Movie Review: The Matrix: Resurrections

 

Michael's Movie Grade: F

Another terrible movie in this vastly overrated franchise. 

To be honest I have not liked any of the Matrix movies, but I still think this film is the worst of them. This fourth installment features all of the faults that made me hate the previous films but somehow, they are even worse here. The biggest fault here (and in the other movies) is simply how bland and boring the characters are. These characters have little to no personality outside of how they serve the plot. We are four movies in, and I still cannot relate to characters like Neo or Trinity in the slightest because there is nothing about them to relate to. There has never been a moment in any of these movies where any of these characters felt real and therefore there is no emotional connect to any of them. The main characters of an action film do not need to be deep or complex, but they still need to be people you can relate to and root for. This movie adds a new villain to the mix, who frankly is just as boring as our heroes. This film also features another fault so prevalent in The Matrix movies, which is dialogue that is supposed to come off as thought provoking or deep but is instead incredibly simplistic and hollow. The philosophy offered in these movies offers little food for thought after watching them. It is actually really basic philosophy that is no more complex than that of many action movies that are much less pretentious than these films. This film however takes this to a whole new height. If you are like me and felt this dialogue in the previous movies was too on the nose, that dialogue is subtle compared to what you get here. The dialogue about the new video game early on in this movie is painfully annoying in its obviousness. However, this is nothing compared to the villain's dialogue which so obviously spelled out everything this film was trying to say as if I was too dumb to get the message otherwise. To say this made me feel talked down to is an understatement. Personally, I would rather watch a big dumb action movie than one which conveys its message as poorly as this does. Speaking of action, that is the one thing I liked about the previous Matrix movies, but somehow even that is terrible here. These action scenes simply seem like pale copies of the ones from the previous films.  

Maybe if you are a Matrix fan you will find something to like here. But not only did I hate the previous films, but I hated this one even more.