The Matrix: Franchise Review (Original, Reloaded, Revolutions, Resurrections)

Here’s a unique review for you. Instead of one review of the latest entry in The Matrix franchise, I’m here to deliver you a review of the entire franchise as a whole. No, this isn’t going to be four detailed reviews of each film. While this post is long, given that I’m talking about an entire franchise, I’ve decided to pick and choose which points to highlight. Strong emphasis on the original film and a decent-sized conversation about this most recent one, but the main goal here is to highlight why the first one worked so well and compare those notes to the sequels that have come after it rather than give a detailed dive into each of the four movies.

Because here’s the thing. I had not seen any of the Matrix sequels until last week. I saw the original not too long before it came out. Not in theaters because I was only 10 when it was released, but I remember watching it on TV at my friends place at some point in the early 2000s, probably around sixth or seventh grade, give or take. But I never got around to watching the other two after they were released. I was more of a casual movie fan until I moved out for college, so some of those 2000s movies and earlier escaped me, especially ones liked the Matrix sequels that everyone seemed to hate. Catching up just wasn’t high on my priority list.

But nevertheless, one cannot watch and review a fourth movie in a franchise without having seen the previous three. I was going to get caught up before “Resurrections” was released in theaters and on HBO Max on Christmas. But I failed. Yet I made the commitment to watch all four before “Resurrections” left HBO Max, which was on my birthday, January 21. With literally minutes to go before it disappeared, my task was complete. And thus being in a Matrix mood, all of thoughts on the four movies have been swirling around in my head and need to escape, not just thoughts on the final one. So this is why I am approaching this review in this way.

Before I completely bury my lede here, I will say that none of the Matrix sequels live up to the original film. In fact, they get progressively worse. This latest iteration especially feels useless and overly convoluted. They spend the whole movie trying to justify this new movie’s existence. And it seems quite evident based on scenes in the movie itself that Lana Wachowski had no desire to even make this film, but she was forced into a corner by Warner Bros. themselves, who were going to make a sequel with or without her. So she uninspiringly threw one together and the result is a really ugly mess that was also a massive failure at the box office.

But to fully understand exactly why this one was a mess, there needs to be an understanding of what exactly made the first movie succeed and why none of the sequels were able to recapture that magic that the first movie presented.

"The Matrix"

I found it a rather immersive experience diving into that original film again. With the benefit of hindsight, the plot itself is nothing remarkable. We’ve seen many times, before and after 1999, the story of humans versus artificial intelligence. As technology continues to evolve, there seems to be a consistent, overarching fear that one day the technology is going to get more advanced than humans can handle and completely take over. And that fear is often reflected by authors and filmmakers in various media, including books, TV shows, and movies. Even back in 1999, “The Matrix” had its own inspirations, like the 1995 anime “The Ghost in the Shell.” And when it comes to humans vs. artificial intelligence, a lot of inspirations can perhaps be traced back to 1982’s “Blade Runner.” Fast forward 23 years and this particular niche has been oversaturated to the extreme.

But even with that, what makes “The Matrix” so immersive is how they set up the world. There is a well-executed balanced between the world building and the stylized action. The audience is essentially put in the shoes of Neo, our main character, who feels like a normal human being living a normal life until suddenly a lot of trippy things start happening. He learns that the world he knows is essentially fake, a virtual creation of the artificial intelligence, who have almost completely wiped out the human race. They’ve kept humanity in these little pods that inject the virtual world into their minds while their real bodies are rotting on the side of a cliff. Neo learns about all this while also getting the bombshell that he is to be the “Chosen One,” to save the remaining or escaped humans from the machines.

When I re-watched “The Matrix” last week, I actually watched it twice. Sure, some of the superfans probably know it like the back of their hands, but having not watched it in years, there’s a whole lot of lore that they throw you into. It’s a lot to take in at first and thus you feel for Neo as he’s trying to figure out what exactly is going on and what exactly he’s supposed to do. But as everything connects in the end, it’s really a fun experience going through it again and having all of those final dots be connected. It’s not just a bunch of fun action sequences, but it is an absolutely fascinating world. And the way in which they slowly layer everything upon itself is incredibly well put together. As Neo learns about all this, he becomes smarter and stronger, meaning the action sequences mixed in get progressively better and more entertaining. And there is a level of intensity and fear with those action sequences with all the uncertainty revolving around them. It’s one thing to watch people punch, kick, and shoot at each other. It’s another to not know how things are going to resolve. If you fear for your protagonist’s safety, you become a lot more emotionally invested in the sequences.

And speaking of the action sequences, what “The Matrix” is best known for is that stylized action. Given the setup of this virtual world, the typical laws of the universe don’t exactly apply like they would in the normal universe. So as our Chosen One learns more of his abilities, he also learns how to defy the laws of physics, adding a new layer to the action. And on top of that, the slow motion work along with those physics-defying sequences made this a milestone event in the world of action and sci-fi. To the point where it was copied and parodied just about everywhere and became a bit stale. Yet the original movie never ceased to be entertaining.

"The Matrix Reloaded"

Yes, I said that this review was not going to be a detailed synopsis of all of the four movies, but detailing the first one feels very important here to establishing why the sequels never lived up. These elements that I brought up here that make “The Matrix” so great aren’t followed like they should. There’s a formula that the Wachowskis laid out for themselves in the first movie that they were never able to go back and follow, whether or not they were invested in doing so. And that ultimately is why the sequels are disappointing. “The Matrix” can stand on its own as a singular film, but Neo doesn’t save the world in that first movie. He gets to the point where he now has the ability to do so, and promises the enemies that he is going to defeat them, but there is a cliffhanger there that sets up for a grand and beautiful franchise that ultimately is never realized. So much potential that is completely wasted.

Now I don’t want to come in and jump on the bandwagon of hate as if I’m morally obligated as a movie fan to do so. I know people who have really loved all three movies. And I also know that some fan reaction is very black and white. If a movie is not the epic masterpiece that you wanted it to be, people often unfairly discard it as trash. See any of the Star Wars sequels. None of the recent movies are the worst movie in the world, but sometimes when you care about a franchise so much, “average” and “decent” are not acceptable. The disappointment turns into hatred because your expectations were so high. “The Matrix Reloaded” still has the fifth highest opening weekend ever for an R-rated movie. And it held the record of highest R-rated opener for 13 years until “Deadpool” came around in 2016. Fans were massively excited for it, yet were massively disappointed. Were they justified in their hate or were they being unfair?

Obviously you know my answer to that question now, but that’s an honest question that I had going into the sequels. I wasn’t just falling in line to what I was supposed to think. I genuinely thought it was possible that I would enjoy the sequels given that I don’t have the same level of superfandom attached to “The Matrix.” And my expectations going in were different. If you expect to get disappointed, then you can’t get disappointed, right?

And honestly “Reloaded” isn’t that bad. It obviously had big shoes to follow. And while it didn’t manage to be an “Empire Strikes Back,” a sequel to an iconic, groundbreaking film that somehow managed to be better than the first, you can tell that the Wachowskis really tried hard to up the ante and make this a bigger and better film. To which I give a tip of the hat for an honest effort.

The ultimate issues lie in the topic of balance. And I made such a big effort in speaking of “The Matrix” being a well-balanced and properly layered film because, in my opinion, that’s where “Reloaded” falls flat on its face. All four Matrix films overload you with exposition. And exposition is not an inherently bad thing as some people make it out to be. But “The Matrix” balanced that exposition in a way that made you progressively learn about this world along with the main character. “Reloaded” gives you immensely heavy exposition dumps squeezed into small periods of film time. And in between those immensely heavy exposition dumps are action sequences that are the biggest and longest action sequences that you might find in any action film, which can be both a positive and a negative.

Yes, the 17-minute care chase sequence might be the most entertaining car chase sequence you’ve ever watched. Yes, the scene in the playground at the beginning with Neo and the hundreds of Agent Smiths is an absolutely insane fight. And yes, the staircase sequence with Neo vs. the French guy and all of his cronies is fantastic. But I think it’s quite possible that they were a bit too much. It was a bit action heavy and minimal on plot. Minimal, yet dense, as I described. The Wachowskis could’ve spread the exposition out more cleverly across the film in doses that were easy to take. In doing so, cut down some of those action sequences to make a better balanced film. And if you tell me that’s preposterous and you don’t want the car chase any shorter, then might I remind you that “The Matrix” wasn’t an action-heavy film. The action sequences were spread out and well executed. The focus was on quality action, not quantity of action. And that’s why it worked so well.

The other part of the action sequences that I noticed is that the stakes weren’t as high. That’s also why I mentioned in my summary of the first film that you can become a lot more invested in a movie if you fear for the life of your protagonist or the opponent seems too strong to overcome. Because in “Reloaded” Neo has essentially reached God status. In more context than one. I think him coming to Zion and having a large crowd of people on their knees begging for his help was a bit heavy-handed. It was as if he was literally their Jesus Christ. But outside that, in the context of action sequences, he’s basically Superman. He can fly, he can easily fight off any opponent in hand-to-hand combat, and he can’t miss any target with his gun. And he can also make any bullets drop in midair. And when your opponent is this invincible, the reward isn’t as high when he wins. Despite the action being incredibly well put together, it becomes like the lightsaber fights in the Star Wars prequels, also released around this time. It’s basically like choreographed dances and not fights. And that’s not as intense in comparison.

In short, bigger doesn’t equal better. I think the Wachowskis’ main problem is that they tried to go too big instead of building on the incredible mythology. It also suffers from being only half of a movie, because they literally filmed the two sequels back-to-back and release them in the same year. In current time, that’s not a huge problem. You can jump straight to the next one on HBO Max and treat it like one giant, five-hour movie (267 minutes total). But I think it would’ve been more rewarding if they focused on making one individually good movie because on its own it’s just a bunch of massive action sequences strung together  with a partial plot.

That said, if you want to treat it like one massive Matrix sequel, that makes it… worse.

"The Matrix Revolutions"

Because “The Matrix Revolutions” is a giant mess. I can concede that “Reloaded” is very watchable and entertaining. And maybe that’s a higher opinion of it than some people have. But I was not invested in “Revolutions” at all.

I don’t really care to do a massive deep dive into all of the problems of “Revolutions,” but the biggest issue for me is that it becomes a massive video game. The type of video game that I don’t really care for. I know gunplay is a thing in every Matrix movie, but it was stylized gunplay that mixed very well with its martial arts hand-to-hand combat. The whole middle section of “Revolutions” had no stylized action at all. It was a massive battle with all the machines invading Zion and the defenders of Zion endlessly shooting their machine guns at them. And in most of these middle sequences, Neo is not involved. He went off on another quest that we finish the movie with. I’ll get to that in a second, but a Neo-less Matrix movie without the stylized action sequences and a bunch of new characters that I definitely don’t care about is not the sci-fi wonder that I wanted. This felt like a Michael Bay action film and not a brilliant sci-fi movie. In “Reloaded,” they tried to include elements of the first movie, they just had it mostly imbalanced. In “Revolutions,” just about everything that made “The Matrix” work was disregarded. And that was rather mind-boggling to me.

The sole interesting part of the movie that felt like a Matrix movie was the final act of the movie where Neo arrives at Machine City. And when your only good moment is the final act, that’s a problem. I can pick apart “Reloaded” pretty easily, but at least it kept me entertained for all three acts. The only good action sequence in this movie is when Neo gets plugged into the Matrix again at the end and has his final confrontation with Agent Smith. And to that scene’s credit, it’s incredible. But one good scene at the end is not nearly enough to make up for the fact that the rest of the movie was a massive dumpster fire.

But even with that one really good sequence, I had many questions about the resolution of the film. I don’t want to do a deep dive into all my questions, and spoiler alert for the movie if you’re like me and hadn’t seen it yet are wanting to, but here’s some quick highlights of my confusion. Trinity dies pretty unceremoniously. They crash landed into Machine City and that killed her. Granted, I think there are parts of all four movies that focused way too much on that romance, but it’s still a bit anticlimactic the way they wrote her off. But a bigger bullet point is how Neo so easily made peace with the Machines. He basically just went in and asked them if they could have peace and they agreed? 200 years of fighting these things and all they had to do was kindly ask them to not fight? That’s weird. And final point, while the Agent Smith fight was really good, I’m a bit confused as to how it actually ended. He let Agent Smith take him over and then all the Agent Smiths exploded. Maybe that one is explainable, but it still left me puzzled. And I think that there could’ve been a better resolution.

So anyways, Neo is dead. We think. Trinity is dead. But the Agent Smiths went boom and Neo asked for peace, so peace we have and a conclusion we have been led to. Maybe. Because it still ended in a slightly ambiguous way with the Oracle’s conversation with the Architect. Maybe Neo is gone for good? Maybe he’ll come back? Maybe the peace will remain or maybe the Machines will decide to change their mind and go to war again?

I don’t think it was a very satisfactory ended, but it needs to be emphasized that it was still an ending. An ending in which the Wachowskis never intended on coming back to. And I do believe they said that in interviews. Matrix 4 was never in the plans for them.

"The Matrix Resurrections"

Which awkwardly leads us to this new movie, “Matrix Resurrections.” And, oh boy, if I thought “Revolutions” was a dumpster fire, I was in for one in “Resurrections.” Even though I hadn’t seen the previous two Matrix movies in this franchise, I will be honest and say that I never was excited for this movie. I know a lot of people that were super hyped. And I know a lot of people that watched the trailer and were blown away. While I admit that “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane was a perfect song choice for the trailer, the trailer never excited me. It never looked good. It never looked interesting. It’s just a thing that existed. My analysis was that Warner Bros. saw the major Keanaissance take place with how massively popular Keanu Reeves has become since the John Wick movies and decided that they were going to make another Matrix movie. Studios reviving old franchises is becoming a very trendy thing today in the wake of the Disney Star Wars era and others. And it can work. But if a studio decides to mandate a franchise revival from filmmakers who never wanted that franchise to be revived, that’s a big issue.

And when push comes to shove, that’s all that “Resurrections” feels like. As it turns out, both Neo and Trinity are alive and living normal lives in a revived or rebooted version of the Matrix. But not just that, Neo works as a video game creator. He’s made three video games called “The Matrix” and now Warner Bros. is forcing him to make a new Matrix video game. And there is an extensive discussion in their office about the necessity of making another Matrix game and all the implications of a reboot or a sequel to this.

Look, maybe some people liked how Meta that was. But for me, I was like… what? And it’s not just subtle or slightly referential. This is all-out Deadpool making fun of Fox and pop culture inside of his movie. And for Deadpool it works. That’s the point of Deadpool. But turning The Matrix into Deadpool did not feel like it fit in anywhere. It felt like Warner Bros. approached Lana Wachowski and said, you’re making this movie or someone else is. So forced into a corner, she wrote a Matrix movie. And she decided to spend the first act of the movie calling out Warner Bros. on their absurdity inside of her film. And somehow that screenplay with all of that in it got the green light from Warner Bros., which is both hilarious and mind-boggling.

In hindsight, this is not the first 2021 Warner Bros. movie to make full Warner Bros. meta references. That was all of “Space Jam: A New Legacy.” Also in hindsight, maybe Warner Bros. should’ve asked someone different than the Wachowskis. Granted, I will admit that I need to go revisit "Speed Racer” and “Cloud Atlas,” but this sibling duo is fully responsible for “Jupiter Ascending,” one of the worst movies ever. And, as I’ve pointed out in detail, they didn’t seem to fully understand what it was about their original Matrix movie that made it work so well. And if they did, they didn’t execute well. So in my opinion, the Wachowskis are not good filmmakers. They made one great movie, “The Matrix,” and a lot of trash ever since. So this sequel just seemed like a project doomed to fail. A studio mandated sequel from poor filmmakers who didn’t seem interested in making this in the first place.

That’s all that really needs to be said, but outside the confusing meta sequence with The Matrix being a video game franchise that Neo programmed, this is the longest Matrix movie at 2 hours 28 minutes and the movie spends approximately the first two hours trying to justify its existence and never succeeding. It’s two hours of massive exposition dump and a plot that mostly revolves around Neo trying to save Trinity from the Matrix. Because once he’s gotten out, he now tries to figure out how to convince her to escape when her new Matrix life is being happily married (to someone who isn’t Neo) with kids. Add to that a whole slew of new characters that are even more uninteresting that the ones they introduced in “Revolutions.” There’s also a recast Morpheus that is kinda in the movie and a few useless cameos, most notably the Frenchman from “Reloaded,” who is only there for the most useless moment of nostalgia vomit, not even getting two minutes of screen time.

And don’t ask me how Neo and Trinity are now alive. I guess the Machines just decided that they needed to be alive and in a pod again. Which totally undermines anything from the trilogy itself, given that we now know that the stakes are even lower. If you die, you can just be brought back. So there’s not even a fear of death.

There is only one action sequence that is even remotely entertaining. And it comes at the two hour mark. And even then, it’s a slightly forgettable action sequence in comparison to other action sequences that we’ve had in recent movies. I didn’t expect the movie to revolutionize the action genre like the first movie, or be any sort of milestone in filmmaking, but I was hoping for some action sequences that at least felt close to the John Wick movies, given that I theorize that’s why this movie exists, or at least be somewhat reminiscent of the original Matrix movie. At the very least, give me a big, fun action sequence like that in “Reloaded.” Nope. Whatever expectation there was for at least a minor moment of entertainment never panned out.

The only solace I gain from this whole debauchery was that it was a massive failure at the box office. It opened to $10.7 million at the domestic box office and has made $36.7 million domestically at the point of me typing this up. For context, the previous three movies opened to $27.8 million, $91.8 million, and $48.5 million, respectively. Adjusted for ticket price inflation, given that was 1999 and 2003, that is the current equivalent of $50.1 million, $139.4 million, and $73.6 million. Their final domestic totals were $173.9 million, $281.6 million, and $139.3 million, which again translate to $313.7 million, $427.7 million, and $211.6 million. To follow that up with a $10 million opening perhaps a final total that reaches $50 million domestically is nothing but an absolute disaster. And its worldwide total ($148.6 million right now) hasn’t even yet matched its production budget ($190 million). And usually you need to make two to three times your production budget to get a profit.

There’s no way around it. “Resurrections” failed to resurrect the franchise at the box office. Some watched on HBO Max (myself included), but I promise that didn’t make up the difference. I don’t even need numbers to know that. And COVID isn’t really an excuse given that “Spider-Man: Now Way” just made $1.7 billion worldwide so far. What this really means is that we’re not getting a fifth Matrix movie. The Wachowskis don’t want to do it and there’s no way Warner Bros. can justify a sequel with that financial output, not to mention that the majority of fans seem to also hate it. I can, with confidence, say that the Matrix franchise is now over. To which I unfortunately say…

Good.

We can safely pretend that the first movie is the only one that happened and that the rest never existed. That’s probably how it should’ve been, which is unfortunate given how much potential there was to keep going. If only someone competent was in charge.