Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ on HBO Max, a Long-in-the-Works Sequel That’s More Woe Than Whoa

Now (back!) on HBO Max, The Matrix Resurrections may trigger allergic reactions to meta-commentary, so be sure to have your EpiPen primed and ready. Forget subtext – this movie has TEXT text, and it addresses director and co-writer Lana Wachowski’s apparent reluctance to make a fourth Matrix. But here it is, Lana making it without longtime filmmaking partner Lilly Wachowski, bringing back Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss as leathered-up warrior couple Neo and Trinity, but without previous mainstays Hugo Weaving and Laurence Fishburne. It poses a crucial question: Does a movie that knows it’s shameless nostalgia make it better shameless nostalgia?

THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A green blinking cursor. A SWAT team. A dark damp sloshy set. A woman in pleather. Things haven’t changed much – the SWAT guys are still firing away at the pleather lady as she runs on the walls. She’s Bugs (Jessica Henwick), she hangs with a different iteration of Morpheus (Yaya Abdul-Mateen II), and their action-packed rigamarole confirms, yes, humans are still trapped in the Matrix by nasty computer robots, and warriors still jump between that simulation and the grubby real world.

So it’s only a matter of time until Neo (Reeves) gets back to it. But didn’t he die at the end of the original trilogy? Yes, but did you notice the title of this movie? Cue the reintroduction of the oh-so-mortal Thomas Anderson, a loner who seems haunted by memories of things that never happened – OR DID THEY. Those adventures of Neo v the machines that we watched between 1999 and 2003? They’re the crux of a video game trilogy that Anderson is industry-famous for creating. His boss, Smith (Jonathan Groff), please note the name, calls him in and says their parent company, WARNER BROS., please note the use of italics and all caps, demands another sequel.

We learn that Thomas is troubled and lonely. He attempted suicide when he stood on the edge of a building, believing he could fly. He goes to therapy, conducted by a fellow very curiously known only as The Analyst (Neil Patrick Harris), who gives him medication to keep the psychotic breaks from reality at bay. And hey, guess what’s in the prescription bottle? BLUE PILLS. Hey bro [packing a bowl] drop the needle on that Jefferson Airplane record, wouldja? Thomas frequents a coffeehouse called Simulatte (ha!), where he sees a woman who invokes feelings in him, mysterious feelings, like he might’ve loved her and fought and died in a revolution alongside her long ago, feelings trapped in the cobwebs of another person’s memory or something. One day he says hi, and learns her name is Tiffany, and she’s played by Carrie-Anne Moss, so we definitely know what’s up, and by the way she’s way into motorcycles. But it stops there because she has kids and a husband named Chad and everything we’ve seen about MISTER Anderson tells us he’s no homewrecker.

Considering the dreariness of his quasi-life and the subconscious stirrings of a life where he was a superhero, it’s with only moderate reluctance Thomas accepts an opportunity to be Neo when it presents itself. He’s reborn in a tub of transparent goo; he spars with the “new” Morpheus in the dojo; he’s briefed on the state of relations between humans and machines. But life isn’t meaningful without Tiffany-slash-Trinity, who he knows is capable of being resurrected just like him, because he saw her goo-pod. But rescuing her from the Matrix is a treacherous endeavor, because it’ll provoke the evil computers and possibly reignite the war. But the heart wants what the heart wants.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The first Matrix is its era’s Blade Runner. But Resurrections recalls the underwhelming disappointment of The Matrix Revolutions more than the brilliant, groundbreaking original.

Performance Worth Watching: Moss’ badass poise and soulful tone make her stand out, just like in the first three films.

Memorable Dialogue: I’m going with two one-liners here:

“Nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia.” – Morpheus

“Real! There’s that word again.” – Neo

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Get past all the winking nudging movie-knows-it’s-a-movie stuff of the first act and you’ll recognize that Thomas/Neo, and therefore Lana Wachowski, is truly wrestling with big ideas here: Age, wisdom, desire, regret, pain, loss. And it’s fascinating to see how the nefarious forces of the Matrix gaslight the human race’s legendary hero, using mental illness as a weapon – which is at least loosely tied to what Morpheus says about anxiety and nostalgia.

But once we hit the midsection – hoo boy. Wachowski drops in enough flashbacks from the first three movies to render Resurrections alarmingly close to a clip show. And she and fellow scripters David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon bury their big ideas and torpedo dramatic momentum with a series of fatiguing expositional speeches: One by Jada Pinkett Smith as an elderly general, one by Harris so we get the opposition’s long-winded perspective on things, and one by Priyanka Chopra Jonas as one of several Neo allies who wear nifty costumes but show nary a shred of charisma beyond an earnest desire to help their hero reunite with the heroine. It’s as if all that talking is supposed to compensate for Reeves’ signature monosyllabism, which has become more poignantly minimalist as he ages.

In the first three Matrixes, the Wachowkis’ wordiness at least was compensated for with blistering thrills (especially in Reloaded, with its OTT freeway chase). Not so with Resurrections, which is frustratingly banal in the staging of its action sequences. I realize you can’t always reinvent the wheel – “bullet time” reinvented action for the digital era, remember – but the film lacks the big-money shots that are a franchise staple, and chops up big set pieces into a bland salad of bullets, backflips and half-hearted kung fu. All this, because one guy pines for his old girlfriend? Because without love, this world, or the parallel world, or any other worlds floating around out there, are meaningless? Please. Tell me something I don’t know, show me something I haven’t seen.

Our Call: SKIP IT. The Matrix Resurrections is a letdown. Just because they exhume it doesn’t mean you have to consume it.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Stream The Matrix Resurrections on HBO Max