'Real'. There's that word again...
Lana Wachowski returned to The Matrix after the death of her parents, seeking solace in being able to bring make the characters of Neo and Trinity. There's a sense in the film that she also knew that sooner or later someone would make a new Matrix film and she wanted to be in control of that.
The plot is broadly the same as the first movie with Neo living as Thomas Anderson in the Matrix and needing to be convinced to take the blue pill. The tweak here is that he has memories of the events of The Matrix trilogy and has even turned them into a successful video game whilst a therapist tells him it's all in his head.
This leads us to one of the most meta films I've ever seen. As well as seeing images from the trilogy, we also have characters discussing the Matrix game, from talk of doing a fourth instalment, even mentioning Warner Bros as the owners of the company, to mentioning that most people think of 'bullet time' when they think of The Matrix. It felt to me both really fun and clever, adding tot he effect of questioning what is real.
Indeed, this film doubles down on the idea of going down the rabbit hole of the previous films. Neo is far more reluctant to believe in the Matrix and I enjoyed the way that his thoughts questioning reality are turned into mental health issues. I absolutely loved the first act of this film as it follows Neo questioning who he is and for a long while refusing to listen to what people tell him.
The film does become a little less interesting once it stops worrying so much about the existential stuff and becomes an action film. Of course, the action here is great but inevitably it doesn't have the feeling of originality that the first film did. There are plenty of great sequences and there's an interesting play on the concept of 'bullet time' too.
Most of the characters from the original trilogy return here in some form but quite a few are played by different actors, largely for plot reasons. Yaya Abdul-Mateen II makes for a great Morpheus and Jonathan Groff is also great in the film. It's also good to see Keanu Reeves in action and it's great that they let him keep his beard and long hair inside the Matrix. Carrie-Ann Moss' Trinity doesn't actually have a great deal to do here which is a shame but there's still a great female lead in Bugs, played by Jessica Henwick who I'm sure is going to be a huge star in the future.
The Matrix has always been a divisive franchise. Some see the concept as questioning reality, to others it's a trans allegory and to some it's simply a decent sci-fi action franchise. It means different things to different people and it's fascinating to see this new instalment get hugely varying critiques. Personally, whilst this isn't quite as good as the original film, it's a great continuation of the story and I will be thinking about aspects of the film for some time to come.
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