The Matrix Resurrections — a deeply meta sequel about Matrix sequels

Nothing says unintended consequences like The Matrix. Twenty-two years after the thrill and invention of the first adventure, directors Lana and Lilly Wachowski clearly did not plan their most enduring legacy to be the takeover of the phrase “red-pilling” by America’s alt-right. Now, as just Lana returns with The Matrix Resurrections, QAnon will have to learn to share. 

In 1999, The Matrix foresaw a world governed by machines. In 2021, it turns out to be run by fans, at whom the movie aims endless nostalgic callbacks. Fan service at least provides a reason for being. Otherwise, the project can feel inexplicable. A clue to the problem is the sheer amount of dialogue, characters spouting exposition as though if they just keep talking long enough, chance alone will deliver a point.

Yet we begin in relative coherence — in a present overhung by the past. Here in the world of the new film, The Matrix exists as a mighty old franchise too — but rather than three movies, as a trilogy of vastly influential computer games (and not everybody hated the second and third instalments.) Keanu Reeves is their designer, Thomas, a modest legend at a leading games company. His boss is glib and wears sockless loafers.

But both are prey to corporate overlords. “Beloved parent company Warner Bros” has demanded a new Matrix. Yes, that’s how meta we’re getting. Out in the office, irritants from marketing try to pin down the appeal of the original. “Mind porn!” someone shouts. There are verbal winks about how hard it is to be a spin-off and undergraduate musings on the nature of fiction.

Reeves’s dazed charisma lets the film get away with a lot. Thomas is nagged by intimations of life through the rabbit hole. Likewise Carrie-Anne Moss, no more the fearless Trinity but a busy mom married into the patriarchy. Other roles from first time around are recast to iffy effect. To rouse the olds from their stupor, younger, cheaper actors enter, bringing with them the air of a Nine Inch Nails tribute band.

What next? Hard to say. The plot feels like the frantic, scribbled product of an essay crisis. There is talk of a character vanishing up their own umbilicus, which is a nice, self-aware joke but not wide of the mark. Action scenes arrive: bone-crunching kung-fu in derelict warehouses, gunplay in cyber-noir cityscapes. But what is any of this about besides its own umbilicus? Wachowski makes a point of dismissing the sociopolitical theories that buzzed around the first film. (Though it was she who first brought up Baudrillard.) Instead, there is the germ of a neat idea about movies needing to think beyond heroes and villains, promptly capsized by a moustache-twirling bad guy. (Mark Zuckerberg is more unsettling.)

Two things almost save the day. One is the thought that Wachowski has made a film so erratic as pure mischief. (Be careful what you wish for, beloved parent company Warner Bros.) The other is an unexpected pleasure amid the nonsense, a charming middle-age love story. The chemistry of Reeves and Moss is hidden in plain sight. It comes as a bizarrely sweet sting in the tail — a whole different reality.

★★★☆☆

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