At the onset of The Matrix Resurrections, Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is surrounded by memories that have been diluted down to toys, figurines, and an award-winning videogame franchise. Zion. The Nebuchadnezzar. Trinity. On its surface, the myth of Neo is everywhere. But as for the savior himself — he couldn’t be further removed.
Lana Wachowski’s follow-up isn’t a film that needed to exist. While most critical reception has mired the conclusion of the trilogy from almost twenty years ago, Lana and Lilly Wachowski completed their arc and went so far as to dismiss the idea of a continuation.
That’s the thing about stories. They never really end, do they?
Smith, The Matrix Resurrections
The Matrix Resurrections has been cited by the director as a passion project inspired by her late parents, but even without the autobiographical context, the film’s inception isn’t entirely out of left field. With a myth as powerful as The Matrix, it’s only a matter of time before we stumble upon that familiar well once again. What we choose to do with that well once it’s renewed, however, is a different subject.
Do we suck it dry for every sequel, prequel, and spin-off we can get, like another influential science-fiction landmark? Or do we just take a contemplative sip a la Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049?
The Matrix Resurrections opts to tackle both questions. On one hand, it dissects what happens to a messiah that lingers far past the prophecy they fulfilled. On the other, it examines when myth is commercialized and churned into something superficial and hollow, asking if purpose itself can be resurrected.
“You wrote that one, yeah?”
Though The Matrix is a fixture in Thomas’s life — its imagery plastered on nearly every wall of his office building — he keeps it at a comfortable distance. He does long for it, going so far as to create a recurring experiment, or modal, that will eventually release him from Machine City once more. But as far as he’s concerned, it’s a coping mechanism; he can deal with his myth’s existence, so long as he doesn’t have to truly relive it.
This, of course, isn’t a choice he gets to make. The fatal flaw of his illusion is that he didn’t create his myth, he was just a piece of it. Thomas faces this fact nearly every day of his life as he sees Tiffany (Carrie-Anne Moss) — a repurposed Trinity — order coffee with her family (her spouse is appropriately played by Chad Stahelski, John Wick director and Reeves’s stunt double in The Matrix).
He’s cataclysmically reminded of this in a conversation with his eerily familiar business partner, Smith (Jonathan Groff). They’ve been approached by their benefactors to make Matrix IV, a request their game studio can’t afford to decline. Effectively seeing the trickling green code on the wall, Thomas retreats to his psychiatrist, or analyst (Neil Patrick Harris), to cope with the trauma of revisiting his myth.
Falsely reassuring himself that creating a sequel can’t fracture his reality more than it already is, Thomas “agrees” by upping his prescription of blue pills. He stumbles back into the well of the myth, assured it won’t have the same effect. It’s only a matter of weeks before he’s literally soaked in his office, terrified and drowning.
The One, round two
Before Neo’s real reawakening, Thomas tries to emulate what he once was in practice. Wachowski is keen to demonstrate that there’s no snapping back into form for this herald. Thomas and his colleagues’ recollection of the Matrix myth has been diluted to “lots of guns” and “bullet time.” Any didactic or teaching the story may have distilled in them pales to the explosions and car chases.
And thus, Neo can’t be resurrected. Not through Thomas alone. While he was once a warrior that defied physics, he now stumbles over his ass and through his coffee table. The image is striking, ensnared by VR cables, an allegory for the cruel simulation that has recaptured him for not just 20, but 60 years.
It’s in this movement of Resurrections Wachowski contemplates nostalgia. As Thomas’s analyst suggests, it’s a way to comfort his reality. At first, he’s almost relishing in the brainstorming process, lost in the mockery of his old self. But when he’s too close to the past, such as when he finally has a coffee date with Tiffany, he’s reminded of what his journey really entailed: a vain hope tempered by copious amounts of pain.
As Tiffany lists off her “coincidental” parallels to Trinity, Thomas knows he’s Neo, even if he’s unprepared to accept it. It’s not the warmth of nostalgia he feels. It’s the ache of old scars.
“I never believed in the One.”
Thomas’s reluctance isn’t spurred by the chance he’s insane, but that everything was true. Because of his great accomplishments, the world he supposedly saved, has led to another Matrix. A sequel with little variance. For Thomas, if this deception is what Neo fought for, then they simply lost.
And when Neo is pulled from his battery cell, a pained look covers his face. Not only because he’s being separated from an adjacent pod that likely contains Trinity, but that everything looks strikingly the same. He’s carried through the bowels of the Machine City as a massive sentinel flies beneath like a deep-sea leviathan.
Neo feels microscopic, certain his myth served no tangible purpose. In fact, he’s so caught up in the idea he failed that he doesn’t notice he’s being carried by “living” evidence of his triumph — a benevolent machine freed by Neo’s sacrifice in The Matrix Revolutions.
Ultimately, Wachowski stresses that a myth, even one as intimate as The Matrix, is never truly built for those that created and took part in it. Neo doesn’t feel happiness or peace when he remerges from the illusion, at least not until he fulfills his most personal goal of resurrecting Trinity.
But again, the power of his myth isn’t predicated on his happiness or really even his life. It’s what follows. For those still caught inside The Matrix, it’s a bloated and tired story fueled by guns, leather, and slo-mo. But for the ones on the outside, collectively the “sentients,” the myth ignited a way of thinking and sense of community beyond anyone’s imagination.
