Matrix 4
December 26, 2021
By NZB3
I don’t do spoiler warnings. That was your spoiler warning.
The Matrix Resurrections (2021) has just been released which prompts a question as to which way the director would take it. Often the route in these situations is to create a nostalgic mosaic resembling the bottled lightning of the first installment. So many songs and films in Western art are examples of this reverse-engineering because there is an audience for doing so. Some of that audience is getting a bitter taste in their mouth as a result so modern sequels have started adding a little sweeter to counteract that. This is achieved by a quantum of self-awareness on the part of the film, a recognition that “yes, we’re doing it all again.” The Matrix Resurrections uses that device (even naming Warner Brothers Studios in the process) and Muppets Most Wanted (2014) had an entire song about it. Jurassic World: Dominion (2022) had better do a whole lot of it.
There’s nothing morally or aesthetically wrong about re-heating leftovers from a previous meal. There’s still plenty of nutrition in there. Dollars to be made from the intellectual property. Lunchboxes (or whatever) to sell. However, there’s another Matrix audience that wants fresh ingredients. Specifically, they want Wachowski Brothers’ GenX version of Descartes Meditations (1641) and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and they want it AGAIN. Such expectations lead to disappointment.
Anticipating this, I’d hoped for a prequel. We know the Matrix has been rebooted many times before Neo came along so why not explore a previous incarnation of The One. Tell another good story that emphasises the same heroic journey of individual vs. collective in a way that speaks to this generation! A contemporary setting is fine or, hell, give us a Cartesian or Carrollian one or even a Robin Hood Medieval Matrix. The environment within the Matrix can be anything so another prequel could even be a Lord of the Rings world where Keanu Reeves is a Hobbit and Hugo Weaving an elf! Alas, Hollywood didn’t call on me for such excellent suggestions.
“Does anyone need another president? Or the sins of Swaggart parts 6, 7, 8 and 9?” – Strawman, Lou Reed
“We’re doing a sequel. There’s no need to disguise the studio considers us a viable franchise. We’re doing a sequel. How hard can it be? We can’t do any worse than The Godfather: 3. We’re doing a sequel. The studio wants more. While they wait for Tom Hanks to make Toy Story 4. I thought it was the end, but no my friends, this is when we get to do it all again. Do it all again” – Muppets (2014)
“Suggests to me it’s a prequel not a sequel. They can look older in the Matrix if it’s a prequel. And dead characters (eg Cypher) can be alive or even re-cast because we’d be talking about an earlier iteration of the Matrix. The trilogy we saw was version 6 or something. Remember Col. Sanders at the end whose only job was to wait for The One to show up so he could press the reset button? And he’s like, “Ah, we meet again.” The part of The Matrix which has yet to be explored is those earlier iterations. Morpheus, Trinity, Neo, etc are much like Doctor Who. They’ve been regenerated several times over by the time we first met them.” – Me, September 2021
What we have, then, is the Western art of functional replication rather than the Western art of re-interpretation and re-expression of an old truth. Matrix IV is not like Warren Zevon’s own true cover of Steve Winwood’s Back In The High Life Again or George Michael’s renewal of Queen’s Somebody to Love nor any number of brilliant covers of Bob Dylan songs. It’s like Elton John singing Candle in the Wind again with new lyrics for Diana Windsor in 1997: Dull unless you’re a low-brow music consumer and/or thrall of the Royal Cult Muggle Masses. Functional replication has the scope of our reptilian brain and as such is enough for most of the Muggle masses. Stimulus and response is all a reptile really has, including the repertoire of previous stimuli and the successful (on the grounds that it led to feeding or breeding or non-fatality) results. Inductive reasoning is how reptiles think: If it worked before then keep doing it. Re-heated sequels is the reptile way to produce and consume art. This yields the ground of innovation and creativity entirely to the post-reptile brain, the higher consciousness man. It also leaves higher aesthetic taste to people like that who will not find soul nourishment from consuming from the reptile’s cut’n paste menu.
So, Matrix IV is a movie for reptiles. Neil Patrick Harris as a new big bad. He is important to the Matrix for the same reason as always: He’s a software architect best able to deceive the humans while they are farmed by the machines. This time the method is to recognise and harness the romantic attachment between Neo and Trinity but keep it in suspense so it doesn’t bring the entire system down. Most of the plot is Neo figuring this out and uniting with Trinity so as to bring down yet another Matrix iteration. The details of that, including chases and fight scenes, were, to me, as boring as re-heated food or a rehashed song.
Keanu Reeves is the better part of 60 years old now so can’t kung fu therefore receives the plot cover of Jedi-like Force powers to block and hit people and objects. Carrie-Anne Moss has an age-appropriate body too so can’t fit her old catsuit. She gets prop cover such as conveniently placed tote bags to cover her middle-aged rear flank (unlike Jessica Jones where she just owned it.) Zion, the human world they earlier saved, is kinda saved kinda not and the story awkwardly straddles the two contradictory quantum states. On the one hand Neo saved the world and is thanked, on the other hand it’s situation normal and humanity is still in jelly prison pods. Cram in black cats, guns, wall-running, spent shell casings falling out of helicopters, 90s ripple-mirror sfx#5, distressed concrete, pealing paint, jumping off buildings, slow-mo bullets, chair-convulsions with oxygen-rich red blood trickles, colored pills, shaved heads, red-eye killbots, green text on black, daytime designer sunglasses, flapping greatcoat, imaginary African renaissance fashion outside Matrix, 90s Emo jet black fashion inside Matrix,….cram in flashback clips of the original films, smeg around the edges of free will vs. determinism problem, express obligatory uncertainty about Neo having powers or not, dojo splintering induction fight, red leather chair, faith-based hero-worship of Neo,…..
You can enjoy all of that without being a reptile yourself. Being a reptile is part of our tripartite soul too, it’s part of the art we need. It needn’t be a let down either, provided you’ve been around long enough not to have raised your expectations higher than can be delivered by a re-heat sequel or a compilation album. That is what Matrix Resurrections is so ought to be judged alongside other sequel films for how well they did at re-heating a cold meal. Or, how well a given Greatest Hits CD manages to re-bundle hit songs from a band’s back catalog or even how much money the studio makes from having this task performed. As such, I give it a rating of Austin Powers III out of Star Wars V.
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Note: Worst and most derivative re-hash of a great song ever was done by the government in 1997. The BBC’s hack job of Perfect Day should get an award for the most over-produced reptile food ever funded by stolen tax money.
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