Evan knocked on the door, thoroughly confused.
“Come in,” the voice said from the other side.
Evan pushed the door open and looked around at a fancy executive office, adorned with modern furnishings and a huge corner window overlooking downtown San Francisco. Standing at the window was a figure Evan knew should be familiar, but whose name eluded him.
“Sit down,” the standing figure said.
Evan sat in an upholstered chair facing what he assumed to be the stranger’s desk. He did his best to slow his now galloping heartbeat, to will his mind, as well as his body, to a state of if not relaxation, at least moderate control. The last thing he remembered, he had been sitting at home, watching a Youtube video about professional wrestling, when suddenly he found himself mid-stride in the hallway outside this office, a vague understanding building inside of him that he had been called to a business meeting.
“It’s been a while,” the standing figure said, still gazing out the window, his back to Evan.
“Has it?” Evan asked. “I’ll be honest, man, I don’t know what the fuck is going on right now.”
The standing figure sighed and slowly turned to face his sitting companion. What struck Evan first was that the man was much taller than he had previously thought–close to eight feet tall. What struck him second was that instead of a human face, this person had only one gigantic eye. What the hell was going on?
The figure sat down in his own chair and gave Evan his full attention. Evan noticed that when he did this, the creature’s eye contracted, almost like a…
Camera lens.
At this moment, Evan knew he had encountered this being before, only he couldn’t recall when. The memory was undeniably there, if just out of reach.
“Almost two years, in fact. What’s the matter, don’t you remember me?”
“Um,” Evan said, “I know I should, but…”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. It’s me. Kinobrax.”
“Kino…Oh! Holy shit! I remember you! You’re that demon who cursed me to watch, summarize, and review every movie ever made, before I would be allowed to die!”
“Obviously. How someone could forget something like that is beyond me, but here we are.”
“Well, to be honest,” Evan said, “with all the crazy shit that’s been going on in the world the past couple years, not being able to die has been a pretty dope safety-net for me. I guess I just went into survival mode, or whatever.”
“Yeah, it has been pretty wild, hasn’t it? We’ve been rather busy, what with the global pandemic and the growing resurgence of fascist ideology in America and abroad.”
“What do you mean ‘we’ve been busy’? Oh, my God! Did you do that? The virus stuff and all that insane political bullshit? Is that you?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“You gotta stop it!” Evan screamed.
“Why? It’s awesome,” Kinobrax responded.
“No it isn’t awesome! It’s fucking lame!”
“Look, I’m a demon. Let’s just agree that our definitions of ‘awesome’ might not align too often.”
“Whatever, man. Why am I here? I was actually kinda busy myself.”
“No, you weren’t.”
Evan sighed. “No, I wasn’t.”
“Listen, Van. Can I call you Van?”
“Literally no one has ever–”
“The thing is, Van, I just got word from our parent company, Warner Brothers, and they informed me–”
“Wait. Warner Brothers, the movie studio?”
“That’s right.”
“They…own Hell?”
“Of course. Does that surprise you?”
Evan thought about it. “No, actually. That checks out.”
“Anyway, they've let me know that they are interested in making more movie reviews, with or without you.”
“There’s no way anyone from Warner Brothers is at all aware of my existence,” Evan said.
“True, but we’re doing a bit here. Didn’t you watch the new Matrix movie?”
“Uh, yeah. It was kinda–”
“Save it for the review. I grow weary of this.”
With that, Kinobrax snapped his fingers, and Evan found himself back home, already typing on the Chromebook he had received for Christmas.
Oh, my God. I think I’m gonna puke. I had forgotten how unsettling it was to be in that demon’s presence. But whatever, I’m back, and I guess I’ll do what he wants and give you my thoughts on the fourth film in the Matrix franchise: “The Matrix Resurrections.” I’ve watched this movie twice, once in the theaters, and once at home, and while–spoilers–I don’t think it’s very good, I do find it somewhat intriguing.
The film starts basically how the first film starts, with a badass hacker named Trinity holed up inside a hotel, doing some hacker shit on a computer, and waiting for some cops to sneak up on her so she can kick their asses. Only it is being viewed from another perspective, that of a couple other hackers who have apparently happened upon this scene while digging through some old Matrix code, or whatever. Then some other stuff happens, and we get to what I thought was the most interesting part of the movie.
I’m not going to summarize the entire plot, for a couple reasons. One, that would take a long time, and I don’t feel like it, and two, the plot is not what this movie is about. Like the other Matrix films, the plot is just an excuse to bring up mind-blowing science fiction concepts. And, just like the other Matrix films, it doesn’t do a great job at this. I’m sorry. I know. But I’ll be honest. I like…most of the Matrix movies, but they’re always spoken of as if they have this depth that I’ve never really thought was there. The Matrix is a movie about being able to download karate. And that’s fucking awesome, don’t get me wrong, but personally, the “deep” stuff they brought up always struck me as watered-down versions of other media from before, properties that had the luxury of delving deeper into concepts that are frankly too dense to be adequately explored in even three two-hour movies. Philip K Dick didn’t have to throw in an action scene every ten pages. Whether or not you believe the numerous claims that the Wachowskis borrowed from pre-existing properties too liberally, there is no denying that practically all the concepts the Matrix films bring up had already been discussed before, to greater effect. And this time, that honor goes to Simulacron-3.
Simulacron-3 is a 1964 novel by a man named Daniel F. Galouye, about a guy tasked with creating a simulation of a society in order to better understand his own. Without getting too far into what occurs, people start to escape the simulation, entering what the protagonist believes to be the real world. But, wouldn’t you know it, the “real world” is just another simulation, and our protagonist has to confront the fact that he is just as artificial as his own creation. It rules. It’s been adapted to film numerous times, first in 1973 as the German television mini-series “World on a Wire,” then in 1999 as the American film “The Thirteenth Floor,” then in 2021 as “The Matrix Resurrections.”
When we first catch up with our pal Neo, he is working as a famous video-game designer. It’s been almost twenty years since his masterpiece game, called “The Matrix,” and he is informed that plans have already begun on a follow-up, which will happen whether he is involved or not. Just like the very hilarious opening to this review, a character literally mentions this as something the higher-up at Warner Brothers are considering. This was the first moment where I felt like this might be a really interesting movie. Until “Space Jam 2” (a film with which this movie shares a striking similarity), such a blatant call-out of the real-world producers of a property was usually played off for laughs, as opposed to acting as the inciting incident for the story. What we then get is a series of brainstorming sessions from the game designers concerning what a follow-up to the Matrix should entail. This had the potential to be really cool. What better place than a Matrix movie to tear down the walls between the two worlds of fiction and reality? But they drop the ball. Ultimately, this story line ends up being equal parts cynical reaction to the state of filmmaking today, and hand-waving justification for the movie the viewer is currently watching. Like its predecessors, this movie thinks it’s deeper than it is. Its meta aspects are half-assed, and while it is a very silly movie, it drapes itself in this cool-guy cynicism that keeps it from being as silly as the story requires.
Like in Simulacron-3, Neo is approached by a person he believed to be a character of his creation, now come to life in the real world. From there, it follows the story of the first film, with Neo deciding to trust his new friends and journey with them to reality. Okay, fine, I guess, but why stop at this one level? We’ve already seen that there is the Matrix and there is reality, and this movie has already pretty much stated that Neo is residing in the simulation, just as he had been before. A better story, in my opinion, would have been if we climbed through the fourth wall and into our reality, the domain that, for you and me, the viewing public, is the “true” reality. I think that the protagonist of “The Matrix Resurrections” should have been Lana Wachowski herself.
So much of this movie is obviously referential of our world, from the studio’s plans to continue with the franchise with or without the original filmmakers (a plan that we know was in the works, several years ago), to the multi-faceted reactions to the original trilogy, stated as actual lines of dialog in the film. It’s pretty clear that Neo is a stand-in for Lana Wachowski, at least in the opening act. But he’s also a fictional character with his own backstory. The whole thing is already pretty muddled, and we haven’t even gotten to the confusing part yet. I think the film should have begun as a documentary following Lana Wachowski and all the events that led up to her deciding to make the film, this time without the help of her sister. She could look in the camera and tell the audience directly what she feels, without having to filter her thoughts through the many layers of character. In the film, the meta references somehow manage to feel far too on-the-nose while simultaneously coming off as oblique. Here, she could put forth the concepts with the bluntness she so clearly wants to, and it wouldn’t come off as nearly as condescending as it does in the final picture. Then, instead of Neo encountering a quippy half-Morpheus in a poorly-lit bathroom, Lana Wachowski would be confronted by fucking Neo while sitting in a Starbucks, working on a script for a movie she doesn’t really want to make. I don’t know what would happen next in this movie, but I’ve seen “The Matrix Resurrections” twice, and I don’t really know what happens next in that, either.
For most of the rest of the story, if, at any moment, any character had questioned why they were doing what they were doing, the logical response would be “so the movie can happen.” The following events are barely explained, and for a while the whole thing devolves into something of a cliche heist film, complete with the scene where someone explains the wildly intricate plan while a parallel sequence of events shows that plan in action. I kinda couldn’t believe what I was seeing. In the first Matrix film, there is a similar concept, but they only explain enough to get our heroes through the door, and we are surprised and excited by what happens. But here it is so derivative that for a moment, I thought it had to be bad on purpose.
That’s a popular theory that I’ve read on the internet: that Lana, either as a meta-statement on the creative garbage dump that is the current culture of reboots in Hollywood, or as an attempt to kill the franchise before someone else got the chance, purposefully made a shitty movie. This strikes me as some high-grade copium. I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised if this was the case, and the fact that I’m not 100% sure either way is what makes this movie so intriguing to me, but if it is, it would be the culmination of a long con that stretches back at least to that Channing Tatum movie where MIla Kunis was the queen of the bees, or a dog princess, or whatever the fuck happened in “Jupiter Ascending.” Because this movie isn’t a shocking departure from the type of stuff the Wachowskis have been making for many years now. If this movie was the exact same except for any indication that it had anything to do with the Matrix franchise, everyone would just be like, “yeah, that’s a Wachowski movie.” The fact that the Matrix lends itself to this kind of transgressive statement does not guarantee that it is one. This movie is at times upsettingly cynical, but it is not bad on purpose.
Other stuff happens, Trinity is brought back to life, Barney Stinson is there, whatever, it’s not important. I want to talk about another cliche this movie suffers from, one that is not only derivative, but also potentially dangerous. Early on in this film, Thomas Anderson is unaware that the events of his “game” really happened. He is told by his therapist that he has had a mental breakdown, and that his inability to distinguish fact from fiction is a symptom of a mental disorder. He is prescribed a nameless medication that turns out to be the blue pills that keep one blind and enslaved in the Matrix. It’s not until he stops taking his medication that he is able to see the truth. In the end, his therapist ends up being the one in control of the new Matrix, or whatever, and Neo and Trinity discover their true power by finally successfully flinging themselves off a building, something Neo has attempted to do several times throughout the film. Ignoring the fact that a character jumping off a skyscraper to prove to himself that the reality he’s been shown is false is something that happens in the early issues of Grant Morrison’s comic book “The Invisibles” (one of the many properties the Wachowskis have been accused of pilfering), this is just another entry in a long line of stories about how practicing mental health somehow robs you of your individuality and power. How often do characters not reach their full potential until they pour their pills down the drain? Is that because the act of taking antidepressants stifles human creativity, or because lots of books and movies are written by people who don’t want to take their antidepressants? I’m not a doctor, but I have taken antidepressants, and personally, my experience has been the exact opposite. I know every person is different, but there were times when my meds felt like magic capsules imbued with the ability to make me give a shit about stuff. Depression isn’t sexy, and any notion that it makes you more creative or more of an individual is, in my opinion, propaganda your brain feeds you to keep itself sick. I’m tired of this trope, not just because I want people to get the help they need, but because I’ve seen it a thousand fucking times. Please, take care of yourself, and don’t jump off buildings. And please, come up with new things to happen in movies.
Which is ultimately where I land on the Matrix Resurrections. For something that masquerades as a screed against a world devoid of new ideas, it has no new ideas. I thought the coolest thing it mentioned was the strawberry that they were able to grow in the real world by reverse-engineering the Matrix code for “strawberry” and turning it into organic information. That’s interesting. In the previous films, the only thing the Matrix gives the real world is death. They found a way to turn it on its head, and create life from nothing. That’s what the movie should have been about. Instead of tying one’s tangible body to an intangible existence, they reach inside and make real that which before was only an idea. They tried that with the machine that turned programs into swarms of particles, but that is barely scratching the surface of what you could do with that concept. It’s disappointing.
But I’m not upset that this movie exists, and I do think people should watch it. It takes big swings, and the thing about big swings is that they are fun to watch even if they miss. Again, it’s not good, but it’s not good in a bizarre, befuddling way that is more interesting than something that just sucks. The action, cinematography, and editing are all substantially worse than most movies with budgets larger than those of Hulu originals you’ve never heard of, but there were some moments that I couldn’t look away from. It suffers from atrocious dialog and often bludgeons you with its themes, but at least the men’s rights movement, society’s most pathetic losers, are likely to hate it. So it’s not all bad.
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