I wouldn’t call myself the biggest Matrix fan, but that first movie was rather impressive. The sequels, not so much, but they did tell a complete story. Why, then, did Lana Wachowski decide to make a fourth this long since the trilogy ended? Was there really a desire to tell another story in that setting? True, The Matrix was a groundbreaking movie in terms of special effects and style, influencing the way action movies looked for the next few years and more or less epitomizing the 90s and what was considered “cool” by that decade.
But a fourth movie was made, so why not check it out while it’s on HBO Max and I can watch it at home?
Actually, this movie starts off very clever, coming out as a movie that is very much aware that, you know, there may be no need to tell this story. Neo (Keanu Reeves) may be Thomas Anderson, and The Matrix may be a story within the movie as much as it is in the real world. There are a number of reasons to doubt that events in the movie, like an Agent desiring freedom and becoming the new Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) thanks to the intervention of a woman going by “Bugs” (Jessica Henwick), are actually true, and Thomas does seem to have a “Trinity” in the form of a married mother going by Tiffany (Carrie-Anne Moss). It’s really a rather clever opening act, one that questions how much the entire series was based on reality for Neo/Thomas and how much of it was just an illusion of some kind, perhaps one caused by Thomas’s own mental state. Really, if the movie had kept going that way, I would have been a very happy camper, and it would have been a very appropriate way to make a new Matrix movie. Heck, some of the dialogue there even felt to me like unintentional(?) commentary on the new Space Jam.
Then something happens and there’s no more ambiguity about what is and isn’t real. From there, it pretty much becomes a standard Matrix movie.
Now, that’s not to say that there’s nothing new on display. The conflict here is less a black-and-white man vs. machines and more a free will vs destiny/slavery argument, one where humans work with machines and sentient programs against a greater evil. Morpheus isn’t the only character recast with a new face and personality, and the use of Trinity is actually interesting as it makes her return as much a matter of her own choice as anything else. Really, this is the ultimate example of a woman giving consent in a movie I may have ever seen, and it’s thematically appropriate for the series itself.
However, what was once cutting edge no longer seems to be. The fight scenes are less effective, to the point that many of the punches thrown don’t seem to be hitting much of anything very hard. The finale, another large scale battle between Neo and his allies, is such a chaotic mess that it was hard to see what was even happening. And as with the sequels, the movie decides to explicitly explain the philosophical decisions being made rather than just let the audience figure it out for themselves with more symbolic representations like the original movie did. There’s a lot to like about this new Matrix. It starts off with a clever twist, and Trinty’s storyarc here works very well, and I will never complain when an older woman gets cast as a love interest, particularly given how often its a younger woman next to a middle aged man. Ultimately, this was a nice side trip into the Matrix that both showed what the original movies did both good and bad. It’s just too bad they didn’t stick to the ambiguity of the first act.
Grade: B-
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