the word “sheeple,” a favorite of those selling conspiracies online.) And there’s nothing here to inspire hope that, should Warners or whomever insist on more sequels, they’d be worth seeing. But as someone who watched Reloaded and Revolutions more than once, trying unsuccessfully to believe they were good (and who’d happily take a blue pill that erased them from my memory), I actually look forward to seeing this one a second time.
-John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter
Wachowski’s gamble is that viewers will enjoy a film that’s heavy on philosophizing and introspection as long as it retains the emotional, romantic hook that powered the first movie. Reeves and Moss sell their reunion as Neo and Trinity persuasively, glowing with the overwhelming chemistry and affection that Wachowski needed to push the film beyond cynicism.
All of us are stuck in our reboots. But at a time when mega-budget franchise movies can only be about themselves, Lana Wachowski has made one that pushes beyond the dopamine hit of cheap nostalgia and dares to dream up a future where mainstream films might inspire us to re-imagine what’s possible instead of just asking us to clap at the sight of history repeating itself.
In a world where “Space Jam” can hack into the “Matrix” IP, this far-from-radical add-on seems distractingly preoccupied with justifying its own existence, rather than seeking a way to take fans to the next level.
It’s doubtful this heart-on-sleeve optimism, expressed by two people well into middle age, will appeal to those who treat the first Matrix’s rage-against-the-machine superficiality as holy writ. For everyone else, your soul, like Neo and Trinity, might just take flight.
-Keith Uhlich, Slant: 3.5/4
The fourth ‘Matrix’ film offers a volcanic cluster of ideas with ambition – and a reminder that long black coats and tiny sunglasses are, indeed, very cool.
-Clarisse Loughrey, Independent: 4/5
If we absolutely must have another “Matrix” movie, if we can’t just let it be, then let it be this weird one. Let it be a film with an existential crisis. Let it be a film that’s half a nostalgia cash-in and half a biopic about a filmmaker who’s forced to make a nostalgia cash-in. Let “The Matrix Resurrections” leave fans half-satisfied and wondering if maybe the fan-service system in which Hollywood has invested for so many decades is itself just another Matrix — keeping the throngs content with low-risk throwbacks and preventing audiences from getting brand-new and truly ambitious stories that push the medium and the culture forward. You know, movies like “The Matrix.”
The Matrix Resurrections is the kind of film that will go down in cult history because it is so laughably bad. Truthfully, I can’t even say it’s unenjoyable because I spent so much of its overly long runtime giggling over how jaw-droppingly misguided the majority of it is. And, even with how rough it is, folks looking for that nostalgia will get exactly what they’re looking for. Granted, it’s exciting to see Neo and Trinity again, and the new players are exciting additions to a complicated canon. At the same time, so many good ideas (and the visual effects) are met with truly shoddy execution and an unbearable desire to be constantly meta that the best summary available is “Less than the sum of its parts.”
-Amelia Emberwing, IGN: 4.0 "bad"
Really, Resurrections doesn’t do much to remove the anticlimax that hung like a cloud over the cinema auditorium at the end of the third film in 2003. This movie is set up to initiate a possible new series, but there is no real creative life in it. Where the original film was explosively innovatory, this is just another piece of IP, an algorithm of unoriginality.
-Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: 2/5
The movie taps into our shared paranoia that nothing is real, but also our desire for a world that’s a little less real — for it to be possible to open the door of a broom closet and enter a hotel room in Paris, overlooking the Eiffel Tower. Or to have a mirror become permeable and form the gateway into a new world. Or to beat up a loathed enemy just by sitting in a lounge chair and thinking about it. That’s the allure of multiple realities. In the end, it’s the ideas at work in “The Matrix Resurrections,” much more than the action, that keep us contentedly in our seats for well over two hours.
-Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
Resurrections does eclipse its predecessors for full-on, kick-you-in-the-heart romance: Reeves and Moss, comfortable with silences, lean into an adult intimacy, so rare in blockbusters, that's more thrilling than any roof jump (though those are pretty terrific too). Their motorbiking through an exploding city, one of them clutching the other, could be the most defiantly sexy scene of a young year.
-Joshua Rothkopf, Entertainment Weekly: B+
Wachowski’s “The Matrix Resurrections” isn’t without rough patches. The director carries the metatextual jokes too far. For a large swath of time, the narrative feels aimless. New characters aren’t wholly fleshed out. Returning figures become superfluous after their initial use wanes. The soundtrack lacks memorable needle drops and the score verges on repetitive. But the bones of what makes a great ‘Matrix’ movie: Neo and Trinity — are as strong as ever. It’s that timeless romance that makes “The Matrix Resurrections” a vivid and boundless new beginning.
-Robert Daniels, The Playlist: B
Yes, reboots and revivals are inevitable, and more than most, any "Matrix" sequel was likely to be polarizing. Still, that first rush of enthusiasm can ebb quickly, which is what happens here. Because while "Resurrections" again offers a choice between the red pill and blue pill, the one thing that won't be necessary -- especially for those choosing the home-viewing option -- is a sleeping pill.
“The Matrix” was renowned for its action, although the new film arrives to find a much higher bar, thanks to "John Wick,” “Mad Max: Fury Road” and many superhero movies. The martial-arts melees and firefights are just OK until the big finale, when Wachowski lets loose and gets creative. But “Resurrections” overall tends toward the philosophical, focusing on legacy and emotion where the original trilogy emphasized free will vs. destiny. The new "Matrix" tries to reprogram a beloved piece of cinema. However, it’s quite a few fixes short of a full upgrade.
-Brian Truitt, USA Today: 2/4
Where Resurrections really disappoints is in the staging of the action. The Hong Kong-influenced long shots that made The Matrix so revolutionary are all but absent, replaced by rapid cuts that render the fight choreography less legible than in previous installments. The hopepunk of it all remains intact. (So does the Wachowskis’ penchant for bizarre aging makeups, for what it’s worth.) This film has one character pointedly remark that “nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia,” but it also has another say, “Hope and despair are almost identical in code.” There’s a clear ambivalence of creator for creation in The Matrix Resurrections, but the impression left by the end is not of bitterness but hope. Confusing, heartfelt, goofy, vulnerable, endearing, all-too-human hope.
-Katie Rife, The A.V. Club: C+
There’s incredible merit in the action seen in “The Matrix Resurrections,” but those aren’t the elements that free the mind of the medium like bold storytelling, like “The Matrix” preached and then became a game-changing classic, only to become a docket for satisfying shareholders. Blue pill or red pill? It doesn’t matter anymore; they’re both placebos.
-Nick Allen, RogerEbert.com: 2.5/4
PLOT
Twenty years after the events of The Matrix Revolutions, Neo lives a seemingly ordinary life under his original identity as Thomas A. Anderson in San Francisco, with a therapist who prescribes him blue pills to counteract the strange and unnatural things he occasionally glimpses. He also meets a woman who appears to be Trinity, but neither of them recognizes the other. However, when a new version of Morpheus offers him the red pill and reopens his mind to the world of the Matrix, which has become more secure and dangerous in the years since the Smith infection, Neo joins a group of rebels to fight a new enemy.
DIRECTOR
Lana Wachowski
WRITERS
Lana Wachowski, David Mitchell & Aleksandar Hemon
MUSIC
Johnny Klimek & Tom Tykwer
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Daniele Massaccesi & John Toll
EDITOR
Joseph Jett Sally
Release date:
December 22, 2021 (on theaters and HBO Max)
STARRING
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Keanu Reeves as Thomas Anderson/Neo
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Carrie-Anne Moss as Tiffany/Trinity
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Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Morpheus
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Jessica Henwick as Bugs
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Jonathan Groff as Smith
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Neil Patrick Harris as The Analyst
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Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Sati
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Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe
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Lambert Wilson as The Merovingian
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Daniel Bernhardt as Agent Johnson
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Eréndira Ibarra as Lexy
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Max Riemelt as Shepherd
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Brian J. Smith as Berg
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Toby Onwumere as Sequoia
Submitted December 21, 2021 at 11:04PM by SanderSo47 https://ift.tt/3soCbGR
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