In these strange, uncertain times, particularly for cinema, the reliance on the blockbuster to draw in crowds is perhaps more significant than ever. That very notion would unsettle me in a ‘normal’ year; however, as we need the cinema to live on, we look to big blockbusters for physical audiences, spectacles, and flashes of inspiration amidst the sea of rehashes and reboots. The Matrix Resurrections, an inconceivable reboot after the faltering sequels to the brilliant, original Matrix, was perhaps not expected to be the film it is. This big-budget, meta-return to a world long left behind is unexpectedly welcome, self-aware, self-assured, and plenty of fun.
Lana Wachowski, alone for this instalment, acknowledges the 18-year gap between Resurrections and Revolutions; she reclaims the prescient narrative, adjusting to the present and contemporary. The Matrix lives on, the world within the world; the machines rule the real; we think we rule the digital. The machines, projected as a natural advancement of technology, harvest humans for electricity, keeping the species in pods wired into a digital substitute of what we once called life. Reprising his role(s) as Thomas Anderson and Neo, Keanu Reeves rolls back the years and is resurrected as humanity’s saviour in both digital and real. The exhuming of intellectual property such as The Matrix and the never-ending cycle of superhero callbacks can often feel cheap, overcooked, and unwarranted. The least we can hope for is the inclusion of the original cast. For the most part, Morpheus (Yahya Abdul Mateen II) and Agent Smith (Jonathan Groff) aside, Resurrections manages to blend new with original fittingly.
Ripe 