Reviews for “The Matrix Resurrections” are out. They are, as predicted, mixed. I’ve sworn off from reviewing any more films until next year since I am currently going through a very mild bout of COVID. It seems as though the virus is ravaging through the entire community here. The good news is I now have all-important natural immunity.
Back to the “The Matrix Resurrections.” it has a 70% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 65 on Metacritic — considerably decent for a sequel many didn’t really want.
In “The Matrix Resurrections”, we return to a world of two realities: everyday life and the other side. Basically, the choice between the red and the blue pill. Mr. Anderson aka Neo, a gaming designer who invested the ‘Matrix’ games, lives a mundane life of isolation.
Set 20 years after the events of “The Matrix Revolutions”, Neo lives an ordinary life as Anderson in San Francisco, with a therapist who prescribes him blue pills to subside the occasional flashbacks to the first three films. He always sees a woman who appears to be Trinity at the local coffee shop, but neither of them recognizes the other.
I really liked the first half of this film, which had a very meta feel to it; Neo has no clue he is Ne0, Trinity has no clue she is Trinity. A couple of potshots are taken towards Warner Bros being hungry for a sequel. However, the second half just goes out of control, playing like a mash-up of the franchise’s worst traits. It all goes downhill when a new version of Morpheus offers Anserson the red pill and reopens his mind to the world of the Matrix. Neo joins a group of rebels to fight a new enemy absolutely nobody cares about.
Director Lana Wachowski seems to have lost her touch in regards to shooting action. The fight scenes here are as bad as those from ‘Revolutions,’ with excessive CGI utilized in favour of developing character. Maybe Lana needed her fellow sister to help out here, alas Lilly decided to, smartly, sit this one out. There’s no poetic allure to the action either, the amount of fast cuts used by Wachowski are headache-inducing.
There are no stakes in this fourth film and that’s its biggest downfall. [C-]
The ‘Smile’ franchise has a new director. David Bruckner, who made “The Night House” and the 2022 “Hellraiser” reboot, has been hired to direct “Smile 3” for Paramount.