After 2021 turned into such a movie year and our list of movies to watch in 2022 is already ridiculously long (see the 202? movies post for more on that), I decided to start writing short reviews for each of the movies we are going to see in cinemas this year. They will in absolutely no way be professional, objective or anything but my personal and probably often quite unreasonable opinion on whatever I’ve seen. And because we basically started the new year with a trip to the cinema on January 2nd, here is the first of them!
So … while technically still a 2021 movie, we didn’t manage to catch The Matrix Resurrections over the holidays and instead made it our first movie of 2022. By we I mean my brother, my bestie and her brother and, obviously, myself. After the last year, I could probably also refer to that as the full movie squad because each of my fifteen trips to the cinema included at least one and often several of them. But I’m here to tell you my opinion about the movie!
It’s been ages since I’ve seen the full Matrix trilogy – sometime in the early 2000s, when my dad gifted us kids the DVD-box. I have seen both The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded since then but I have refused to rewatch the third part. Still, I was kind of excited about the prospect of a fourth movie but very aware that this could just as easily be horrible as it could be awesome. Turns out it’s neither but unfortunately closer to the negative end of the spectrum.
The story was pretty much all over the place. Parts of it were questionable, with a lot, and I really mean A LOT, of nostalgia – at points it felt like at least a quarter of the movie was actually material from the old movies -, action scenes and special effects that could just as well have been from the original movies, if not for the fact that Keanu Reeves looks clearly older (not a bad thing though, not at all!), and a story that just left me wondering why!? The ending especially was questionable but all throughout the story I was left questioning the plot and that really didn’t help my enjoyment of the movie.
There also were good things though! I do like both Keanu Reeves and Neil Patrick Harris a lot, even though I had my problems with their characters, and the recastings for Agent Smith and Morpheus were very well done. Also, the middle part of the story was so promising! I would have loved a deeper exploration of Io and the implications of this society for the wider world outside the Matrix. But alas, instead we got this really weird ending …
And, obviously, I also asked my fellow movie-watchers their thoughts about The Matrix Resurrections so here are their thoughts on the movie:
2-3 [stars]? It was better than the third part, but the end was just so… cringy for some reason. And I feel like they nerfed Neo which made me sad.
Henrike (aka. HenrikeHaphazard aka. my bestie)
A film that is self aware enough to spend the first half criticising the modern trend to produce sequels to 20 year old films that told their story already only to grab some quick cash from the nostalgic wave only to do exactly that in the second half
my brother who can say very smart things about movies but despises social media etc. and shall thus remain nameless und unlinked
Overall, The Matrix Resurrection really wasn’t a great movie. It wasn’t terrible either and, as Henrike said, it’s clearly better than The Matrix Revolutions, though that would have been hard to beat anyways. But to me the movie felt unbalanced, some parts were way to drawn out and boring, some parts had a lot of potential, that was nowhere near fully explored, and some just were complete WTF-moments.
Two out of five stars!
