Film The Matrix Resurrections

It has gotten very mixed reviews generally, so it's definitely not just this place. And "popcorn flicks" regularly get very positive reviews and very positive audience reactions, so it isn't anything to do with skewed expectations either.

It's just a bad film. In the same way the other Matrix sequels were bad films. There's not much more to it than that.

The meta stuff might have been vaguely interesting but nowhere near enough to sustain the rest of the film.
 
Zen said:
I'm not even sure I recall the term 'popcorn flick' even existing when the original was made. The summer blockbuster scene started to get murdered by Michael Bay in the years following.... he's the pioneer of it. The other term for them being "turn off your brain" movie....

But I guess, sure... but still, the Matrix is highly regarded in it's own right as a sci-fi first and foremost.
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I'm sure you're right it wasn't described as such when it came out, but is it really your impression that the original trilogy is some cerebral experience while number 4 is on par with whatever Michael Bay has been making the last decade?
 
Just saw this. First thoughts:

Has there ever been a sequel where they keep showing scenes of the original movie with very little/no context?

NPH makes for a terrible bad guy in this movie. The acting overall was quite poor apart from the Asian girl with the aussie accent.

Agent smith made no fecking sense

Nice of the helicopter pilots to fly away and give the main characters a chance to make out
 
pierrethesnack said:
I'm sure you're right it wasn't described as such when it came out, but is it really your impression that the original trilogy is some cerebral experience while number 4 is on par with whatever Michael Bay has been making the last decade?
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Erm, I don't really know where to start, I didn't mention the sequels for one, nor did I mention my opinion on the first, I merely it said it ranks highly on a hell of a lot of sci-fi lists that weren't done by me.

You won't see Matrix 4, as well as 2/3 in anything but mostly 'worst of year' and 'worst sequels' lists if that helps anything.
 
pierrethesnack said:
I'm sure you're right it wasn't described as such when it came out, but is it really your impression that the original trilogy is some cerebral experience while number 4 is on par with whatever Michael Bay has been making the last decade?
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I'm pretty certain that they're only talking about the first film, which was fantastic. Not the bad second film and the abysmal third.
 
I'm a big Matrix fan and I quite enjoyed the fourth installment. Finally back to the Matrix and fortunately it's a direct sequel.

This movie is foremost a love story, more so than the first three movies.
Happy to see Neo and Trinity back again and nice they found a way to bring them back.

After viewing the trailer I had my doubts about her character, but Jessica Henwick as Bugs is a great addition to the franchise. I really like her.

Too bad this third sequel is almost an copy/ remake of the first movie. References to the first movie and to a lesser extent Reloaded and Revolutions were numerous. They even added many shots from the first three movies. It's like the directors were playing it safe.

Hopefully there will be a fifth movie and the producers will expand the Matrix universe even more. My advice is, don't be afraid, take risks.
 
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sullydnl said:
It has gotten very mixed reviews generally, so it's definitely not just this place. And "popcorn flicks" regularly get very positive reviews and very positive audience reactions, so it isn't anything to do with skewed expectations either.

It's just a bad film. In the same way the other Matrix sequels were bad films. There's not much more to it than that.

The meta stuff might have been vaguely interesting but nowhere near enough to sustain the rest of the film.
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This was definitely much worse than the other 2 sequels imo.
 
Just finished it. I thought it was very good. I was nervous going in after the mixed/negative reactions but it's probably my favourite since the original.

It was bold, surprising, original, moving and found new depths in the major characters. It was also reasonably coherent with less unanswered questions than Revolutions.

Overall, I'm kind of struggling to understand what people dislike so much about it. Very pleasantly surprised, given the reactions. Felt like a fitting, timely ending to the story.
 
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I thought it was mostly what I was expecting. More love story than I would have liked or cared about, some of the special effects didnt look great, some of the new cast members were fine but there was a lot of time spent on Bugs/Henwick and I didnt like her. Other special effects looked good... Cant say I cared much about the story overall as I found it fairly uninteresting. 6.5/10 for me
 
I think I lasted longer than some other people did before finding it turned to shit.

Overall I’d say I enjoyed 80% of it.

The moment it turned for me was when “Tiffany” decided she was Trinity, and then they touched hands and created a mini explosion that blew away all the FBI bots. Pretty much everything after that was various degrees of bad, but up until there I mostly enjoyed it. The meta stuff at the beginning was particularly good, and I quite liked Smith although him calling Neo “Tom” stuck in the craw a little.

Trinity can fly now even though Neo can’t? Why?

Also Jada Pinkett deserves an Oscar for worst old person acting ever.

And then they John Lewis’d RATM which should be illegal.

Overall, 7/10, better than 2 & 3 but a long way short of the original.
 
Rado_N said:
Wait I’ve just been looking on IMDB, when the hell was Christina Ricci in it?!
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She was in it for about 30 secs as the head exec talking about the new game. She appears right at the start of the White Rabbit montage.

matrix-christina-ricci-2-e1640287716519.jpg
 
Rado_N said:
Trinity can fly now even though Neo can’t? Why?
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Very strong implication throughout the film (with all the talk about their shared energy and Neo only finding his mojo when Trinity is brought up) that Neo isn't The One; Neo and Trinity combined constitute The One.

Also they both fly at the end.
 
I really enjoyed it. Appreciated a lot more after the below video (long but worth it):



Just forward through the ad plugs inbetween the video
 
FrankDrebin said:
This film intentionally a piss-take ?
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No:

The analyst (being an upgraded version of the Architect) took the reality and turned it into fiction by breaking the fourth wall in his fake world. All the people in the Matrix were introduced to the theory that they were all plugged into a fake world by being introduced to a video game also called "The Matrix". Of course this was indeed a reality, but it was so far fetched that everyone rejected it as a possibility and looked at it as a fun game which it was pitched as. Because the analyst was able to fictionalize the reality, the reality was ultimately rejected by those plugged in, which was one of the reasons why it worked so much better than the first 6 iterations of the Matrix under the Architect. That and the fact that anomalies can generate feckloads more energy, so it was worth keeping Neo and Trinity alive and plugged in.
 
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VP89 said:
No:

The analyst (being an upgraded version of the Architect) took the reality and turned it into fiction by breaking the fourth wall in his fake world. All the people in the Matrix were introduced to the theory that they were all plugged into a fake world by being introduced to a video game also called "The Matrix". Of course this was indeed a reality, but it was so far fetched that everyone rejected it as a possibility and looked at it as a fun game which it was pitched as. Because the analyst was able to fictionalize the reality, the reality was ultimately rejected by those plugged in, which was one of the reasons why it worked so much better than the first 6 iterations of the Matrix under the Architect. That and the fact that anomalies can generate feckloads more energy, so it was worth keeping Neo and Trinity alive and plugged in.
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It definitely was a pisstake in parts too. The more interesting, watchable parts.
 
caid said:
It definitely was a pisstake in parts too. The more interesting, watchable parts.
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I think theyre just taking a piss on how everyone likes a reboot sure. But they weaved the context into benefitting the story really well. The more I look back on the film the more I enjoy it. Its one where multiple viewings will enable me to pick up more understanding without it being too complicated.

Its all subjective and movies is just opinion. But I thoroughly enjoyed this one, for me its really good. Also on a personal note to me Ive recently felt that the world is too socially engineered, Ive left facebook and twitter, contemplating leaving instagram too. This film speaks to me in lots of levels in that sense. The whole free will vs determinism thing is really current, I really appreciate the director bringing that debate to the table (they did this in so many scenes, from the choice of the pill explanation to Tiff talking about why she had kids).

Funnily enough I was having this debate the movie brings encompassed in the rival release of Spiderman. So many people like Spiderman because they had decided its great before walking in. Social media hype was high, they like Tom Holland and love the comics, so the headstart the movie had was huge before the first scene was shown. So did a lot of people like it because they liked it as a movie? Or because they were engineered to with the nostalgia of the reboot of Andrew Garfield and Toby Maguire? This movie spoke about reboots being the perfect sedative for people to forget about reality. That was pretty balsy, considering its a sequel to a nostalgic film itself. But it was also so much more, for me anyway.
 
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Rado_N said:
I think I lasted longer than some other people did before finding it turned to shit.

Overall I’d say I enjoyed 80% of it.

The moment it turned for me was when “Tiffany” decided she was Trinity, and then they touched hands and created a mini explosion that blew away all the FBI bots. Pretty much everything after that was various degrees of bad, but up until there I mostly enjoyed it. The meta stuff at the beginning was particularly good, and I quite liked Smith although him calling Neo “Tom” stuck in the craw a little.

Trinity can fly now even though Neo can’t? Why?

Also Jada Pinkett deserves an Oscar for worst old person acting ever.

And then they John Lewis’d RATM which should be illegal.

Overall, 7/10, better than 2 & 3 but a long way short of the original.
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Pretty much this (except Neo flies at the end).


A couple of things caught my attention:

When they are pitching the next game, and he says "they'll make it with or without you" I'm guessing that's exactly what happened. In which case, they would be much better off without either of the W sisters involved going forward.

Smith was entirely pointless, as were the "captains" being there at the end only to be ditched by Neo/Trinity at the first opportunity :lol:

Even though Smith was pointless, I liked who they chose and I also liked NPH surprisingly much more than I thought. He does creepy really well, which was the character. Morpheus on the other hand, can't think of a single thing I liked about what they did with the character.

As you said, overall I liked the idea behind the story enough. I just don't think Lana is anywhere near as good at the "meta" and related jokes as she thinks she is. In fact, I think she's watched an episode of Rick and Morty and attempted to rip that off without understanding even that. Similarly she seems to acknowledge the problem The Force Awakens had with pissing on the original trilogy and making it all seem pointless, so at least tries to account for that here...then gives us a bit of terribly attempted feel goods with the new Zion which actually means nothing to the story anyway.

Robot animals/bugs. Just so laughably dumb (and terribly designed/animated too).



Overall it was nowhere near as bad as I expected, and much better as part of the story than 3. I think the Wachowskis will never not have half-decent ideas but the lack of originality to actually pull them off properly. They always seem to miss the mark as they don't seem to get their own material. Matrix one and perhaps V were outliers, but then weren't their ideas.
 
Bit late but...I enjoyed the first half, maybe first two thirds of it, then it descended dangerously towards Jurassic World/Independence Day 2 territory, without ever making it all the way into the same gutter of shame where these films reside.

I also suspect my enjoyment of the first half may have been partly down to being interested to see where it was actually going. There was a point fairly early on where I thought they might be doing something completely different and almost breaking the fourth wall...but then it just gradually became more, I dunno, boring?

I think I was on board until the French guy from Reloaded turned up, but for some reason was an insane rambling hobo. This sort of thing belongs in a Transformers movie. It makes no sense and if it was an attempt to be funny it wasn't. Part of the reason the first Matrix was good is because it steered a million miles from dumb shite like this. This film on the other hand had lots of it.

I wasn't horrified by it. I was expecting it to be bad and still can't decide if it was as bad as I was expecting or not.

More general complaint:

Why do sequels nowadays constantly have to put tons of throw backs or tributes to the original film in them? The whole film and the fact it exists is literally a tribute to the original...you don't then need to cram it with self appreciating bollocks just to remind everyone watching the Matrix movie that its a sequel to the film "The Matrix". This is the worst film yet for this. The constant flashbacks, the literal copying of scenes, lines, flashing back to Agent Smith at the same time as Agent Smith is copying an old Agent Smith line, illogically referencing old lines ("I still know kung fu"), the key shop. Literally so much paying tribute to itself that it was overlapping or going on in layers. How much back slapping can you actually cram into 2 hours and still fit a new movie in there at the same time? I know they tried to tie some of it in as being part of the Neo/ Mr Anderson arc, but no, not nearly a good enough excuse for the sheer amount of it.
 
noodlehair said:
Bit late but...I enjoyed the first half, maybe first two thirds of it, then it descended dangerously towards Jurassic World/Independence Day 2 territory, without ever making it all the way into the same gutter of shame where these films reside.

I also suspect my enjoyment of the first half may have been partly down to being interested to see where it was actually going. There was a point fairly early on where I thought they might be doing something completely different and almost breaking the fourth wall...but then it just gradually became more, I dunno, boring?

I think I was on board until the French guy from Reloaded turned up, but for some reason was an insane rambling hobo. This sort of thing belongs in a Transformers movie. It makes no sense and if it was an attempt to be funny it wasn't. Part of the reason the first Matrix was good is because it steered a million miles from dumb shite like this. This film on the other hand had lots of it.

I wasn't horrified by it. I was expecting it to be bad and still can't decide if it was as bad as I was expecting or not.

More general complaint:

Why do sequels nowadays constantly have to put tons of throw backs or tributes to the original film in them? The whole film and the fact it exists is literally a tribute to the original...you don't then need to cram it with self appreciating bollocks just to remind everyone watching the Matrix movie that its a sequel to the film "The Matrix". This is the worst film yet for this. The constant flashbacks, the literal copying of scenes, lines, flashing back to Agent Smith at the same time as Agent Smith is copying an old Agent Smith line, illogically referencing old lines ("I still know kung fu"), the key shop. Literally so much paying tribute to itself that it was overlapping or going on in layers. How much back slapping can you actually cram into 2 hours and still fit a new movie in there at the same time? I know they tried to tie some of it in as being part of the Neo/ Mr Anderson arc, but no, not nearly a good enough excuse for the sheer amount of it.
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This was by design, not to have nostalgia.

The consultant (new upgraded architect) had turned the reality that Neo had broken through to and turned into a simulation via a game. Everyone rejected the actual reality as a result because it seemed so far fetched, something you can only really see in a video game.

Neo himself kept rejecting it and even in the Office rescue attempt this time Moropheus failed to get him out, unlike in Matrix 1 where he was successful. The consultant used the deja vu cat cleverly in this iteration to make Neo think the rescue was a simulation and he needs to return to reality, on the his psychiatrist couch. In order to get around this, Morpheus decided to have the snips and scenes on the TV of "old" matrix to guide Neo to the truth.
 
VP89 said:
This was by design, not to have nostalgia.

The consultant (new upgraded architect) had turned the reality that Neo had broken through to and turned into a simulation via a game. Everyone rejected the actual reality as a result because it seemed so far fetched, something you can only really see in a video game.

Neo himself kept rejecting it and even in the Office rescue attempt this time Moropheus failed to get him out, unlike in Matrix 1 where he was successful. The consultant used the deja vu cat cleverly in this iteration to make Neo think the rescue was a simulation and he needs to return to reality, on the his psychiatrist couch. In order to get around this, Morpheus decided to have the snips and scenes on the TV of "old" matrix to guide Neo to the truth.
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Yes I know all this as I watched the film and already mentioned it in my post. It didn't necessitate the constant flashbacks or tribute lines to emphasise the point. If anything it would have worked much better without them or certainly with them massively toned down. A fair chunk of them also had nothing to do with this.

Agent Smith's existence in this film in general made no logical sense other than as a callback to the original trilogy.
 
noodlehair said:
Yes I know all this as I watched the film and already mentioned it in my post. It didn't necessitate the constant flashbacks or tribute lines to emphasise the point. If anything it would have worked much better without them or certainly with them massively toned down. A fair chunk of them also had nothing to do with this.

Agent Smith's existence in this film in general made no logical sense other than as a callback to the original trilogy.
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Eh? I don't get the hate against the nostalgia if it's weaved into the storyline.

You don't get why Agent Smith is in the film? He and Neo are connected. When Neo is revived so is he. Except the machines had overwritten the programming for them to make them unaware of their past.
 
Let's be honest, the Matrix films only had 1 good film and that was the original.

Everything else was just running off the hype of the first film and nolstogia. W sisters are better off directing a game because they want to tell too many stories which just doesn't fit into a movie at all.
 
Can't remember how the third ended but was it explained how neo ended up back in the matrix this time? I saw the film but had had a few
 
Pickle85 said:
Can't remember how the third ended but was it explained how neo ended up back in the matrix this time? I saw the film but had had a few
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Yeah, they spent a lot of money (which is a bit weird, money?) to rebuild his body, then plugged him in for the power and realised it wasn't working, then figured out many years later that Trinity was the key, so they not only reanimated her they also gave her even more magic powers without knowing it.

Makes total sense, no idea why even when drunk you wouldn't figure that one out!
 
Redlambs said:
Yeah, they spent a lot of money (which is a bit weird, money?) to rebuild his body, then plugged him in for the power and realised it wasn't working, then figured out many years later that Trinity was the key, so they not only reanimated her they also gave her even more magic powers without knowing it.

Makes total sense, no idea why even when drunk you wouldn't figure that one out!
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:lol: :lol: :lol: thanks for the explanation. Kinda sorry I ever asked now!
 
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