The Matrix Resuscitated?
Anthony D’Alessandro
Three years ago, I was excited that The Matrix Resurrections might sweeten the bitter pill left in our collective mouths by The Matrix Revolutions. Sadly, it did not. It wasn't awful, but anything less than great was a failure. It was a weird combination of too self-referential and yet not Matrix-y enough. It was like a cute parody Matrix.1 There were some interesting ideas, but they mostly weren't explored in favor of being clever. And how's that working out for you?
Anyway, now the task of resurrecting the revolution falls to The Matrix 5. It's clearly being driven by Drew Goddard, a filmmaker whose background doesn't exactly scream Matrix, but apparently he's a super-fan and approached Warner Bros Discovery with an idea that compelled them to have another go at it...
“Drew came to Warner Bros with a new idea that we all believe would be an incredible way to continue the Matrix world, by both honoring what Lana and Lilly began over 25 years ago and offering a unique perspective based on his own love of the series and characters,” said Jesse Ehrman, Warner Bros Motion Pictures President of Production. “The entire team at Warner Bros Discovery is thrilled for Drew to be making this new Matrix film, adding his vision to the cinematic canon the Wachowskis spent a quarter of a century building here at the studio.”
The key phrase in there would seem to be "series and characters" that implies that Goddard aims to do this film with at least some of the main characters from the first four movies and not as some unrelated offshoot simply set in the universe. As Deadline notes:
It’s still early days in regards to whether core cast members Keanu Reeves, Carrie Anne-Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Hugo Weaving and Jada Pinkett Smith are coming back.
It seems like it would be nearly impossible to do a Matrix film without Keanu. And they almost certainly wouldn't greenlight such a project without at least talking to him. Would he do it again? It sort of felt like Resurrections was a nice little coda opportunity for him. Then again, it seems like he's inching towards making a fifth John Wick movie, so why not a fifth Matrix? Well, the fourth John Wick was decidedly better than the fourth Matrix, for one. But still...
Carrie Anne-Moss who is about to be back in a tangential world of fandoms with The Acolyte seems like a more obvious participant here. Laurence Fishburne, of course, was not in Resurrections, though his character was. Might bringing him and Hugo Weaving back be a good remedy?
This all feels a bit Indiana Jones 5 to me right now. That is, bringing the gang back to make another movie with a new director after the bitter taste left by the fourth movie. Though there, the fourth installment had the impossible task of coming long after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which was a beloved third film to cap off a trilogy. So the fifth film was sort of a way to correct that wrong. But again, it did not. (It was okay.) What might a fifth Matrix bring? The main themes of the original are arguably more important and certainly will resonate more in our current world going down the AI rabbit hole...
1 Honestly, I should probably re-watch it. Perhaps it holds up better than I recall. But I also kind of don't want to. That's how I felt about it.