Love or Hate It, Just Appreciate The Matrix Resurrections

The following contains spoilers for The Matrix Resurrections.

There’s nothing worse than a middling movie. What we the people need (deserve?), is a visceral reaction, on either end of the spectrum. So when reviews started coming through for The Matrix Resurrections, it had me like a kid on Christmas morning. That wonderful, exciting feeling of having no idea what you’re going to get. Unparalleled disdain? Very likely. Joyous disbelief? Potentially. No matter what I would end up with, I was at the very least saved from expecting nothingness.

David Ehrlich of IndieWire called The Matrix Resurrections “…the boldest and most vividly human franchise sequel since “The Last Jedi…” If that’s not a statement that either makes your eye twitch in the slightest, or your eyebrows raise in approval, would you mind checking again? If nothing else, what is more Matrix-esque than a movie so palatable to some and incompatible with others that it creates a true-to-film divide of experience? What’s more of a choice between a red pill and a blue pill than the different worlds of logic we find ourselves in to justify our love or hate for this thing? What’s more revolutionary than being challenged to feel anything for the 4^th film in a series, and all the while knowing that the film does not care if you rise to meet it?

Going back to the Matrix was always going to be an enticing venture; at least, the film says so. While descending that rabbit hole, why not opt for a bumpy ride over one you fall asleep in? Try as you might to convince yourself of wanting something more middle-of-the-road than atrocious, nobody wants a 2010’s Robin Hood (sorry, Ridley Scott). If you can’t love it, why not at least love-to-hate it?

What’s maybe most interesting about The Matrix Resurrections, besides the amount of out-there swings it takes, is that its worst parts don’t take cancel out the good bits. There’s at least one thing in here for nearly anyone. Yet as a film, it’s all the better because it won’t work 100% for nearly anyone. There is too much clunkiness, awkwardness, and erraticism for that. Even its most vocal supporters would probably say, “yeah, there are some lackluster fight scenes; yeah, at times, there’s a woodiness to the dialogue and performances that even I can’t fully say is intentional.” It all adds up to the uncanny humanism that The Matrix as a franchise has always been indebted to.

That’s why The Matrix Resurrections hasn’t failed if you are a fan of The Matrix, not a fan of the series, and expected anything else to come from this. In this case, you were just tricked into taking a pill you didn’t need. Because whether you found it here or another film in the franchise, you’ve experienced some variant or flavor of the comprehensive, definitive Matrix experience. It’s one of fleshy, messy mashups between machine logic and human error, but that’s really what you signed up for.

I’d like to say I love this movie. If anything, I love that it’s challenging me to fight to love it. It wants me to ask, “how was this greenlit?” while also just enjoying it on the merits of its filmmaking. Regarding the discourse, the one thing I’ll vehemently disagree on is that it’s in any way or form a “cash-grab.” Cash-grabs don’t make you feel angry unless it’s angry with disappointment. Cash-grabs, at least many of the most well-intentioned of them, make you feel like you’ve just taken a sleeping pill.

They make you feel that you’ve been lulled into a sense of security and comfort that will spoon-feed you a regurgitation of what’s gone down easily before. Cash-grabs are generally made of appeasement, not pieces of what you may like. With The Matrix Resurrections, you don’t have to like it or even appreciate it. Regarding the latter, though: would it really hurt if you did? What’s one more cog in that machine?