The Matrix 4: Resurrections Trailer

[Piscian]

Bit of a misfire. It starts off legitimately interesting until the meta thing diverges from a Jacobs Latter horror film to "hey we're being self-ware that were churning out another rebootquel so now it's ok right?". The rest of the movie screams were making this using the most readily available technology and on a Christmas deadline so no dicking around allowed.

I read somewhere WB did legitimately tell the wachoskis they were doing another matrix movie regardless, but would obviously prefer they be involved so the film has this permeating smell of Lana halfheartedly being involved in the writing and directing, but, like George Lucas, not being invested enough to make a fully realized sequel. It's full of eye twitching logic holes, the fighting is phoned in, CGI is heavily utilized over practical effects in an on/off manner like "ok if we tried to make this look good it would months of tweaking so just smear CGI all over it and move on.". The bare minimum of actual fighting is the same where in it feels like an obligation and needs to wrap up before lunch rather than feeling like they spent sleepless nights storyboarding it out.

However the acting is fine, there's some interesting ideas here and there, I was entertained enough to where I could see myself watching it again on some lazy Sunday as apposed to the new Star War trilogy which I've never managed to bring myself to rewatch because of how cringe most the characters and dialogue are.

Matrix 4 keeps the cringe to a minimum and is mostly an ok watch. Be wary of anyone actually praising it, they are up their own ass. It is not "great" by any definition.

 

[Eacaraxe]

I've been done with the franchise since Reloaded. I did not even see Revolution until 2007; just for some minor closure.

I've been done with the franchise since I took philosophy classes in college, actually read Nietzsche and Baudrillard for myself, and realized precisely how massive a pair of pseudo-intellectual, fart-huffing, hacks the Wachowskis actually are. Being this occurred between the release of the first and second movies, I was fully prepared for the rest of the trilogy to be a shitshow...and was not fortunately surprised.

Fun fact about the first film, practically the entire cast and crew was required to read Simulacra and Simulation and discuss it before receiving the script. Reeves, Fishburne, Moss, and if I remember right Weaving, also were made to read two other works by Kevin Kelly and Dylan Evans before getting their scripts. Allegedly, the main folks to have read Baudrillard and not understand it were the Wachowskis themselves, something to which Fishburne allegedly took issue and wasted no time schooling the pair on their own damned required reading.

 

[Ezekiel]

I didn't expect the action to be this bad. Looks like some cable show. Hard to believe it's the same director.

 

[Chimpzy]

I didn't expect the action to be this bad. Looks like some cable show. Hard to believe it's the same director.

Yeh, it felt like watching a CW show a lot of the time, like from an episode of Arrow. I can't be arsed to look up who did the fight choreography for Ressurections, but if it's the same person as the original movies, then man, they slipped hard.

Fun fact: the actor who played Chad, the husband of Tiffany/Trinity? That's Chad Stahelski, Keanu's stunt double and the director of John Wick. Perhaps they should've let him direct the action scenes.

 

[Ezekiel]

Yeh, it felt like watching a CW show a lot of the time, like from an episode of Arrow. I can't be arsed to look up who did the fight choreography for Ressurections, but if it's the same person as the original movies, then man, they slipped hard.

Fun fact: the actor who played Chad, the husband of Tiffany/Trinity? That's Chad Stahelski, Keanu's stunt double and the director of John Wick. Perhaps they should've let him direct the action scenes.

Not the same choreographer as the original trilogy, but I think there's more to it than poor choreography. The gunfights, car chase and sentinel battles in the two sequels blow this out of the water too. It looks, cinematically, so amateur.

 

[gorfias]

One of my guests complained that storm troopers were better shots than the cops in this movie. The fighting and shooting scenes did lack suspense and were mostly consequence free. The cop guns were little more than noise makers.

 

[Chimpzy]

Not the same choreographer as the original trilogy, but I think there's more to it than poor choreography. The gunfights, car chase and sentinel battles in the two sequels blow this out of the water too. It looks so amateur.

I agree. The fights are also poorly framed, poorly edited and suffer from shakycam. The movie just looks kind of cheap in general, despite having triple the budget of the original. Did they spend it all on advertising and that Matrix Awakens tech demo or something? Whenever Neil Patrick Harris' character uses bullet time looks especially bad.

 

[Samtemdo8]

"Your heroes are old and pathetic and accomplished less than you thought they did" is the new cash grab.

Make way for the new generation of heroes then.

 

[Samtemdo8]

The only good part of the movie for me ironically was anything to do outside of the Matrix.

What was going on in the Post Apocalyptic Reality.

 

[Piscian]

I have to back pedal a little bit. I felt reasonably favorable towards the film on first watch, but I tried to rewatch it on a bigger screen the other night and I couldn't get passed the point where Smith says O.M.G.

On rewatch I couldn't help but get irritated by how saturated in mehmeh bullshit the film is and by the time I got passed the coffee scene I was just exhausted.

While Im not trying to taught my authority on the subject I'd mentioned earlier I'm a software/hardware developer by trade. I've always been able to enjoy the original matrix because it doesn't make any attempt to really be relevant. The programming and network lingo is kept pretty simple so it never required me to question too deeply.

I suspect that all kind of got thrown out the window with this one. They keep saying "modal" constantly throughout the film and it irritates the shit out of me. It's just a sandbox/dev module instance but they either felt the need to give it a stupid futuristic name which never ages well or they were too lazy to do any research, maybe both.

The change to mirrored surfaces and doors is ok, but it breaks the rules in a way that hurts the tension of the film. For instance why do they need to escape on the motorcycle, can they just jump in a mirror? This ends up making the writing seem muddled and lazy. Like they didn't advance anything for the sake of improving the story they just didn't "feel" like dealing with complexity of exits so now anyone can go anywhere any time.

Then they constantly make dated references to try and hook you on this being relevant with obnoxious meme shit like tdubs and best self and shit which is already tiresome.

I just didn't need a hook. The twist of the first film is that it takes place in 1997 and it's been 1997 for like 200 years so moving the timeline forward doesn't make any sense other than a sad desperation to hook current gen audience BUT this is the 4th fucking movie. WTF is seeing this that hasn't seen The Matrix???

I read some shill praising of the changes as them bolding moving past the constraints of the original film, but like the new star wars trilogy it feels like they just got lazy.

So if the sci-fi is muddled and the action is shit all you're kind of left with is the story. This gets another red mark from me because Agent Smith and NPHs Analyst lean hard into self referential sarcastic cartoonishness that feels more at home with a twitch streamer than compelling villains.

So what did I like about it? I'm starting to scratch my head. Everything about it seems so thrown together. They're not really setting up a trilogy, but this also doesn't really have reason to exist on its own. I guess it's just nice to see more ..matrix? Idk.

 

[BrawlMan]

​

 

[SilentPony]

Okay so I finally managed to get my security email shit worked out, and I saw this movie while I was away and mentioned some thoughts on the Escapist proper review, but I still have problems with this one. Namely authorial intent vs authorial execution. By most accounts, especially from the LGBTQ- crowd and the producer herself, this movie should be a pro-trans message about being who you really are, and indeed the first Matrix movie is very heavily in that camp.
So...why the fuck did Lana Wachowski make such an anti-transgender and oddly conservatives movie?!

Red pill vs blue pill. Red pill in lore has a tracking software that helps find people in the people farms and break them out of their pods. Metaphorically some hormone pills come in a red pill, so metaphor. Blue pills were just supposed to be the illusion of choice in the metaphor, and a placebo pill in lore.
Except now blue pills have a chemical that replaces your perception of reality with a false one, allowing the Matrix to have better control over you. And only by detoxing from this chemical can you return to your natural, no artificial chemical state. And the pill is literally prescribed by a doctor!
So we have a movie where the reality replacement therapy is evil, and only by stopping your replacement therapy can you return to your natural self. Holy shit, that is not a pro-transgender message!

Also for whatever reason there are only two couples in the movie, Neo and Trinity, and Niobe and the plant lady. And for whatever reason the movie has the gay black lady tell the straight white guy his trying to get back his relationship with Trinity is a danger to their society. And in the end only the love between a cis-gender white man and cis-gender white woman can save the world.

Seriously, did anyone involved in this movie's writing actually watch the dailies coming out of production? Is this a case of extreme company interference? I noticed almost all of Neil Patrick Harris's lines are dubbed and a good 80% of his shots are away from camera so you can't see his mouth. So who knows what he was actually saying, and what they added in post.

I'm all for author intent, and I do believe authors have a say in how their work should be seen. But also...you gotta follow through. It really doesn't work to say the movie is X all the while showing Y. Makes me think either A. they don't know what X is, or B. This isn't their movie. I would say C. I misinterpreted it, but the movie does say the therapist is evil, does say the blue pill is a chemical replacement, does say Neo needs to detox, does have Neo and Trinity causing God rays whenever they touch.

Also are we going to ignore the fact a robot civil war with Zion in the mix and pro/anti human robots is a WAY better plot and hook?! Why the fuck didn't we get THAT movie?! The race-relation metaphors practically write themselves.

 

[BrawlMan]

Also are we going to ignore the fact a robot civil war with Zion in the mix and pro/anti human robots is a WAY better plot and hook?! Why the fuck didn't we get THAT movie?! The race-relation metaphors practically write themselves.

Nostalgia masturbating and self-fellatio. Too obsessed with living in the past.

 

[Asita]

Nostalgia masturbating and self-fellatio. Too obsessed with living in the past.

...Well now that you say it like that, if that isn't quintessentially "the Matrix", I don't know what is. In the context of the story, that is quite literally what it is to live in the Matrix. Heck, it's also basically what Cypher was asking for in the first movie: to return to the blissfully ignorant 'glory' days of the past before he knew about the real world.

 

[BrawlMan]

...Well now that you say it like that, if that isn't quintessentially "the Matrix", I don't know what is. In the context of the story, that is quite literally what it is to live in the Matrix. Heck, it's also basically what Cypher was asking for in the first movie: to return to the blissfully ignorant 'glory' days of the past before he knew about the real world.

The only difference being Resurrections is so far up its own ass and proud of its message, that it makes Reloaded and Revolutions look pleasant by comparison.

 

[SilentPony]

The only difference being Resurrections is so far up its own ass and proud of its message, that it makes Reloaded and Revolutions look pleasant by comparison.

See Reloaded and Revolutions were both up their own asses too, but at least what they claimed their message was and what they showed lined up.
Neo is a Christ allegory who dies for the sins of man and machine, and the last we see of him is being carried off in a Jesus cross pose having died fighting Smith. Like heavy handed or not, at least its their.
Resurrections problem is its so pleased with what it thinks is its own message it sorta forgot to tell that message and fumbled through a lot of really problematic concepts and implications.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Also are we going to ignore the fact a robot civil war with Zion in the mix and pro/anti human robots is a WAY better plot and hook?! Why the fuck didn't we get THAT movie?!

That's a whole lot more difficult to write than self-referential pabulum.

 

[Fallen Soldier]

Apparently the matrix 4 had some political bullshit.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Yeh, it felt like watching a CW show a lot of the time, like from an episode of Arrow. I can't be arsed to look up who did the fight choreography for Ressurections, but if it's the same person as the original movies, then man, they slipped hard.

Fun fact: the actor who played Chad, the husband of Tiffany/Trinity? That's Chad Stahelski, Keanu's stunt double and the director of John Wick. Perhaps they should've let him direct the action scenes.

Holy shit this movies is fucking aweful. I knew I was in trouble when in the very first fight scene the actress couldn't do a kick. The scene trying to recreate the opening scene of the first movie, where Trinity fucks up all those agents, they didn't even bother recreating anything about that scene, and the kick that shit did off the wall was...what the fuck even was that? Then to put in all the effort to rebuild the scene only to not bother with the most iconic moment where Trinity jumps into the air and floats in bullet time....what the fuck dude.

The entire movie was a fucking joke. And a complete waste of time.

Okay here is another problem

Spoiler

Trinity is the One now? But somehow Neo still has enough of his powers as the One to stop bullets and shit? Neo didn't have that ability until he became the One, so if that power now belongs to Trinity then Neo shouldn't be able to do it. Except at the end they are both the One....so not the One...the Two I guess.

The Meta commentary throughout the film was pretty on the nose and honestly if the director actually gave a shit about preserving the integrity of her own franchise, she could have wrote something pretty deep here about the pressure to make sequels and the bastardizations of franchises all to please the corporate overloads. I get that she was forced to make this film, because otherwise WB was going to make it without you. But She didn't care enough to make a good film so she might as well have let someone else take a fucking crack at it. Lana didn't want someone else to fuck up her work, so she fucked it up herself? That makes total sense.

Also the excessive use of words like "triggered" annoyed me.

At least the character that I should have hated (Blue haired SJW insert lady) was actually my favorite character. Bugs felt like the only person in the story who actually gave a shit.

 

[Piscian]

Holy shit this movies is fucking aweful. I knew I was in trouble when in the very first fight scene the actress couldn't do a kick. The scene trying to recreate the opening scene of the first movie, where Trinity fucks up all those agents, they didn't even bother recreating anything about that scene, and the kick that shit did off the wall was...what the fuck even was that? Then to put in all the effort to rebuild the scene only to not bother with the most iconic moment where Trinity jumps into the air and floats in bullet time....what the fuck dude.

The entire movie was a fucking joke. And a complete waste of time.

Okay here is another problem

Spoiler

Trinity is the One now? But somehow Neo still has enough of his powers as the One to stop bullets and shit? Neo didn't have that ability until he became the One, so if that power now belongs to Trinity then Neo shouldn't be able to do it. Except at the end they are both the One....so not the One...the Two I guess.

The Meta commentary throughout the film was pretty on the nose and honestly if the director actually gave a shit about preserving the integrity of her own franchise, she could have wrote something pretty deep here about the pressure to make sequels and the bastardizations of franchises all to please the corporate overloads. I get that she was forced to make this film, because otherwise WB was going to make it without you. But She didn't care enough to make a good film so she might as well have let someone else take a fucking crack at it. Lana didn't want someone else to fuck up her work, so she fucked it up herself? That makes total sense.

Also the excessive use of words like "triggered" annoyed me.

At least the character that I should have hated (Blue haired SJW insert lady) was actually my favorite character. Bugs felt like the only person in the story who actually gave a shit.

I have to sit back and remind myself that these two aren't exactly Chris Nolan or Ridley Scott. Being surprised that this movie sucks is like being surprised M. Night Shyamalan would make shitty sequel to sixth sense. These derps made the matrix and haven't really made a good film since other than "arguably" V for vendetta, which I fuckin hated, and cloud Atlas. Weirdly I recalled liking Ninja Assassin, but they only produced that one and it flopped anyway.

I would definitely say in hindsight I wish they'd found someone else more invested in a continuation of the story. I'd bet there's a David Fincher type floating out there that could have done something less phoned in.