The Matrix Resurrections (2021) Dir. Lana Wachowski

Almost 20 years have passed since the end of The Matrix trilogy and the film and digital world has certainly changed beyond comprehension. The virtual world of hackers and artificial life has been replaced with media reboots, nostalgia and social media. And it’s very much those topics this belated sequel wants to focus on.

Sadly, this is at the expense of fantastic music, a strong visual style and the endless creativity that came with the original. This time, Neo is a frustrated video game developer struggling to work out reality from fantasy. A group of resistance fighters have to (again) convince him to re-enter the Matrix to overcome a “big bad”.

The cheap shot-on-video style, the choppy editing and the absence of the film’s anime influences are clear from the start and replaced with bland action that could be from any modern film from the genre. The martial arts seem poorly constructed too. Ironically, the neo(n) soaked John Wick films should be the visual yardsticks these days. There’s a “greatest hits” feel to the whole thing and the meta-aspects are clearly intentional but poorly executed and ham-fisted.

A sad facsimile of The Matrix, of course the dialogue includes on-the-nose pot-shots of online language such as “WTF”, “sheeple” and “triggered”. It weirdly reminded me of the mis-judged “meta” Blair Witch sequel. This film's montage of brain-storming for a Matrix video-game being one of the worst things in cinema that year.

Back in the real world, a nano-bot man plants a bloody strawberry or something and then falls out of a drain and now it’s my turn to use "WTF" is going on here?

I’ve been a big defender of the (underappreciated) Matrix sequels – the freeway chase being one of the best action sequences of the 2000s in my eyes. But I hope The Matrix Resurrections convinces more people to reassess both previous sequels, given this honourable but sadly disappointing re-positioning of its lore.

I’m logging off now.

★★☆☆☆

Michael Sales