Neo: I still know Kung Fu.
Oh wow, it’s been about 22 years, yeap 22 years since we were first blown away by a ground breaking film with cutting edge special effects and a sci-fi story that brought the genre to new heights. Without further a do, I must admit something to you all. If you have read my reviews in the past and have a little insight into who I am as a reviewer, you should know that I strive to be honest with myself which in turn will make me honest to you all. Up to and until Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: End Game were released, The Matrix and the entire trilogy for that matter were my favorite movies of all time (yes, the trilogy as a whole). Needless to say, I was more than excited to hear that another Matrix film was on its way. I apologize for any sense of bias that I might surely demonstrate with this review. And yet, maybe not so much because in actuality, I was not blown away. I mean, my apologies to Director Lana Wachowski, the bar was set pretty high and my expectations followed suit. I thought that 20+ years later, a new Matrix installment would knock our socks off again with ground breaking and cutting edge technology and such, and sure there were some very cool moments, but overall not as impactful as the original in its time. So in that aspect, I was a little disappointed. But for someone like me, I was just happy to see these characters in action again. We get a lot of the old and a lot of new ones too and some of them were intriguing. The storyline was slightly different than what we are used to with this franchise but the action sequences, the costumes, the sets, and overall look and feel, very much what we are used to. We even get a heavy dose of philosophical dialogue to make you reflect. I would venture to say that no other movie I’ve ever seen reminisces as much as this one which is okay if you like that kind of thing, but it was arguably too much reminiscing. I get that you can consider this a soft reboot, but I was looking forward to a little more “new”.
Therapist: After all these years, to be going back to where it started… back to the Matrix.
As we would expect, the movie is sexy, very sexy, visually in practically all aspects. The cinematography is amazing as it should be. The movie is also confusing, very confusing, just like the first one when you watch it the first time. No doubt, I NEED to see it again with subtitles and no distractions to take it all in. There are a few WTF? moments that need to be re-watched. The performances are sharp and appropriate for the franchise. Although many of the new characters are underdeveloped, some performances did stand out like Jessica Henwick was pretty cool, Neil Patrick Harris commands the screen, as does Yahya Adbul-Mateen II, and Priscilla freaked out when she recognized Jonathan Groff who of course gave a great performance (she’s a huge Hamilton fan, especially King George). Then there’s the music. The soundtracks for the first three films are just as iconic as the movies themselves. Wake Up by Rage Against The Machine is one such example of a perfectly selected music selection for the movie series. This film graces us with another such selected music selection that is super appropriate: One Pill by Jefferson Airplane. Used in the context of this film, it gives me goosebumps.
If you happened to have seen the first Deadpool movie, you might recall toward the beginning how Deadpool himself declares it a love story. Well, after seeing Resurrections, I am now more aware that this whole Matrix thing is also a love story, what do you know? So even though it might not blow you away like the first one did, it’s still a darn good movie that you will enjoy especially if you’re a fan and like Morpheus says:
Morpheus: Time to fly