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The Matrix Resurrections

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Watch The Matrix Resurrections with a subscription on Max, Netflix, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

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If it lacks the original's bracingly original craft, The Matrix Resurrections revisits the world of the franchise with wit, a timely perspective, and heart.

The Matrix Resurrections falls short compared to the original, but doesn't skimp on the action or cool visual effects.

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Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Lana Wachowski

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Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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The astonishing, angry Matrix Resurrections deals with what’s real in a world where nothing is

A furious Lana Wachowski fights back with a love story

by Joshua Rivera

Neo and Trinity stand in front of burning wreckage in The Matrix Resurrections.

[ Ed. note: Minor spoilers for The Matrix Resurrections follow.]

The story: A man named Thomas is told that the world is not what he thought it to be, and despite the passion of the messenger and the void in his own life, he refuses to believe. He wants to see for himself. He wants, as the Gospel of John recounts, to feel the wounded flesh of the resurrected Christ, to feel where the nails were hammered into his hands. In his doubt, he becomes a myth, the first man to doubt the gospel, only to believe there is truth there when he’s standing in front of the gospel’s corporeal form.

Another version of the story: A man named Thomas Anderson lives a respectable life at the end of the 20th century, a gifted programmer at a nondescript software company. Everything is as it should be, and yet there is a void in him. Messengers find him and tell him his suspicion is correct, that this world is an illusion, yet he refuses to believe. Not until he takes a pill and wakes up in a nightmare, where he, along with everyone else he thought he knew, is plugged into a machine from birth until death, living in a simulation he never doubted until he could feel the wounds in his own flesh, where the machines jacked him into a digital world called the Matrix. Over the next 22 years, Mr. Anderson’s story in The Matrix becomes a different, newer myth, disseminated through the burgeoning internet and refracted through various subcultures. Depending on which set of eyes it encountered, the story’s symbolism and themes took on new meanings, some thoughtful and enlightening, others strange and sinister.

The Matrix Resurrections ’ third version of this story: Once again, there is Keanu Reeves’ Thomas Anderson, a gifted programmer who suspects his world is wrong, somehow. Once again, he is contacted by people claiming to confirm his suspicions. Once again, he refuses to believe. For a little while, the story seems the same, to the point where it doesn’t seem worth telling. Yet the world it’s being told to — our world, the one where we’ve returned to see a new film called The Matrix for the first time since 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions — is very different. In the final days of 2021, Thomas, just like those watching him, has much more to doubt. And Resurrections finds its meaning.

Directed by Lana Wachowski from a script she co-wrote with David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon, The Matrix Resurrections is about doing the impossible. On a very basic level, it’s about the insurmountable and inherently cynical task of making a follow-up to the Matrix trilogy, one that breaks technical and narrative ground the way the first film did. On a thematic one, it’s an agitprop romance, one of the most effective mass media diagnoses of the current moment that finds countless things to be angry about, and proposes fighting them all with radical, reckless love. On top of all that, it is also a kick-ass work of sci-fi action — propulsive, gorgeous, and yet still intimate — that revisits the familiar to show audiences something very new.

Reloading, but not repeating

Thomas Anderson stands in front of a torn projection of Trinity from the Matrix in The Matrix Resurrections.

The Matrix Resurrections soars by echoing something old. A familiarity with The Matrix and its sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions , comes in handy when entering the new film, as the first task Wachowski, Mitchell, and Hemon go about resolving in Resurrections is extricating Thomas Anderson — better known as Neo — from his fate in Revolutions . Slowly, they reveal how Neo, seemingly deceased alongside his love and partner Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), may or may not have survived to once again become Thomas Anderson, a blank slate who has trouble telling what’s real and what is not.

This Thomas Anderson is also a programmer, but now a rockstar of game development, responsible for the most popular video game trilogy ever made: The Matrix. These games are effectively the same as the Matrix film trilogy that exists in our world, a story about a man named Neo who discovers that he is living in a dream world controlled by machines, and that he is The One destined to help humanity defeat them.

Like Lana Wachowski, who co-created the Matrix films with her sibling Lilly decades ago, Thomas is asked to make a sequel to the Matrix trilogy, one that his parent company — also devilishly named Warner Bros. — will make with or without their input. So, as Thomas goes about his task, his reality takes on an M.C. Escher-esque level of circuitousness. Was the Matrix trilogy a series of games of his making? Or did they really happen, and he is once again a prisoner of the Matrix? Why is there a woman named Tiffany (Carrie-Anne Moss) in this world with him, one who strongly resembles the deceased Trinity of his fiction? Wachowski layers these questions in disorienting montage with voyeuristic angles, presenting Thomas’ presumed reality with just enough remove to make the viewer uncomfortable, and cause them to doubt, as Thomas does.

Casting the previous films as in-world video games allows The Matrix Resurrections to function as a refreshingly heavy-handed rebuke of the IP-driven reboot culture that produced the film, where the future is increasingly viewed through the franchise lenses of the past, trapping fans in corporate-controlled dream worlds where their fandom is constantly rewarded with new product. That video games are the chosen medium for The Matrix Resurrections ’ satire is icing on the cake: an entire medium defined by the illusion of choice, a culture built around the falsehood that megacorporations care about what their customers think when they have the data to show that every outrage du jour will still result in the same record-breaking profits.

As one of Thomas’s colleagues bluntly puts it: “I’m a geek. I was raised by machines.”

Bugs in the system

Jessica Henwick as Bugs in The Matrix Resurrections

The opening act of The Matrix Resurrections is wonderfully confounding, a delicious way to recreate the unmooring unreality of the original to an audience that has likely seen, or felt its influence, countless times. Yet as it replicates, it also diverges. This is not, as the hacker Bugs (Jessica Henwick) notes early on, the story we know.

Bugs is our window into what’s new in Resurrections , a young and headstrong woman dedicated to finding the Neo that her generation knows only as myth. Her zealotry puts her in hot water with her elders; outside of the Matrix, humanity has eked out a small but thriving post-apocalyptic life, resting on the uneasy treaty between man and machine that Neo brokered at the end of the original trilogy. By constantly hacking into the Matrix to find Neo, Bugs threatens that peace — yet it’s a risk that Bugs and her ragtag crew (which includes a phenomenal Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in a role that’s not quite who viewers think he is) feel is worth taking. Because despite the war fought to free humanity from machine enslavement, much of humanity is still choosing to remain in the Matrix. The real world being real is not reason enough for anyone to wake up from the dream world.

But the hope of rescuing Neo is only half of the story. Wachowski makes a dazzling pivot halfway through The Matrix Resurrections , one that underlines a focal shift from individual freedom to human connection: The Resistance learns that it may be possible to free Trinity again as well, although by means never tried before. It’s a mission that isn’t likely to succeed, but in this strange new future, it’s the only one worth living and dying for. In pivoting to a mission to save the theoretical Trinity, Resurrections takes the messaging of the original film a step further. It’s not enough to free your mind; in fact, it’s worthless if you don’t unplug in the interest of connecting and loving those around you.

Thomas Anderson walks through a city street as it devolves into code in The Matrix Resurrections.

This back half gear-shifts into something much more straightforward, and frankly, it whips. It’s The Matrix as a heist movie. Because of this genre pivot, Resurrections ’ action takes on a different flavor from that of its predecessors. While weighty, satisfying martial arts standoffs are still in play, they’re not the centerpiece, as “Thomas” and “Tiffany” are the heart of the film, played by actors 20 years older and a little more limited in their choreography. Instead, The Matrix Resurrections chooses to dazzle with gorgeous widescreen set-pieces, big brawls, and visual effects that once again astonish while looking spectacularly real. Wachowski and her co-writers split the action as Bugs and her crew — who don’t get enough screen time but all make a terrific impression — race to find where their heroes may be hidden in the real world, and “Thomas” tries to get “Tiffany” to remember the love they once shared. All of the heady philosophy that these movies are known for is put into direct action, as the machines show off the ways they’ve changed the Matrix in an effort to not just keep a Neo from rescuing a Trinity, but to imprison him again.

In this sequence and throughout, The Matrix Resurrections relishes in being a lighter, more self-aware film than its predecessors, a movie about big feelings rendered beautifully. Its score, by Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer, reprises iconic motifs from original Matrix composer Don Davis’ work while introducing shimmery, recursive sequencing, a sonic echo to go with the visual one. While legendary cinematographer Bill Pope is also among the talent that doesn’t return this time around, the team of Daniele Massaccesi and John Toll bring a more painterly approach to Resurrections . Warm colors invade scenes from both the Matrix and the real world; the latter looks more vibrant than ever without the blue hues that characterized it in the original trilogy, while its digital counterpart has now changed to the point where it’s painfully idyllic, a world of bright colors and sunlight that is difficult to leave.

Embodying those changes is Jonathan Groff as a reawakened Smith, Neo’s dark opposite within the Matrix. Groff, who steps in for a role indelibly portrayed by Hugo Weaving, is the audacity of The Matrix Resurrections personified: He nails a character so iconic that recasting it feels like hubris, yet also finds new shades to bring to an antagonistic role in a world where villains only appear human, when in fact they’re often ideas. And ideas are so hard to wage war against.

Systems of control

Jonathan Groff as Smith in The Matrix Resurrections

If the old Matrix films are about lies we are told, the new Matrix is about lies we choose. In spite of its questions, 1999’s The Matrix hinges on the notion that there is such a thing as objective truth, and that people would want to see it. On the cusp of 2022, objective truth is no longer agreed upon, as pundits, politicians, and tech magnates each present their vision of what’s real, and aggressively market it to the masses. Our current crisis, then, is whatever you choose it to be. You just have to choose a side in the war: one to be us, and another to be them.

“If we don’t know what’s real,” one character asks Neo, “how do we resist?”

In returning to the world she created with her sibling, Lana Wachowski makes a closing argument she may very well not get to have the last word on. The Matrix Resurrections is a bouquet of flowers thrown with the rage of a Molotov cocktail, the will to fight tempered by the choice to extend compassion. Because feelings, as the constructs that oppress humanity in the Matrix note, are much easier to control than facts, and feelings are what sway us. So what if Neo fights back with a better story? A new myth to rise above the culture war?

It doesn’t have to be a bold one. It can even be one you’ve heard before. About a man named Thomas who can’t shake the idea that there’s something wrong with the world around him, that he feels disconnected from others in a way that he was never meant to be. And when others finally tell him that he’s living in an illusion, he doesn’t quite believe them — not until he sees something, someone, for himself that reminds him of what, exactly, he is missing: that he used to be in love.

The Matrix Resurrections hits theaters and HBO Max on Dec. 22.

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‘The Matrix Resurrections’ is brilliant, but not for everyone

It's bound to be another divisive matrix sequel..

"Nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia," Morpheus says in The Matrix Resurrections . That's a not-so-subtle dig at the onslaught of reboots and remakes dominating our culture — revisiting characters and stories we already know is, well, safe. Audiences know what to expect, and it's a better bet for risk-averse studios. Of course, Morpheus (now played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen) is also commenting on the film he's in.

More than twenty years after The Matrix fundamentally reshaped genre cinema, director Lana Wachowski is finally diving back into the universe that made her and co-director Lilly Wachowski renowned. After all that time, is it really worth going back down the rabbit hole, or is this just another easy franchise cash-grab?

The answer to that question depends on what you want from a Matrix sequel. Like The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions before it, Wachowski (along with co-writers David Mitchell and Aleksander Hemon) isn't interested in merely retreading the past with Resurrections . Instead, it's a film that's keenly aware of its legacy, our relationship with its characters, and the lofty expectations that fans (and studios!) have when rebooting a beloved property.

As someone who adored the original film, and found plenty to respect in the much-maligned sequels, Resurrections feels made just for me. It's intoxicating, thrilling and unabashedly romantic. But judging from the polarizing early critical responses, it's clearly not for everyone.

Minor spoilers ahead.

It's hard to talk about what The Matrix Resurrections is without describing its basic setup, most of which you can gather from the film's trailers. Keanu Reeves returns as Thomas Anderson, a programmer adrift in a world that doesn't quite make sense to him. He meets a woman played by Carrie-Anne Moss, but this time she's not the Agent-whupping bad-ass Trinity, she's just your typical (albeit, strikingly beautiful) mom. The two feel an instant connection. Thomas eventually gets ripped out of the world he's in thanks to a plucky new character named Bugs (Jessica Henwick), he finds the real world, and yadda yadda , you get the picture.

Now, you might be asking yourself, "Didn't Neo and Trinity die in The Matrix Revolutions?" All I can do is point at the title of the movie — what did you expect? This time, Anderson is a renowned game developer known for creating an popular trilogy of games that retell the entire Matrix story. When we first meet him, he's faced with a new challenge: making a fourth entry. He approaches it with the same sense of dread the Wachowskis likely felt about tackling a potential Matrix 4 . A series of brainstorming scenes feel as if they're pulled directly from their own hellish meetings with Warner Bros. Anderson's team can only focus on the surface — How do they go beyond bullet time? What if they just focus on more mindless action? — rather than anything truly substantive.

As the film unfolds (and don't worry, I'm not revealing any major surprises), it's impressive how Lana Wachowski elegantly avoids the traps most reboots fall into, as if she were in the Matrix herself, deftly avoiding all of the bullets aimed right at her. Sure, Resurrections brings some new special effects toys to the party, and it has the requisite action scenes you'd expect. But in many ways it's more reminiscent of the Wachowski's recent works, like the time-hopping epic Cloud Atlas , and the unabashedly humanistic Sense8 .

The Matrix Resurrections wears its heart on its sleeve. It's far more interested in the transcendental possibilities of love than it is in laying the groundwork for a new trilogy of films. The fact that Wachowski is practically refusing to play by the current rules of Hollywood – set up the sequel by any means necessary! – feels almost revolutionary. She has one story to tell, and it means a lot to her. That’s it.

Strangely enough, the movie Resurrections reminds me of most is Wes Craven’s A New Nightmare , a groundbreaking attempt at wrestling with a hugely popular genre franchise. That film – the seventh A Nightmare on Elm Street entry – brought Freddy Krueger into the real world to reclaim what made him terrifying. Throughout The Matrix Resurrections , it feels as if Wachowski is also ready to break the fourth wall with her sheer contempt for reboots, fan service and watered-down sequels. “The sheeple want control, certainty,” a villain says at one point. (At that moment, I couldn’t help but think of the utter failure of The Rise of Skywalker . Yes, the wound is still fresh.)

And this is where I come back to saying this movie isn’t for everyone. But that just makes it a Matrix sequel. Sure, Reloaded and Revolutions were a bit overstuffed and convoluted, but they were also singular visions that took some major swings. (I’m still chasing the high of seeing Reloaded’s sprawling highway chase for the first time.)

Geek cinema has taken over the world, yet aside from Christopher Nolan’s work, it’s rare to see big-budget filmmaking that isn’t beholden to some major corporation’s franchise rules (and at this point, that’s usually just Disney). The Matrix Resurrections says “to hell with the rules!”, and I applaud it.

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Movie Review: ‘The Crow’ reimagined is stylish and operatic, but cannot outfly 1994 original

This image released by Lionsgate shows Bill Skarsgård in “The Crow”. (Larry Horricks/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Bill Skarsgård, left, and FKA twigs in “The Crow”. (Larry Horricks/Lionsgate via AP)

Bill Skarsgard attends “The Crow” world premiere at the Village East by Angelika on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Rupert Sanders, from left, FKA twigs, and Bill Skarsgard attend “The Crow” world premiere at the Village East by Angelika on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

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One of the first things you see in the reimagined “The Crow” is the sight of a fallen white horse in a muddy field, bleeding badly after becoming entangled in barbed wire. It’s a metaphor, of course, and a clunky one at that — a powerful image that doesn’t really fit well and is never explained.

That’s a hint that director Rupert Sanders will have a tendency to consistently pick the stylish option over the honest one in this film. In his attempt to give new life to the cult hero of comics and film, he’s given us plenty of beauty at the expense of depth or coherence.

The filmmakers have set their tale in a modern, generic Europe and made it very clear that this movie is based on the graphic novel by James O’Barr, but the 1994 film adaptation starring Brandon Lee hovers over it like, well, a stubborn crow.

Brandon, son of legendary actor and martial artist Bruce Lee, was just 28 when he died after being shot while filming a scene for “The Crow.” History seems always to repeat: The new adaptation lands as another on-set death remains in the headlines.

Lee’s “The Crow” was finished without him and he never got to see it enter Gen X memory in all its rain-drenched, gothic glory, influencing everything from alternative fashion to “Blade” to Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy.

Bill Skarsgård seizes Lee’s role of Eric Draven, a man so in love that he returns from the dead to revenge his and his sweetheart’s slayings in what can be best called a sort of supernatural, romantic murderfest. (The tagline, “True love never dies,” clumsily rips off Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera.”)

William Schneider, who co-wrote the screenplay with Zach Baylin, has given the story a near-operatic facelift, by introducing a devil, a Faustian bargain, blood-on-blood oaths and a godlike guide who monitors the limbo between heaven and hell, which looks like a disused, weed-covered railway station. “Kill the ones who killed you and you’ll get her back,” our hero is told.

The first half drags at it sets the table for the steady beat of limbs and necks being detached at the end. Eric and his love, Shelly (played by an uneven FKA Twigs), meet in a rehab prison for wayward youth that is so well lit and appointed that it looks more like an airport lounge where the cappuccinos are $19 but the Wi-Fi is complimentary.

Eric is a gentle loner — tortured by a past the writers don’t bother filling in, who likes to sketch in a book (universal cinema code signaling a sensitive soul) and is heavily tattooed (he’s often shirtless). His apartment has rows of mannequins with their heads covered in plastic and his new love calls him “brilliantly broken.” He’s like a Blink-182 lyric come to life.

Shelly is more complex, but that’s because the writers maybe gave up on giving her a real backstory. She has a tattoo that says “Laugh now, cry later,” reads serious literature and loves dancing in her underwear. She clearly comes from wealth and has had a falling out with her mom, but has also done an unimaginably horrible thing, which viewers will learn about at the end.

Part of the trouble is that the lead couple cast off very little electricity, offering a love affair that’s more teen-like than all-consuming. And this is a story that needs a love capable of transcending death.

There are lots of cool-looking moments — mostly Skarsgård in a trench coat, stomping around the desolate concrete jungle in the rain at night — until “The Crow” builds to one of the better action sequences this year, albeit another one of those heightened showdowns at the opera.

By this time, Eric has donned the Crow’s heavy eye and cheek makeup. He adds to this ensemble a katana and an inability to die. As he closes in on his target, mowing down tuxedoed bad guys as arias soar, the group movements on stage are echoed by the furious fighting backstage. A few severed heads might be considered over the top at curtain call, but subtlety isn’t being applauded here.

If the original was plot-light but visually delicious, the new one has a better story but suffers from ideas in the films built on its predecessor, stealing a little from “The Matrix,” “Joker” and “Kill Bill.” Why not create something entirely new?

“The Crow” isn’t bad — and it gets better as it goes — but it’s an exercise in folly. It cannot escape Lee and the 1994 original even as it builds a more allegorical scaffolding for the smartphone generation. To use that very first metaphor, it’s like the trapped white horse — held down by its own painful past, never free to gallop on its own.

“The Crow,” a Lionsgate release that hits theaters Friday, is rated R for “strong bloody violence, gore, language, sexuality/nudity and drug use.” Running time: 111 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Review: Tim Burton’s Lightweight Sequel Works as Ghostly Fan Service

Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega star in a sequel that's no "Beetlejuice," but it's got just enough Burton juice.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Review: Tim Burton’s Lightweight Sequel Works as Ghostly Fan Service 2 days ago

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, (aka BEETLEJUICE 2), from left: Winona Ryder, Bob, Michael Keaton, 2024. © Warner Bros. /Courtesy Everett Collection

Back in 1988, “ Beetlejuice ” was a comedy, a ghost story, a high-camp horror film, and a macabre funhouse ride, all driven by a new kind of palm-buzzer freak-show prankishness. I first saw the movie at a Saturday-night sneak preview, before anyone knew a thing about it, and by the time it was over it was clear that the director, Tim Burton , was going to be a superstar who ruled over his own weirdly ardent world of ghoulish mockery.

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As a result, it’s one of those sequels that spends a lot of time looking back. The film opens with the tingle of Danny Elfman’s jumpy ghost music, along with another flyover shot of the picturesque town of Winter River, Connecticut, where Winona Ryder ’s Lydia Deetz, the former goth teen who interfaced with the spirit world, is now a psychic mediator who hosts her own hunt-for-the-paranormal television show entitled “Ghost House.” Lydia still wears her hair in spiky bangs, but where you might expect her to have relaxed into middle age, the way Ryder plays her she’s more distraught than ever. Maybe that’s because her TV-producer boyfriend, Rory (Justin Theroux), is a fatuous sleaze who speaks in progressive therapeutic bromides to cover his flagrant opportunism. Or maybe it’s because her daughter, Astrid ( Jenna Ortega ), has nothing but contempt for her mother’s ghostly preoccupations, which she thinks are sheer delusion.

Catherine O’Hara, winningly overwrought as ever, is back as Delia, Lydia’s narcissistic artist stepmother. And to spin past any awkwardness over former cast member Jeffrey Jones (who is now a convicted sex offender), his character, Charles — Lydia’s father and Delia’s husband — is given a claymation segment that ends with him being chomped by a shark; the character then spends the rest of the movie skulking through the afterlife as a blood-spurting trunk without a head. As for Keaton’s title pest, he keeps popping up in Lydia’s sightlines, and it’s not long before he’s summoned. Keaton, at 73, invests him with that same obscene gnashing energy and throwaway scuzzball cunning — and, in fact, Beetlejuice figures out another way to coerce Lydia into marrying him. It’s all hooked to the fact that Astrid has fallen for a sweetheart of a dude in her class (Arthur Conti), who turns out to have a very dark secret.

The movie doesn’t come entirely alive until the scene where Beetlejuice, acting as Lydia and Rory’s “couple’s therapist,” literally spills his guts, then produces an infant version of himself — a baby as disquieting as the crawling-on-the-ceiling one in “Trainspotting.” A gambit like this exists mostly for its own agreeably sick sake, and that, in its way, is the “Beetlejuice” aesthetic: Tim Burton making this stuff up simply because it tickles his naughty fancy. At least one thing he has made up is a bit cringe: the punning use of “Soul Train,” complete with a boogie-down chorus line of ’70s funk dancers (which in the movie becomes a train for dead souls — get it?). And the plot has even more of the balsa-wood quality that the Alec Baldwin/Geena Davis ghost plot in “Beetlejuice” had.

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Out of competition), Aug. 28, 2024. MPA rating: PG-13. Running time: 104 MIN.

Production: A Warner Bros. Pictures release, in association with Domain Entertainment, of a Tim Burton, Tommy Harper, Plan B Entertainment, Marc Toberoff production. Producers: Marc Toberoff, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Tommy Harper, Tim Burton. Executive producers: Sara Desmond, Katterli Frauenfelder, Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, Larry Wilson, Laurence Senelick, Brad Pitt.
Crew: Director: Tim Burton. Screenplay: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar. Camera: Haris Zambarloukos. Editor: Jay Prychidny. Music: Danny Elfman.
With: Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, Arthur Conti, Nick Kellington, Santiago Cabrera, Burn Gorman, Danny DeVito.

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The matrix: 9 unpopular opinions about the franchise, according to reddit.

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Tom hanks' eerie moment in saving private ryan's d-day opening clarified by historian (& yes, it's accurate), "does what no other trilogy has ever been able to do": quentin tarantino reveals his pick for the best movie trilogy.

To its fans, The Matrix franchise is a thought-provoking series of films that blends sophisticated philosophical concepts, spiritual ideologies, and compelling action sequences in ways that have influenced multiple movie genres. Its imagery, characters, and dialogue have worked their way into the pop culture zeitgeist, and its filmmaking techniques have changed the way audiences perceive movies.

RELATED: 10 Things Fans Are Most Excited For In The Matrix Resurrections

The very themes the movies champion, namely free will and personal choice, have given rise to myriad opinions about it, from the sequels being better than the original movie to Agent Smith being a terrible villain. While most of Reddit takes a positive view towards the franchise, there are unpopular opinions about it that have started to become as plentiful as sentinels.

The Matrix Is A Terrible Film

Neo and Trinity walking together in Matrix.

When The Matrix came out over 20 years ago, it pioneered many themes, concepts, and tropes that action movies and television series today have repurposed for their own ends. Because of its distinctive style and innovative contributions to the action and sci-fi genres, The Matrix is considered a stalwart classic that still holds up today.

Flyingverver795 thinks that despite having "some cool action sequences", the movie is terrible because viewers "can’t get invested in the characters, the plot is predictable, [and] the antagonists have no real personalities." Most fans would argue that it's the characters, the complex plot, and the altruism of the antagonists that make the movie watchable.

The Movies Have Horrible Action Sequences

In 1999, The Matrix fundamentally changed the course of action movies forever with its use of 360-degree shots, slow-motion ("bullet time"), and wirework. Any other action movies from the '90s looked unpolished and amateur when compared to The Matrix 's aesthetically pleasing and near-balletic action.

Ubique008 believes that after the movies lured "young people with cool black clothes," viewers were treated to "awful, fake kung fu" that couldn't possibly appeal to anyone who enjoys "UFC or a serious martial arts fight." The fight sequences in the Matrix are not only an homage to Hong Kong cinema but intended to reflect the endless possibilities inherent to the Matrix simulation, using spectacle to illustrate this point. The "lobby scene" is still considered by many to be one of the best action sequences in any movie .

The Matrix Reloaded Is Better Than The Matrix

Trinity and the Keymaker on a motorcycle in The Matrix: Reloaded

Most fans of the franchise will maintain that The Matrix is a thought-provoking, character-driven action movie whereas its sequel, The Matrix: Reloaded , often elects to focus more on style than substance, which can be par for sequels that intend to be bigger (but not necessarily better) than their predecessors.

DesirableLettuce thinks that the sequel is better than the first movie because "the plot [is] more interesting and complex" and expands the world with "the architect and key maker characters." It should be noted that the second movie takes place almost entirely in the Matrix simulation with Neo at the height of his powers, and that has undeniable appeal to some fans, but not enough to excuse the "rave scene" and other scenes that seem self-indulgent.

The Movies Tell A Cohesive And Satisfying Story

After The Matrix introduced some interesting philosophical questions, its sequels intended to add still more until the entire trilogy sagged under the weight of its collective ruminations while providing very few answers. This has led fans to believe that the story introduced in the first movie was very much derailed, leading to a finale that lacked cohesion or purpose, and was altogether different than what it set out to be.

RELATED: 6 Reasons Why The Matrix Sequels Aren’t As Bad As People Say They Are (& 4 Reasons They Are)

Samislegend89 doesn't agree and believes that from beginning to end, the three movies tell a perfectly cohesive and even satisfying story, with the end of The Matrix: Revolutions having "some of the most satisfying dialogue and sequences if you’re a fan of the characters in the world that has been made." The addition of verbose characters like The Architect, issues with Neo becoming OP, and the war against the Machines, in the end, are all generally cited as ways the franchise jumped the shark.

Neo Is The Villain

Neo and Agent Smith facing off during The Matrix Reloaded

From his humble beginnings as a hacker to becoming a symbol of resistance to Zion, and finally a Messiah in the Matrix, Neo has a true hero's journey, fundamentally changed at its end from the person he was at the beginning. He comes to represent selflessness and personal liberty with his sacrifices.

Bulletkiller06 believes that Neo is actually the bad guy, going after machines that, despite being nearly destroyed by humans, "decided to keep the humans around regardless", even going so far as to give them a "utopia" to live in, to say nothing of "all of the people Neo kills in the Matrix." While it's true, Morpheus doesn't tell Neo who started the war first, the Machines using humans as batteries is an unconscionable decision most fans can't see past.

Cypher Was Right

Unlike the rest of his friends, Cypher never liked being liberated from the Matrix. Learning the truth about the fate of humanity didn't nullify surviving in a dystopian environment bereft of the luxuries enjoyed in the Matrix. Therefore, he made a deal with Agent Smith to be put back into the Matrix (as "somebody important") in exchange for selling out Neo, Morpheus, and everyone else.

RELATED: 10 Other Movies Starring The Cast Of The Matrix Resurrections

According to curtwagner1984 , "In the Matrix, one might lead a far better and fuller life than in the war-torn reality...so Cypher's desire to go back into the Matrix isn't as cowardly as it might sound." While it's true, Cypher might lead a far better life in the Matrix, it didn't excuse his betrayal of his friends.

Agent Smith Is The Worst Villain

Smith discusses existence with Morpheus in The Matrix

To make every hero virtuous there must be a powerful antagonist for them to fight against and prove their worth. Luke Skywalker had Darth Vader, Sarah Connor had the Terminator, and Neo had Agent Smith, considered by many fans of the movies to not only be the best villain in the Matrix franchise but to hold up against the best villains in science fiction as an unrelenting evil.

Lonelylamb1814 views him as the worst villain because "he can take over/become anybody he pleases" and it "just gets so boring." While Smith's method of villainy can be viewed as monotonous, he must be a match for Neo, who achieved god-like powers in the final movie. Most fans would agree that Smith represents a merciless harbinger of doom that seems impossible to stop, until, like Neo, one embraces "choice" and succumbs to him, and therefore is able to destroy him.

The Matrix: Reloaded And The Matrix: Revolutions Are Good Movies

Split image of Smith in Matrix Revolutions and The Merovingian in The Matrix Reloaded

To some fans, there isn't a "franchise" as much as there's The Matrix followed by a series of movies that dilute the prestige of the original. They consider The Matrix: Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions as soulless cash grabs rather than parts of a worthwhile continuation of the themes and stories set forth by The Matrix.

Albert_street asserts that the sequels aren't as bad as people say, and "did exactly what could be expected in terms of continuing the plot of the first movie," as well as furthered the world-building of the original movie by "the various programs taking human form and having 'human' emotions."

Equilibrium Is Better

At first glance, 2002's Equilibrium seems similar to The Matrix; its protagonists wear long black trench coats, act emotionless, and live in a dystopian world. Beyond superficial semantics, however, it follows a plot much more similar to Fahrenheit 451 or THX1138 , but certain viewers still see fit to compare it to The Matrix and declare it the superior movie.

Willo420 thinks Equilibrium is a better film because of its "philosophical tone" and "fight scenes," but most Matrix fans believe that it's impossible to take anything in Equilibrium seriously, from its spiritual dogma to its pistolling techniques that rival anything as campy as the movie it's said to surpass.

NEXT: 10 Of The Most Perfectly Cast Characters In TV History, According To Reddit

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The Matrix Resurrections review: Has the new Matrix movie been worth the wait?

It's time to head back in.

preview for The Matrix Resurrections trailer 2 (Warner Bros)

18 years ago, The Matrix trilogy came to a divisive end as it wrapped up with what felt like a definitive ending to the story .

The Oracle knew better though, telling Sati that she suspected Neo would be back – and you should always trust the Oracle. Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss are back as their iconic characters in the eagerly-anticipated The Matrix Resurrections , solely directed by Lana Wachowski as Lilly needed time away from the industry .

In a world that has become increasingly dominated by franchises, reboots and legacyquels, it felt almost inevitable that we'd get another Matrix movie. It felt equally inevitable that when it happened, the new Matrix movie wouldn't be unaware of society's obsession with familiarity and it wouldn't be your average sequel.

For better and for worse, this has turned out to be the case as The Matrix Resurrections makes bold and mind-bending swings to tell what is, at its heart, that purest of things: a love story. This is a Matrix movie though, so simple isn't really on the table and endless debates among fans are to be expected.

But if all you want to know is whether it's any good, then rest assured, it's better than the sequels. If you want to delve deeper to follow the white rabbit though, we've got some more spoiler-free thoughts for you ahead.

keanu reeves, neo, carrieanne moss, trinity, the matrix resurrections

Even with a full range of trailers and TV spots , it's impressive how little we know about The Matrix Resurrections , which makes a plot summary tricky. What we do know is that, somehow, Neo (Reeves) and Trinity (Moss) are back alive and Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) has a new look.

For whatever reason, Neo is back to being Thomas Anderson and has no idea what he went through. He doesn't even fully remember Trinity, but there is at least a flicker of recognition when they see each other. (These mysteries are all explained during the movie and not in a "somehow he returned" Rise of Skywalker way, so fear not.)

Bugs (Jessica Henwick) is the new white rabbit that Thomas just has to follow to learn the truth – should he choose to do so, of course. That's probably as deep into the plot as we can go without wading into spoiler territory as even where we first reunite with Neo is a surprise.

We hear you, it does sound awfully familiar, as though the new movie is just a retread.

And it actually is... until it very much isn't.

yahya abdul mateen ii, the matrix resurrections

Lana Wachowski is fully aware of the comparisons and delights in offering meta-commentaries to the trends of reboots, legacyquels and more. It's not exactly subtle and could prove too on-the-nose for some, but it turns out to be a crucial part of the plot rather than a winking in-joke.

It helps that the meta commentary and the numerous callbacks and nods to the entire trilogy are often very funny, one of the most unexpected things in the new movie. Whether you end up liking The Matrix Resurrections or not, this isn't a sequel that's been casually thrown together to deliver more of the same.

There is a downside to this self-aware mocking, though, that becomes apparent in the movie's second half. It starts to feel as though the movie wants to have its cake and eat it too, as the familiarity starts to become stale rather than innovatively self-aware. You can't really mock sequels for doing more of the same... and then continue to do more of the same yourself.

This is especially apparent in the weakest aspect of the movie which, surprisingly, turns out to be the action scenes. There are familiar set-ups, including Neo taking on a huge army of people, but the execution is nowhere near on the same level as in the trilogy.

For a series that defined action scenes as we know them, it's hugely disappointing. Too many of the fight sequences are choppily edited and filmed in close-up, instead of making the choreography the star. When the set pieces get bigger than one-on-one combat, there's nothing here that we haven't seen in numerous blockbusters in recent years.

If it's all some extremely meta commentary that uniformity has become king in modern blockbusters then fair play to Lana. Yet while even the divisive sequels delivered something new, there's nothing of the sort to be found here.

One element of the sequels that is on display here though is the clunky exposition and overuse of techno-babble. After a magnificent first half, all momentum is lost when the explanations start coming and the final act is being set up. It's not confusing as such, but it's definitely convoluted and when it's delivered in big chunks, you'll need rewatches to fully understand.

As in the original trilogy though, the sincerity of the cast sells the outlandish concepts. Keanu Reeves is every bit as good as he was before as Neo and has lost none of the chemistry he shared with the equally-great Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity.

keanu reeves and carrie anne moss in the matrix resurrections

She's underused compared to Reeves, but their love story still holds an emotional power almost two decades later. It's an unashamedly romantic movie as their connection provides the key to the majority of the plot. Compared to the relatively sexless blockbusters we're used to, it's refreshing to see their romance front and centre.

As much as we'd have loved to see Laurence Fishburne back as Morpheus, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is a superb replacement. There's a narrative reason behind the 'new' Morpheus and the actor balances reverence to the established character with his own fresh take on the performance.

The same goes for Jonathan Groff as a version of another classic character (if you've seen the trailer, you'll know) who's no less menacing and engaging. With brand-new roles, Jessica Henwick and Neil Patrick Harris are superb as Bugs and the mysterious Analyst. They make them instantly feel as though they're characters we've known for years.

keanu reeves, neo, jessica henwick, the matrix resurrections

It's a shame that the rest of the supporting cast, including Jada Pinkett Smith's returning Niobe and Priyanka Chopra Jonas's Sati, are underdeveloped by comparison. However, the main cast members are so strong that you don't really notice, and there's the potential sequel for them to be explored more.

Because that's the thing. As much as the movie is self-aware of its status as a legacyquel, it definitely sets the pieces on the board for this to act as a soft reboot for further movies. It's another aspect that makes you think it wants to joke about the current marketplace as well as become part of it too.

Don't get us wrong: we'd be happy to see it happen. While The Matrix Resurrections ends up being a mixed bag, it's still a unique mixed bag of ideas and creative expression that you can never accuse of being dull. We'd take that any day over a cookie-cutter blockbuster or, even worse, a generic Matrix movie.

The Matrix Resurrections is out now in cinemas and is also available to watch on HBO Max in the US.

Warner Bros. The Matrix 4K UHD and Blu-Ray with rabbit artwork

Warner Bros The Matrix Trilogy Blu-ray box set [4K Ultra HD]

Warner Bros/Zavvi Matrix Red Pill Blue Pill Unisex T-Shirt - Black

Matrix Simulatte Mug - Black

Warner Bros/Zavvi Matrix 'Choice Is An Illusion' hoodie with rabbit illustration

Titan Comics The Matrix Comics – 20th Anniversary Edition

Running Press Why We Love The Matrix by Kim Taylor-Foster

Warner Bros The Matrix [Blu-ray]

Warner Bros The Animatrix [DVD] [2003]

Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies , attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy , initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.

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The Matrix Movies, Ranked by Tomatometer

The Matrix Reloaded celebrates its 20th anniversary!

The defining sci-fi event of 1999 was supposed to be Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace , the long-awaited and super-hyped kick-off to the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Yet, while that film did rake in plenty of cash – and generate plenty of discussion – it was the kick-off of a different trilogy that year that would ultimately become the sci-fi moment of the year… if not the decade… and the next couple of decades to come.

Lana and Lily Wachowski’s The Matrix was a phenomenon. The story of Neo’s (Keanu Reeves) awakening to the truth of his existence – that he and the rest of humanity had been interned by sentient machines in a virtual reality system known as the Matrix – was a box office success, a critical smash, and just really, really f–king cool. The movie had style to burn (those muted green colors, those leather trenches) and introduced western audience to cutting-edge Eastern action choreography thanks to the efforts of fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping. Action cinema hasn’t looked the same ever since.

Sequels were, of course, inevitable, and in 2003 Matrix fans got two of them, both shot concurrently in Sydney, Australia: First came Reloaded , which expanded the lore of the franchise and delivered one of the most epic highway chase scenes ever recorded; then came Revolutions … and that rave party. That same year, fans were able to dig even deeper with the excellent animated anthology film, The Animatrix , in which seven top filmmakers told stories in the Matrix universe using the latest in CG animation and Japanese anime techniques.

Now, with Certified Fresh films first, we’re ranking the Matrix movies by Tomatometer!

The Matrix (1999) 83%

The Matrix Reloaded (2003) 73%

The Animatrix (2003) 89%

The Matrix Resurrections (2021) 63%

The Matrix Revolutions (2003) 34%

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‘The Matrix Resurrections’ Review: The Boldest and Most Personal Franchise Sequel Since ‘The Last Jedi’

David ehrlich.

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It’s fitting — maybe even fate — that “Spider-Man: No Way Home” should be the biggest and virtually only movie in the world on the week that “ The Matrix Resurrections ” is released. Both are mega-budget, meta sequels that feed on our collective familiarity with their respective franchises. One is a poison, the other its antidote.

One is a safe plastic monument to the solipsism of today’s studio cinema; an orgiastic celebration of how studio filmmaking has created a feedback loop so powerful that it’s programmed audiences to reject anything that threatens its perfection (and to clap like seals for anything that reaffirms it, even if that means cheering for the “unexpected” return of heroes and villains they were once eager to leave behind). The other is a jagged little red pill of a blockbuster that exhumes its intellectual property with such a pronounced sense of déjà vu that the comforts of its memory start to feel like the bars of a cage, and the perfect circle of its feedback loop blurs into a particle accelerator spinning faster and faster in order to create something new and romantic. One is a crowd-pleasing testament to the idea that even (or especially) the biggest fictions can shrink our imaginations. The other is a fun, ultra-sincere, galaxy brain reminder that we can only break free of the stories that make our lives smaller by seeing through the binaries that hold them in place — us vs. them, real vs. fake, corporate product vs. personal art, reboot vs. rebirth, etc. vs. etc.

If “No Way Home” is the snake eating its tail with such reckless abandon that it fools itself into thinking it’s full, “The Matrix Resurrections” is the rare blockbuster that dares to ask what else might be on the menu. It’s the boldest and most vividly human franchise sequel since “The Last Jedi” (if also messier and more postmodern than Rian Johnson’s miraculous addition to the “Star Wars” canon). It will likely prove the most divisive as well. Doubling down on the “Alice in Wonderland” spirit of its franchise, “The Matrix Resurrections” is a movie that will only appeal to fans interested in seeing how deep the rabbit hole goes; anyone simply looking for more “Matrix” isn’t just shit out of luck, they’re in for an experience that will toy with their expectations for more than two hours without fulfilling a single one of them.

Once upon a time — at the brink of history between one century and another — there was a corporate drone who doubted the true nature of his world and grew obsessed with finding the man who could show him what lay behind the curtain. This time around, Thomas Anderson ( Keanu Reeves ) is the creative genius who designed that curtain, and he’s doing everything he can to convince himself that nothing is on the other side. Those glitches he sees in the code of reality? There are prescription blue pills for that. What about the nagging suspicions that his face isn’t right? That he somehow knows Tiffany ( Carrie-Anne Moss ), the badass soccer mom he keeps seeing at the Simulatte coffee shop? That the hit trilogy of video games he created about a war between humans and the machines who kept their minds enslaved in some kind of computer matrix wasn’t a story he came up with, but something he remembered from another life? All fodder for Thomas’ therapy sessions with his Analyst (Neil Patrick Harris), who has a logical answer ready for every question.

The brilliant conceit of “The Matrix Resurrections” — and this is not a spoiler by any measure — is that it’s about someone who doesn’t want to disbelieve in his life. Not again. Not after his last breakdown almost ended in suicide. And it’s not like Thomas is stuck in some anonymous noir city programmed for the characters of a simulation. On the contrary, he lives in a recognizable San Francisco so bright and poppy that every window of his skyscraper office appears to provide its own Instagram filter. Things may be going too well for them to seem real, as Thomas’ boss and corporate partner Smith (Jonathan Groff) is happy to point out in a very familiar cadence, but he’s earned his success. It’s only when Warner Bros., the parent company that owns his gaming studio, starts pressuring Thomas to reconsider his refusal to make a “Matrix 4” that he begins to reflect on what that success means, and what it may have wrought.

The cheekily self-reflexive “Resurrections” rests closer to something like “The Souvenir Part II” or “Twin Peaks: The Return” than to “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” and all of the other recent blockbuster sequels made to consecrate their own mythologies. Lana Wachowski ’s reluctant trip back to the signature franchise she invented with her sister kicks off by admitting — in shockingly direct terms — that it only exists because Warner Bros. was going to make another movie with or without her. And so, with the help of co-writers David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon, she used the opportunity to reflect upon that cultural hunger for more of the same. If the trilogy generated several billion dollars in revenue by telling a paradigm-shifting tale about the limitless power of a free mind, why is Hollywood still stuck in a creative death spiral? What does “The Matrix” tell us about the real world (and vice-versa) in a new millennium where the basic premise of a shared reality no longer seems valid? And what could Neo, the real Thomas Anderson, possibly do about it after he and the love of his life both died in the war against the machines?

“The Matrix Resurrections” answers all of those questions to one extent or another, but the real beauty and synaptic thrill of Wachowski’s film lie in how it forces audiences to ask those questions themselves. It’s not enough to suspect that you’re dreaming; you have to want to wake up. The fact that Thomas Anderson is uncharacteristically reluctant to do so makes him a more compelling avatar for us than ever before, even as we find ourselves rooting for the new faces there to prod him along.

THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS, (aka THE MATRIX 4), from left: Keanu Reeves, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, 2021. © Warner Bros. / Courtesy Everett Collection

Some of those new faces are attached to new names. Jessica Henwick ’s Bugs is the single most electric addition to the franchise since the original, even if her earnestly punkish gunslinger spends large chunks of this movie re-watching the events of “The Matrix” from behind the walls (think of the Avengers revisiting the Battle of New York in “Endgame,” except here everything is curiously just a little bit different). The other key character is someone we know, but don’t quite recognize. His name is Morpheus, but here he’s played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II instead of Laurence Fishburne. The role hasn’t been recast so much as reprogrammed, and Morpheus 2.0 is learning how to become his namesake in real-time, as if he, Bugs, and the rest of their team were trying to “Shutter Island” Thomas into remembering that he’s really Neo. It’s a process that makes for this film’s most ecstatic moments, as Wachowski races through a glossy speed-run of the original movie’s greatest hits in a way that might seem like cheap nostalgia if not for the dizzying vertigo of its déjà vu.

It goes without saying that Thomas eventually rediscovers his inner Neo and becomes determined to dive back into whatever Matrix he came from and rescue Trinity (or is that Tiffany?) from her Chad of a husband, but “Resurrections” is such a remarkable head trip because the rest of the movie continues the first act’s fixation on disentangling people from their most comforting fictions. Maybe Tiffany doesn’t want to leave her family and her foam lattes behind and go back to a subterranean hell future where she’ll be mired in a war against squid robots. Maybe some people loved “The Matrix,” understood its bold-faced message about the illusion of choice, and still decided that they preferred a five-figure salary and the occasional steak over volunteering on the Nebuchadnezzar for gruel. Others might have mistaken one pill for another, and unwittingly aligned themselves with the same forces choking off their freedom. “If we don’t know what’s real,” Abdul-Mateen’s Morpheus-que character says, “we can’t resist.”

So no, this isn’t simply a continuation of where “The Matrix Revolutions” left off, but rather a vision of the future shaped by the last two decades of our collective past. And Wachowski hammers that point home from start to finish, as “Resurrections” bears little resemblance to the franchise’s previous installments. Gone are the hyper-rigid compositions that helped make “The Matrix” so iconic, its shots arranged with the airless precision of the cyberpunk anime cels that inspired them. Gone too is the Oz-like emerald and black color scheme that defined the computer world, and the impossible action scenes that turned it into a digital playground for choreographer Yuen Woo-ping. Instead, Wachowski’s latest film retains the vibrant look of “Cloud Atlas” and “Sense8,” that aesthetic enriched by a looseness that allowed the director to keep her camera rolling for 30 minutes at a time and find each scene in post.

THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS, (aka THE MATRIX 4), Keanu Reeves, 2021. © Warner Bros. / Courtesy Everett Collection

The paradox of “The Matrix” has always been that the real world in these movies looks fake, while the computer simulation more resembles our reality. “Resurrections” is able to stretch that feeling to new heights by populating “the real world” full of more unbelievable effects (include a manta ray robot destined to become your new best friend) and an almost documentary-like sense of verisimilitude made uncanny by the fact that every polygon is just a little too shiny. Something about Thomas’ San Francisco sticks in your teeth in a way that neither he nor we can ignore.

That approach doesn’t do the fight sequences any favors, but the good news is there aren’t that many of them. This won’t sound like an endorsement, but it helps to know going in: “The Matrix Resurrections” isn’t cool. At all. Not that anyone who’s followed the Wachowskis’ recent work will be surprised that this movie only uses spectacle as an on-ramp for unalloyed “love will save the world” sentiment. The action here is seriously unexciting compared to even the trilogy’s wonkiest setpieces.

If most of the combat is forgettable, with the 57-year-old Reeves appearing to save what’s left of his body for “John Wick 4,” that’s only a major problem during the small handful of action scenes that aren’t in service to bigger ideas. A climactic motorcycle chase through downtown San Francisco is riveting (and eerie) because of how literally it illustrates the dangerous hold that fiction can have over waking life. The rooftop helicopter battle that follows might have been unsatisfying if not for how poetically it locates the essence of human freedom amid the acceptance of a fait accompli.

This whole movie is like that final leap of faith: an IMAX-sized dance between desire and fear that Wachowski stages with someone else’s money and a loving smile on her face. Not everything adds up on first watch: Some of the fan-servicey bits are clunky as hell (Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ part is one long monologue of future heist gobbledygook, like a cross between “Ocean’s Eleven” and “The Jabberwocky”), and even diehard fans may not appreciate that “Resurrections” maintains franchise tradition of making all the real-world scenes faintly insufferable.

Then again, this is a movie that strives to bridge the divide between real and fake, past and future, choice and illusion. It’s a movie that knows people will always yearn for what they can’t have as they dread to lose what they already do, and fall prey to certain fictions regardless of how many times someone tells them to seize control of their minds. Best of all, its emphasis on the romance between Neo and Trinity allows “Resurrections” to become a devastatingly sincere movie about how love is the best weapon we have to make sense of a world that fills our heads with the white noise of war and conflict on a forever loop. All of us are stuck in our reboots. But at a time when mega-budget franchise movies can only be about themselves, Lana Wachowski has made one that pushes beyond the dopamine hit of cheap nostalgia and dares to dream up a future where mainstream films might inspire us to re-imagine what’s possible instead of just asking us to clap at the sight of history repeating itself.

“The Matrix Resurrections” opens in theaters and on HBO Max on Wednesday, December 22.

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'The Matrix Resurrections' Proves It's Worth Returning to the Well for Love | Review

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Editor's note: The following review contains mild, non-plot spoilers for The Matrix Resurrections.

Action filmmaking has seen several pivotal titles that singularly redefined the genre over the decades, with movies that tested and in many cases broke through the ceiling of what audiences and even creators thought could be achieved on-screen. In the year leading up to the millennium, no film succeeded at this more than The Matrix . In fact, you could probably divide most sci-fi movies into two categories from that moment on: those that came before The Matrix , and those that came after. The first Matrix movie wasn't just a breath of fresh air in Hollywood filmmaking; it became a cultural moment that permeated our society, a work of fiction to be dissected by fans, a fame vehicle for its young lead Keanu Reeves , and eventually, fodder for plenty of MTV Movie Awards parodies. The massive success of the film would go on to spawn two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions , filmed back-to-back in one long run of production and released in the same year of 2003, although each follow-up was met with diminishing critical response in spite of being box office hits. The growing franchise also led to the release of The Animatrix , a series of short anime movies. Pretty soon it became obvious that Warner Bros. just wanted to keep the Matrix train running by whatever means necessary.

When a long-awaited sequel was announced back in 2019 , it was anyone's guess how the creators would approach the concept, especially since it's a question that has loomed over the sisters' heads even as they worked on other films together like Jupiter Ascending and Cloud Atlas . Eventually, Lana Wachowski came back to make The Matrix Resurrections solo, directing and co-writing the film alongside her Sense8 series finale collaborators David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon — which, if you know the Netflix show, should already clue you in about the type of sequel movie you're in for. With these three at the helm, The Matrix Resurrections becomes an acutely meta and epically romantic film — one that also asks us to question things like our own instinct to reach for nostalgia, or our reliance on sequels and reboots to comfort ourselves rather than wholly original ideas.

Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne Moss The Matrix: Resurrections

The Matrix Resurrections is set approximately twenty years after the events of the last movie — coincidentally, almost as many years as it took this sequel to come out. Neo (Reeves) is living what appears to be a rather mundane life in San Francisco as Thomas Anderson, a virtuoso game programmer whose most successful and award-winning title to date is, surprise-surprise, The Matrix . He's clearly going through some shit on a personal level, evidenced by his constant visits to his therapist ( Neil Patrick Harris ), who prescribes him suspicious blue pills when he confesses to having odd visions and dreams, as well as the strange desire to try jumping off of buildings to see whether he can fly. He's also captivated by a woman ( Carrie-Anne Moss ) that frequents the coffee shop near his office but is still trying to work up the nerve to introduce himself to her. When Anderson's business partner Smith ( Jonathan Groff ) approaches him about the heavy demand for a new Matrix game, it sends Neo into a spiral of ennui and creative listlessness, one that is unexpectedly broken when he's approached by two strangers, the blue-haired Bugs ( Jessica Henwick ) and a man calling himself Morpheus ( Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ).

Summarizing up the film aside, what do you do when you've already smashed through the ceiling as far as action moviemaking is concerned? If you're Lana Wachowski, apparently that involves focusing on the bigger question hovering around this sequel by textually wrestling with what it means to contribute to franchise culture by making Resurrections in the first place. It's evident from the jump that Wachowski's script, at least in part, serves as a mouthpiece for her to make one thing plain to fans — the overlords at Warner Bros., as Groff's Smith so directly states to Neo, were planning to make a Matrix sequel with or without the original creative team. It's a moment in the movie that's played for humor, but the underlying cynicism rings distinct: you wanted me to make another Matrix film? Well, here it is, and you can take it or leave it. There's also even more weight to the scene when one recalls the fact that Resurrections almost never saw the light of day; when the movie had to halt production for pandemic reasons, Wachowski reportedly considered leaving it unfinished and had to be convinced by the cast to come back and resume filming.

RELATED: Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss on ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ and When They Realized What Trinity Means to People

Fortunately, what results from Wachowski's return to the franchise is well worth plugging back in for — and while Resurrections does afford screentime to plenty of action as well as keen philosophizing about free will vs. choice and the switch to manipulating feelings over facts in this new version of the Matrix, it's never been clearer that the crux of this franchise is a love story. In a realm defined by technology and science, Neo and Trinity have been linked by the most illogical concept of all: fate. Although the movie introduces each of them as having no idea who the other person is or what they even mean to one another, there's still an unconscious charge that happens the first time they shake hands, a magnetic pull that continually brings them into each other's orbit in spite of greater forces conspiring to keep them apart. Their romance in this movie is not implicit by any means, and the love that Wachowski still openly holds for that story persists through every single emotional beat of its script. When Neo finds himself awakened to the reality of this new Matrix, courtesy of a red pill from Morpheus 2.0, his sole mission becomes about how to save Trinity — and his love for her defines every single choice he makes from that moment on. Reeves and Moss sell the relationship between their characters in every scene, from quiet conversations over a coffee shop table to standing on the precipice of a skyscraper, weighing whether or not to jump into the unknown together.

Cast-wise, there's as much to love from the crop of newcomers as there is with the franchise's legacy players. Henwick's Bugs is the character whose unwavering optimism drives most of the story as she works tirelessly to free Neo from the Matrix. Abdul-Mateen's Morpheus serves as less of a guiding figure in this new iteration and more of a force designed to shake Neo out of his complacency, as well as inject plenty of levity. As the Analyst, Harris is responsible for delivering much of the sequel's metaphysical monologuing, which he commits to with a blend of menace and sangfroid. And Groff absolutely makes a meal out of the scenery as the newest incarnation of Smith, capable of alternating between charming and sinister energy without missing a beat.

The place where Resurrections does fall a little short is with its action. The sequel continues to emphasize all of the ways in which the Matrix eschews the laws of physics, resulting in many thrilling visuals, but the film, at many points, oddly veers away from the wire-fu and wide camera angles that the first movie became defined by. The result is a lot of frenetic and close-up perspective on certain sequences that makes the action very difficult to parse. It's a minor quibble in the overall delivery of the plot, but this is one particular instance in which leaning on nostalgia might have served the sequel better rather than trying to deliver something so divergent in terms of camerawork.

The most common question that circles around sequels, especially ones that are finally released after years of waiting, is whether they were even worth making to begin with. With The Matrix Resurrections , Wachowski has succeeded in not simply providing her own answer but conveying a film that represents the story she was most interested in telling after all this time, for better or worse. The Matrix Resurrections is an admirable follow-up in that it's less concerned with being the movie any fans might believe they want and instead serves up a sequel that will invite lots of conversation, encourage us to parse through the story code, and ultimately linger behind in our minds long after the credits roll.

The Matrix Resurrections premieres both in theaters and on HBO Max on December 22.

Movie Reviews

A black and white photo of Alain Delon driving a convertible sports car in sunglasses, looking at the camera with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gearshift.

Alain Delon, Smoldering French Film Star, Dies at 88

The César-winning actor was an international favorite in the 1960s and ’70s, often sought after by the era’s great auteurs.

Alain Delon in California in 1964 during the filming of the movie “Once a Thief.” Credit... Wayne Miller/Magnum Photos

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By Anita Gates

Published Aug. 18, 2024 Updated Aug. 26, 2024

Alain Delon, the intense and intensely handsome French actor who, working with some of Europe’s most revered 20th-century directors, played cold Corsican gangsters as convincingly as hot Italian lovers, died on Sunday. He was 88.

He died at his home in Douchy-Montcorbon, France, according to a statement his family gave to the French news service Agence France-Presse.

Hours later, President Emmanuel Macron honored him in a post on social media, saying, “Wistful, popular, secretive, he was more than a star: a French monument.”

During his heyday, the 1960s and ’70s, Mr. Delon was a first-tier international star, highly paid and often sought after by the era’s great auteurs.

When he burst on the scene in the gangster genre, as a sad-eyed, saintly young sibling in “Rocco and His Brothers” (1960), Luchino Visconti was in the director’s chair. Two years later, when Mr. Delon played a sexy stock trader, it was in Michelangelo Antonioni ’s “L’Eclisse” (“Eclipse”).

And “Le Samouraï” (1967), released in the United States as “The Godson,” and the jewelry-heist flick “Le Cercle Rouge” (1970), in which Mr. Delon was a sinister, mustachioed ex-con, were both directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, patron saint of the French New Wave.

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The Matrix Resurrections Is a Self-Aware Sequel

The film critiques Hollywood’s reboot culture while also serving as a surprisingly sweet work of nostalgia.

Keanu Reeves points two fingers at his reflection in a mirror in "The Matrix Resurrections."

The Matrix was set at the end of history. Released in 1999, the Wachowskis’ sci-fi film painted a quotidian picture of the late 20th century: The protagonist, Thomas Anderson (played by Keanu Reeves), lived in a bland-looking megacity where he worked a dull cubicle job and pondered the hopeless future that many feared at the end of the millennium. The twist, of course, was that this seemingly familiar life wasn’t real, and that Thomas, like almost all of humanity, was stuck inside a computer program created by a machine race. In The Matrix Resurrections —a new entry in a movie franchise that’s been dormant since 2003—Thomas, whom audiences knew as the heroic Neo, is once again trapped in a simulation. But in this film, the turn of the century’s crushing inertia has evolved into the unending din of the social-media age.

The Matrix Resurrections is hardly the first “legacy sequel” to hit cinemas recently— Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Space Jam: A New Legacy are among the many long-delayed follow-ups to big hits of yesteryear. But in updating a seminal text about generational alienation from more than two decades ago, Lana Wachowski (who directed solo this time, without her sister Lilly) has made a film that addresses the discombobulations of contemporary life, critiques Hollywood’s general reboot culture, and serves as a surprisingly sweet work of nostalgia.

Read: The 10 best films of 2021

Exhaustion with our ultra-connected world pervades the first act of The Matrix Resurrections , which finds Thomas living in the present day. (Reeves also sports his John Wick look—longer hair and a patchy beard.) Thomas is a video-game designer coasting off the success of The Matrix, a deeply immersive, best-selling game that appears indistinguishable from the original film arc. Though the world around him has changed—he’s now surrounded by chattering Millennials tapping away on their cellphones—he’s as existentially tormented as he was before, sure that there’s more to life beyond what he can see.

While working on a new video game, Thomas is told by his smarmy business partner Smith (Jonathan Groff) that their parent company, Warner Bros., is forcing Thomas to create a sequel to The Matrix—news that further emphasizes the sense that his life is an unending treadmill of the same experiences. Wachowski, who had long seemed content to leave the Matrix universe dormant after the back-to-back sequels Reloaded and Revolutions in 2003, is poking fun at the pervading corporate desire to make everything old new again. Does the world really need more Matrix ? Wachowski ponders the question both through Thomas’s weariness and the strange creative debates that play out on-screen, as eager young game programmers bat around notions of what made The Matrix so appealing in the first place. Was it the action? The twisty plotting? The punky, late-’90s leather aesthetic?

Read: A movie like The Matrix might never happen again

To Wachowski, what clearly mattered most to the original film trilogy was the love story of Neo and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), which forms the central arc of Resurrections as well. Both characters died by the end of Revolutions , but just as Neo has returned in this new Matrix as an older, more jaded Thomas, Trinity also reappears, first introduced as Tiffany and apparently unaware of their past. Much of Resurrections ’ narrative revolves around reviving Neo and Trinity’s prior connection, and it’s shot through with the sentimental streak that’s always powered the Wachowskis’ work but felt particularly predominant in their recent and ambitious Netflix series Sense8 .

Still, Resurrections is not without action. The expected gravity-defying gunplay abounds, much of it involving new characters such as Bugs (Jessica Henwick), a hacker seeking to liberate Neo from the Matrix, and Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), an … updated version of Laurence Fishburne’s character from the original trilogy (I won’t spoil the details of his origins). The film has plenty of other lore to untangle as well, such as why Neo’s old enemy Smith (previously played by Hugo Weaving but now inhabited by Groff) is around, how Neo and Trinity were revived, and whether the intentions of a slick psychiatrist (Neil Patrick Harris) in the Matrix are malevolent. However, the gun battles and kung fu duels, while competent, lack the innovative edge of the prior films—no “bullet time” moment that significantly raises the visual stakes.

Keanu Reeves walks down a city street that is partially digitized in 'The Matrix Resurrections'

To my surprise, Wachowski nonetheless holds on to quite a lot of backstory from the often-derided Matrix sequels; as a defender of those giddy epics, I was thrilled to see Resurrections not wipe the plot slate clean and just launch a brand-new Matrix. The evolution of the simulation is laced with some heady in-universe logic, but Wachowski (along with co-writers David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon) also ties it to how the internet has changed since the first Matrix . The 1999 film reflected an online world made up of a series of databases, in which the enemies were emotionless machines intent on keeping humanity under control. In Resurrections , the Matrix has shifted to something more wildly emotional and provocative: a universe of constant distraction and intense energy, embodying the all-out sensory assault that comes with being logged on in 2021.

That clever tweak helps justify The Matrix Resurrections ’ existence—the film evokes new metaphors rather than repeating the old ones, even with all its metatextual jokes about the futility of rebooting. Wachowski’s gamble is that viewers will enjoy a film that’s heavy on philosophizing and introspection as long as it retains the emotional, romantic hook that powered the first movie. Reeves and Moss sell their reunion as Neo and Trinity persuasively, glowing with the overwhelming chemistry and affection that Wachowski needed to push the film beyond cynicism.

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The Matrix Resurrections

New ‘Matrix’ Movie In The Works — But It Will Be The First Directed By Someone Other Than The Wachowskis

New shows & movies to watch this weekend: netflix's 'leave the world behind' + more, stream it or skip it: 'the matrix resurrections' on hbo max, a long-in-the-works sequel that's more woe than whoa, lana and lilly wachowski auction off "magical artifacts" from 'the matrix' and more to support trans youth.

The twists and turns of The Matrix Resurrections have enthralled some viewers, while leaving others cold. The first reviews of the film rolled in on social media last night, a mixed bag of complete and total support versus hatred towards the convoluted mess. While we’ll only be able to see it for ourselves beginning next week — from the comfort of our own home on HBO Max , of course — thanks to early reviews, we can gauge what Lana Wachowski ‘s new installation might be like.

As the movie’s social media embargo lifted yesterday (Dec. 16) night, critics rolled their opinions in all over Twitter. “#TheMatrixResurrections is a terrific, awe-inducing, meta mind-bender completely in line with the franchise’s legacy,” film critic Courtney Howard raved. “Finds an innovative, high-concept way to frame the new story. Keanu Reeves & Carrie-Anne Moss ‘ chemistry burns. Jessica Henwick is a revelation!”

#TheMatrixResurrections is a terrific, awe-inducing, meta mind-bender completely in line with the franchise's legacy. Finds an innovative, high-concept way to frame the new story. Keanu Reeves & Carrie-Anne Moss’ chemistry burns. Jessica Henwick is a revelation! @TheMatrixMovie pic.twitter.com/xRawqiOcuu — Courtney Howard (@Lulamaybelle) December 17, 2021

#TheMatrixResurrections is an unexpected delight. It’s a sequel/reboot that is confident and complex, stuffed with new ideas and designs and creatures, unwilling to simply unspool what’s come before. Like if “Gremlins 2” had a $150 million budget and lots of Kung Fu. What a ride. pic.twitter.com/kzIg6G3YIg — Drew Taylor (@DrewTailored) December 17, 2021

There was a point in the middle of The Matrix Resurrections where I briefly thought it was the best movie ever made, and, like, I haven’t convinced myself it’s NOT? I lovvvvvvved it. A lotta people are gonna haaaaaaaate. My favorite kind of movie!! — Emily VanDerWerff (@emilyvdw) December 17, 2021

And, of course, there were folks who felt the complete opposite — as is with any movie! “#TheMatrixResurrections is an almost 2.5-hour exposition dump with choppy action scenes reminiscent of the Bourne movies,” film critic Jeff Nelson tweeted. “It reuses far too much footage from previous installments and is meta to a fault.”

#TheMatrixResurrections is an almost 2.5-hour exposition dump with choppy action scenes reminiscent of the Bourne movies. It reuses far too much footage from previous installments and is meta to a fault. — Jeff Nelson (@SirJeffNelson) December 17, 2021

I have very complicated feelings about #TheMatrixResurrections . I’m not sure which movie it wants to be, an expanded world sequel or a story about a person being consumed by their own creation. One of those is an interesting idea but it doesn’t stick the landing on either. — Chris E. Hayner (@ChrisHayner) December 17, 2021

It's not perfect. There are some moments that might be complete and utter nonsense. But while THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS broke my heart, #TheMatrixResurrections … did the other thing. And I'm just so happy about that. Full review to come at @consequence next Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/nXX9sSevb1 — Liz Shannon Miller (@lizlet) December 17, 2021

As seen above, folks are making some wide-ranging comparisons when it comes to The Matrix Resurrections . The most common? Rian Johnson’s Star Wars installation, The Last Jedi . There were a handful of other Star Wars sequel comparisons tossed in the mix, too. “The Matrix Resurrections, despite (and because of) its infinite goofiness, is the boldest & most vividly personal Hollywood sequel since The Last Jedi ,” writes critic David Ehrlich, who continues, “a silly/sincere galaxy brain take on reboot culture that makes peace with how modern blockbusters are now only about themselves.”

The Matrix Resurrections, despite (and because of) its infinite goofiness, is the boldest & most vividly personal Hollywood sequel since The Last Jedi. a silly/sincere galaxy brain take on reboot culture that makes peace with how modern blockbusters are now only about themselves. — david ehrlich (@davidehrlich) December 17, 2021

the matrix resurrections is the most interesting blockbuster I’ve seen since the last jedi and i fully expect the people who are annoying about that movie to be annoying about this one. it rocks imo. — adam (@adam_notsandler) December 17, 2021

Saw #TheMatrixResurrections the other week (in IMAX!) and I enjoyed it! Easily better than 2 and 3. It feels like The Force Awakens – a nostalgic sequel/reboot to (maybe?) kick off a new franchise. Definitely rewatch the entire original trilogy in advance. Full review next week. pic.twitter.com/XHGQtkLcEB — Kirsten (@KirstenAcuna) December 17, 2021

You can make your own call when The Matrix Resurrections releases next Wednesday, Dec. 22, right in time for Christmas. The film will stream for free to HBO Max subscribers on the non-ad supported tier for 31 days before leaving the platform — scroll up to watch the trailer for the new reboot.

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COMMENTS

'The Matrix Resurrections' Review Thread : r/movies
ADMIN MOD. 'The Matrix Resurrections' Review Thread. Rotten Tomatoes: 69% (176 reviews) with 6.30 in average rating. Critics consensus: If it lacks the original's bracingly original craft, The Matrix Resurrections revisits the world of the franchise with wit, a timely perspective, and heart. Metacritic: 64/100 (50 critics) As with other movies ...
Why Matrix: Resurrections is a good movie. : r/matrix
ADMIN MOD. Why Matrix: Resurrections is a good movie. Most reviewers bash Matrix: Resurrections for being basically a nostalgia checklist with everything on the plate. From the awakening scene through training and jokes about Neo's flying abilities and bullet time: let's be honest - it's a fan service from A to Z -a nostalgia roller coaster ...
I want you opinion about the new Matrix movie! : r/matrix
To me it was a fun movie. I liked the message and the character focus of Neo and Trinity. For a matrix movie, the fights were lame. For a action movie they were ok. I think matrix pushed the envelope of what a fight scene could be. John Wick does that again. This, is to this movies detriment.
The Matrix Resurrections: 10 Unpopular Opinions About The Movie
Whether viewers believe that its plot is a blatant rip-off of Free Guy (which most fans feel is a blatant rip-off of The Matrix), or simply praise artistic choices that hardcore fans can't abide by (Lana Wachowski intentionally made a bad movie), The Matrix: Resurrections has been the subject of some unpopular opinions all across Reddit.
The Matrix Resurrections
With its unique story that is meta and heartfelt and tons of action, The Matrix Resurrections is the best film in the series since the original. Rated: 4/5 • Jul 29, 2024. If "The Matrix ...
The Matrix Resurrections movie review (2021)
"The Matrix Resurrections" is the first "Matrix" movie since 2003's "The Matrix Revolutions," but it is not the first time we've seen the franchise in theaters this year.That distinction goes to "Space Jam: A New Legacy," the cinematic shareholder meeting for Warner Bros. with special celebrity guests that inserted Looney Tunes characters Speedy Gonzales and Granny into a ...
It's Time to Accept That 'The Matrix Resurrections' Is Great
If he's learned anything, it's that choice, while an illusion, is still the only way out of -- or into -- the Matrix. Neo already knows what he has to do, but what he doesn't yet know is that the ...
The Matrix Resurrections Review
This is a spoiler-free review of The Matrix Resurrections, which hits theaters and HBO Max Dec. 22. Nostalgia naysayers are often quick to trash remakes, reboots, or long-lead sequels. They call ...
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The villain in this one, Roeg (presumably named for the great director Nicolas Roeg, and played by go-to bad guy Danny Huston) is not just a garden variety human criminal, but a vile and powerful creature who, by his own description, has been around a long time, and has the ability to corrupt mortals.Unlike previous screen tellings of the legends of The Crow, this one is thoroughly steeped in ...
Why The Matrix Resurrections Reviews Are So Mixed
These particular reviews suggest the critics feel the potential in The Matrix Resurrections is lost. There's too much a sense of deja vu in the action, storyline, and themes. To be sure, The Matrix Resurrections reckons with its own history, the idea of sequels and what the audience might want to see when returning to the world of the Matrix ...
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Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday offered her most expansive explanation to date on why she's changed some of her positions on fracking and immigration, telling CNN's Dana Bash her ...
The Matrix Resurrections review: angry, astonishing, unmissable
Matrix 4 is here. Director Lana Wachowski revives the Matrix movie trilogy with stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss. The dazzling sequel is one of the year's best films, and is streaming on ...
'The Matrix Resurrections' is brilliant, but not for everyone
Warner Bros. As someone who adored the original film, and found plenty to respect in the much-maligned sequels, Resurrections feels made just for me. It's intoxicating, thrilling and unabashedly ...
The Matrix Resurrections
Whoa! Neo is back in the first Matrix movie in 18 years, and it just might be the best sequel yet. The first reviews of The Matrix Resurrections are mostly favorable, acknowledging that it's less interested in innovation than emphasizing what truly works in the franchise: the romance.. Yes, Trinity (Carrie Anne-Moss) is back as well, and her chemistry with Keanu Reeves as Neo is said to be ...
Movie Review: 'The Crow' reimagined is stylish and operatic, but cannot
The first half drags at it sets the table for the steady beat of limbs and necks being detached at the end. Eric and his love, Shelly (played by an uneven FKA Twigs), meet in a rehab prison for wayward youth that is so well lit and appointed that it looks more like an airport lounge where the cappuccinos are $19 but the Wi-Fi is complimentary.. Eric is a gentle loner — tortured by a past the ...
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Back in 1988, "Beetlejuice" was a comedy, a ghost story, a high-camp horror film, and a macabre funhouse ride, all driven by a new kind of palm-buzzer freak-show prankishness. I first saw the ...
The Matrix: 9 Unpopular Opinions About The Franchise, According To Reddit
In 1999, The Matrix fundamentally changed the course of action movies forever with its use of 360-degree shots, slow-motion ("bullet time"), and wirework.Any other action movies from the '90s looked unpolished and amateur when compared to The Matrix's aesthetically pleasing and near-balletic action. Ubique008 believes that after the movies lured "young people with cool black clothes," viewers ...
'Matrix Resurrection' bad reviews: Why is the new Matrix ...
However, with the arrival of the fourth film, 18 years after the previous one, The Matrix Revolutions, also comes an avalanche of bad reviews from critics, although many fans persist in defending the film directed by Lana Wachowski. This is exactly what is going on in this sub: many fans persist in defending the film directed by Lana Wachowski. 1.
The Matrix Resurrections review
Warner Bros. Even with a full range of trailers and TV spots, it's impressive how little we know about The Matrix Resurrections, which makes a plot summary tricky. What we do know is that, somehow ...
The Matrix Movies Ranked
The Matrix Movies, Ranked by Tomatometer . The Matrix Reloaded celebrates its 20th anniversary!. The defining sci-fi event of 1999 was supposed to be Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, the long-awaited and super-hyped kick-off to the Star Wars prequel trilogy.Yet, while that film did rake in plenty of cash - and generate plenty of discussion - it was the kick-off of a different ...
The Matrix Resurrections Review: Lana Wachowski Delivers a ...
Jessica Henwick's Bugs is the single most electric addition to the franchise since the original, even if her earnestly punkish gunslinger spends large chunks of this movie re-watching the events ...
Matrix Resurrections Review: A Worthwhile Return to the ...
Editor's note: The following review contains mild, non-plot spoilers for The Matrix Resurrections. Action filmmaking has seen several pivotal titles that singularly redefined the genre over the ...
Where Kamala Harris Stands on the Issues: Abortion ...
With Vice President Kamala Harris having replaced President Biden on the Democratic ticket, her stances on key issues will be scrutinized by both parties and the nation's voters.. She has a long ...
'Strange Darling' Review: Assume Nothing
Playing out in six, ingeniously scrambled chapters, this headlong thriller transforms a simple cat-and-mouse premise — and maybe even a toxic love story — into an impertinent rebuke to genre ...
The Matrix Resurrections
The Matrix Resurrections is a 2021 American science fiction action film produced, co-written, and directed by Lana Wachowski, and the first in the Matrix franchise to be directed solely by Lana. It is the sequel to The Matrix Revolutions (2003) and the fourth installment in The Matrix film franchise.The film stars Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan ...
'The Matrix Resurrections' review: Keanu Reeves can't save this remix
The Matrix is still a thing, though, and it's been upgraded. A new human freedom fighter named Bugs (Jessica Henwick) and a revamped Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II instead of OG star Laurence ...
Alain Delon, French Film Star, Dead at 88
The César-winning actor was an international favorite in the 1960s and '70s, often sought after by the era's great auteurs. Alain Delon in California in 1964 during the filming of the movie ...
My "Matrix 4" review and comparison
The world's biggest online community about The Matrix franchise, created by the visionary minds of Lana and Lilly Wachowski! Welcome to the Source! My "Matrix 4" review and comparison - the short version. The first movie floats around my top 5 all-time. I think it's that good.
'The Matrix Resurrections' Is a Self-Aware Sequel
By David Sims. Warner Bros. December 21, 2021. The Matrix was set at the end of history. Released in 1999, the Wachowskis' sci-fi film painted a quotidian picture of the late 20th century: The ...
'The Matrix Resurrections' Reviews: 'Awe-Inducing' or ...
As the movie's social media embargo lifted yesterday (Dec. 16) night, critics rolled their opinions in all over Twitter. "#TheMatrixResurrections is a terrific, awe-inducing, meta mind-bender ...

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