After being kept for under the wraps for so long, the 4th installment of the Matrix series will be titled Resurrections. It officially became confirmed on August 24th, 2021 at Cinemacon in Las Vegas, reportedly along with a new trailer (which has yet to debut online).
The 4th entry is mightily anticipated, as it comes nearly twenty years after the 2003 double release of Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions. Lana Wachowski is flying solo this time at directing, with Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Lambert Wilson returning as Neo, Trinity, Niobe, and The Merovingian respectively. Sadly, Laurence Fishburne will not be returning as Morpheus as he was not asked to return. Some new members will be joining the ensemble like Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Neil Patrick Harris, and Priyanka Chopra.
While it is exciting to get another Matrix installment, we have to hope Wachowski and Warner Brothers can produce a comeback after the steep downfall with the release of Revolutions back in 2003. Everything about it felt anticlimactic and repetitive, and the story became bogged down with too much real-world exposition.
The Matrix had a unique aura around it as the audience wished to know more about the Matrix beyond Morpheus’s effective explanation with Neo. “It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” We also had the spoon scene, red pill/blue pill dilemma, and question of whether Neo is or not the One. Delving into it in the two sequels tampered with the mystery aspect, pulling a “Midi-Chlorian effect” like with Liam Neeson’s explanation of the Force in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Each reveal in Reloaded and Revolutions strips away the imagination and mystique of the first. And several scenes with the dialogue to superfluous characters underscore the potency of the philosophies once established. Thus, the sequels were information dumps rather than compelling products.
Let’s cross our fingers, and hope Lana Wachowski brings Resurrections back to a respectable position this franchise once yielded.
The Matrix: Resurrections releases December 22, 2021, simultaneously in theaters and HBO Max.
