The Matrix Resurrections

Treading lightly here. My opinion on that was favorable with some caveats.

First of all, before I get into The Matrix Reservations (of which I have a few) I need to remind people that I tend to review movies well the first time I see them. There are exceptions to that (such as Avatar) but I have been known to be overly generous to movies I've only seen once. I also should probably remind people who think the movie sucks that I did in fact give a great review to the last Matrix movie which was pretty much universally reviled elsewhere. What I'm saying is, if you hated this, feel free to take this review with a bovine-sized lick of salt.

My biggest reservation is something that bugs the hell out of me, and it's not something that I can rationalize away, or pretend it doesn't matter. But I got the great sense from the movie that it didn't want to be made, which is SO unusual for ANY movie, that I had trouble wrapping my brain around it. The meta jokes about Warner Bros Studios wanting to make a fourth Matrix made me cringe because I sense Lana Wachowski made them under duress. I suspect she didn't want to make this movie at ALL, and only took over because she knew someone else would screw it up. Part of her seems to resent it, so I do too.

What I appreciated about the film is that it wasn't about a new war between humanity and the machines (I forget what they preferred to be called in the movie). In fact the peace stuck and "sides" were no longer man versus machine, and many machines worked alongside people and were good guys. And speaking as someone appalled by the humans' behavior in The Animatrix, it's really cool that the humans treat the robots well here, and like real people (including fist bumps). That strikes me as not only growth for fictional characters, but for a fictional society as well. The conflict of the movie is actually nothing more than rescuing Neo, and then Trinity, because it turns out they aren't dead. The rescue threatens the peace, but the peace itself is still in place for the movie, which is kind of cool. I suspect a great deal of people disliked the last movie because Neo and Trinity died. So I sort of dug the idea that this movie kept the happy(ish) ending for humanity, while also extending it to Neo and Trinity.

I thought Jonathan Groff was pretty great as the new Smith, and his temporary alliance with Neo pleasantly shocked me. NPH as the Analyst was a pretty great villain too. He's very funny.

The unexpected comedy tag is great because not only is it the first tag for the franchise, but it's not setting up another movie. Personally I think we've taken care of all remaining business from the franchise. I half hope the movie bombs at the box office so Warner Bros will just leave things alone here.

It's a nice ending that I think should stick. And I get the sense that Wachowski felt it was already one movie too many, and so she didn't do too much to upset the applecart on purpose. ****.