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“The Matrix Resurrections” is the first “Matrix” movie since 2003's " The Matrix Revolutions ," but it is not the first time we’ve seen the franchise in theaters this year. That distinction goes to “ Space Jam: A New Legacy ,” the cinematic shareholder meeting for Warner Bros. with special celebrity guests that inserted Looney Tunes characters Speedy Gonzales and Granny into a scene from “ The Matrix .” Speedy Gonzales dodged slow-motion bullets; Granny jumped in the air and kicked a cop in the face like Trinity. The 2003 animation omnibus “The Animatrix” detailed how the Matrix was created, how an apocalyptic war against robots led to human suffering being harvested to fuel a world of machines; there should be an addendum that includes this scene from “Space Jam: A New Legacy” to show what it all led to.  

This is the reality that we live in—one ruled by Warner Bros.’ Serververse—and it is also the context that rules over “The Matrix Resurrections.” The film bears the name of director Lana Wachowski , returning to the cyberpunk franchise that made her one of the greatest sci-fi/action directors, but be warned that no force is remotely as strong as Warner Bros. wanting a lighter and brighter take on “The Matrix.” “The Matrix Resurrections” is a reboot with some striking philosophical flourishes, and grandiose set-pieces where things go boom in slow motion, but it is also the weakest and most compromised “Matrix” film yet.  

Written by Wachowski, David Mitchell , and Aleksandar Hemon , “The Matrix Resurrections” is about building from beloved beats, characters, and plot elements; call it deja vu, or just call it a convoluted clip show. It starts with a new character named Bugs ( Jessica Henwick ) witnessing Trinity’s famous telephone escape before having her own swooping, bullet-dodging getaway, and later throws new versions of previous characters into the the mix. The wise man of this saga, Morpheus, is no longer played by Laurence Fishburne , but Yahya Abdul-Mateen II , who looks just as cool in dark color coats and sunglasses with two machine guns in hand, but has a confusing purpose for being there. “The Matrix Resurrections” will bend over backward, bullet-time style, to explain why he is. The same goes for how heroes Neo and Trinity return, even though “The Matrix Revolutions” put a lot of care into killing them off. This is the kind of movie in which it truly doesn’t matter when you last saw the original films; your experience might be even better if you haven’t seen them at all.  

It is also about making you painfully conscious of what constitutes Matrix intellectual property, as it places Keanu Reeves ’ hero Neo, known in the Matrix as a brilliant video game programmer named Thomas Anderson, in a board room with a bunch of creatives, trying to come up with ideas for a sequel. He has received pressure from his boss (and Warner Bros.) after his game “The Matrix” was a hit; “bullet-time” is discussed with awe by stock geek characters as something that needs to be topped. This is one of the movie’s more reality-shifting ideas—to frame “The Matrix” as a new type of simulation, one that was created by Thomas Anderson inside the actual Matrix, as taken from his dreams that come from taking a blue pill daily, instead of the eye-opening red pill he took in the original 1999 film. And yet like many of the Warner Bros.-related meta redirections, it all ends up adding so very little to the bigger picture.  

“The Matrix Resurrections” brings back the love story of Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss) and Neo, our two cyber heroes whose romantic connection gave the earlier films a sense of desperation larger than the apocalypse at hand. But here, they do not know each other, even though Thomas’ video character Trinity looks a lot like Moss. In this world, she’s a customer in a Simulatte coffee shop named Tiffany that he’s hesitant to talk to, in particular because she has kids and a husband named Chad (played by Chad Stahelski ). Reeves and Moss are both invested in this whimsical arc about fated lovers, but the movie plays too much into this nostalgia as well, relying on our emotions from the past movies to largely care about why they should be together.  

The movie’s greatest stake is in the mind of Thomas, one that's been having daydreams that are clips from the "Matrix" movies, while sitting in a bathtub with a rubber ducky on his head. He receives some guidance from his therapist, played by Neil Patrick Harris , who tries to make sense of the break from reality that previously had Thomas attempting to walk off a roof, thinking he could fly. Harris’ part should remain a mystery, but let’s say it’s an unexpected role that does get you to take him seriously, including how he analyzes our own understanding of “The Matrix.” Meanwhile, it becomes apparent that just as Morpheus is a little different than we remember, there’s a new version of big baddie Smith, played by Jonathan Groff , trying to imitate Hugo Weaving ’s slithering line-delivering that comes from a tightly clenched jaw. There are also copies of agents that take over bodies and wear impeccable suits and ties, chasing after the good guys. 

Plenty of Matrixing is in store once Thomas believes Morpheus, but it's more fun to witness in the movie than for anyone to explain in detail. But it includes the feeling of Thomas going back to where it all began, including a training sequence in which Reeves and Abdul-Mateen II do a rendition of the dojo scene in “The Matrix,” only this time Neo leaves with a different power that requires less movement. And as part of Neo’s journey back down the rabbit hole, there’s a breakneck, candy-colored fight sequence on a speeding train, in which Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer ’s blitzing score seems to be powering the locomotive. 

Expositional philosophizing is also a part of the “Matrix” experience, and there’s a great line here from one of the film’s villains about fear and desire being the two human modes (you can practically imagine the line scribbled in Wachowski’s notebook). But these wordy passages also conceal the movie trying to move the goal posts, that the rules of the Matrix can change however its saga about cyber messiahs needs it to keep making sequels. And while the apocalyptic, real world action has always been less exciting than the stylized anarchy up in the Matrix, that gap of intrigue is felt even more here. Behind the screens, with Neo, Trinity, and others plugged in, certain returning members of the underground land of Zion like Niobe ( Jada Pinkett Smith, aged forward) try and fail to convince you that this story absolutely needs to be told, and that THIS is the ultimate world-saving chapter, even though the franchise no longer feels dangerous. That latter note becomes all the more obvious when “The Matrix Resurrections” gives us a micro, cutesy, fist-bumping descendant of the sentinel machines that used to rip human beings to shreds.  

It’s the action that proves to be the purest element here, robust and snazzy—for years we have been watching directors imitate what Wachowski did with her sister Lilly with “The Matrix” films, and now we can get caught up again in her fast-paced action that marries kung fu with acrobatic gunplay, often in lush slow motion. For all of this movie’s cheesy talk about bullet-time (almost killing the fun of being in awe of it), “The Matrix Resurrections” doubles up with certain scenes that combine two different slow-motion speeds in the same frame, painting some exhilarating, big-budget frescos with dozens of flying extras and hundreds of bullets. The film’s grand finale is an action gem, as it thrives on how much adrenaline you can get from layering multiple big explosions as things suddenly crash into frame, all during a high-speed chase.  

And yet once the adrenaline from a sequence like that wears off, you can’t help but think about the guy who sat near Steven Soderbergh on an airplane and watched a clip show of explosive action scenes , virtually making the director want to quit filmmaking back in 2013. There’s incredible merit in the action seen in “The Matrix Resurrections,” but those aren’t the elements that free the mind of the medium like bold storytelling, like “The Matrix” preached and then became a game-changing classic, only to become a docket for satisfying shareholders. Blue pill or red pill? It doesn’t matter anymore; they’re both placebos.  

Available in theaters and on HBO Max tomorrow.

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Rated R for violence and some language.

148 minutes

Keanu Reeves as Thomas A. Anderson / Neo

Carrie-Anne Moss as Tiffany / Trinity

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Morpheus

Jonathan Groff as Smith

Jessica Henwick as Bugs

Neil Patrick Harris as The Analyst

Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe

Priyanka Chopra as Sati

Christina Ricci as Gwyn de Vere

• Lana Wachowski

Writer (based on characters created by)

• Lilly Wachowski
• David Mitchell
• Aleksandar Hemon

Cinematographer

• Daniele Massaccesi
• Joseph Jett Sally
• Johnny Klimek

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Everything We Know

Everything we know about the matrix resurrections, 22 years after we first dove into the wachowskis' dystopian sci-fi world, it returns with some familiar faces, some new ones, and neo projecting some heavy john wick energy..

TAGGED AS: Action , Film , films , movie , movies , Sci-Fi , science fiction

The year was 1999. The summer movie season was about to kick off with one of the most anticipated films of all time. This would be the year that would see the return of the greatest franchise in cinema history, as George Lucas would once again journey to a galaxy far, far away with Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace . There was no question that this would be the movie event of the —

Hold up. Before a single podracer would fire up that May, a little oddity dropped on March 31. It was too early to be a summer movie, too late to be a holiday movie – clearly no one knew what to do with this dystopian sci-fi action flick that was part Blade Runner , part anime, and part Intro to Existentialist Philosophy 101 (and it starred the dude from Point Break ?) It was The Matrix , and it would explode like a neutron bomb, stealing little Anakin Skywalker’s thunder on its way to becoming the movie of 1999, a genre-bending instant classic with a powerfully iconic style that is still recognizable (and mimicked) today. It would be followed up by two mega-sequels in 2003 – The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions – that wouldn’t reach the heights of the original, but opened up a vast and intricate world that fans still obsess over.

Now, 18 years and several animated shorts and MMORPGs later, Neo and Trinity are back in  The Matrix Resurrections . With the release of the first official trailer, here’s what we know about our imminent future…

Only One of the Wachowskis Is Returning to Direct

(Photo by Timothy Hiatt/Getty Images)

Ever since their 1996 directorial debut, Bound , Lana and Lilly Wachowski have been a double act. The siblings not only co-directed the entire original Matrix trilogy, but also Speed Racer , Jupiter Ascending , and Cloud Atlas (they also co-produced V for Vendetta   and created the Netflix series Sense8 ). However, Matrix Resurrections will see Lana fly solo behind the camera for the first time. At this year’s CinemaCon, Lilly cited exhaustion from multiple projects, her transition, and the death of their parents for sapping her creative energy.

“I got out of my transition and was just completely exhausted because we had made  Cloud Atlas  and  Jupiter Ascending , and the first season of  Sense8  back-to-back-to-back,” said Lilly. “We were posting one and prepping the other at the exact same time. So you’re talking about three 100-plus days of shooting for each project, and so, coming out and just being completely exhausted, my world was like, falling apart to some extent even while I was like, you know, cracking out of my egg. So I needed this time away from this industry. I needed to reconnect with myself as an artist and I did that by going back to school and painting and stuff.”

Neo and Trinity Are Back

(Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures)

Is That “Young Morpheus”?

One of the reasons Fishburne may not be back is that Morpheus as we know him is gone. In fact, the character is killed during the Matrix Online – an MMORPG that ran from 2005-2009 and is considered canon. Candyman star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is rumored to be playing either a young version of Morpheus (perhaps beaming in from another timeline to alter the future) or simply Morpheus with a newer, younger look. Note that in the trailer, Abdul-Mateen is clearly wearing very “Morpheus”-like pince-nez sunglasses, and there’s a call-back to the dojo fights between Neo and Morpheus in the first film. Also, on the website WhatisTheMatrix.com , there were quick teaser shots of what looked to be computers “creating” Abdul-Mateen out of nothing – so maybe he’s not what he seems at all, even if Abdul-Mateen himself took to Instagram seemingly to confirm what everyone was thinking.

Maybe Not, According to Keanu

While doing an interview on the BBC’s The One Show , Reeves dropped a few tantalizing Resurrections  tidbits. Nothing solid, of course, but when asked if there were prequel elements at play, he quickly shot them down, saying, “No, no. No going in the past.” While this doesn’t rule out a young Morpheus showing up, it does reinforce that the movie is firmly post- Revolutions . Reeves also called it an “inspiring love story.”

Is this why Neo and Trinity may be getting a fresh start?

One of the most intriguing bits in the trailer are those that show Neo once again going by the name “Thomas” – before he was awakened out of the Matrix, he believed he was a computer programmer named Thomas Anderson. Also, when they meet, Trinity doesn’t recognize Neo at all (“Have we met?”) – could she have been re-set or rebooted? Is this a new Matrix entirely? The shots of Thomas gulping down blue pills – the ones that keep you blissfully ignorant of the truth – like they’re morning vitamins could suggest he’s either willfully returning to life as a human battery or he’s being manipulated and kept from remembering who he is.

There Are Plenty of New Faces

In addition to the returning stars and (possibly) returning characters, Resurrections will feature some exciting new players as well. Leading the way are Neil Patrick Harris (playing what appears to be a psychiatrist, but nothing is as it seems – note the blue pill-colored glasses he’s wearing), Christina Ricci (reteaming with Lana Wachowski after Speed Racer ), Priyanka Chopra Jonas (glimpsed briefly giving “Thomas” a copy of Alice in Wonderland ), Iron Fist star Jessica Henwick (pulling off some very Trinity-like action moves), and Hamilton alumnus  Jonathan Groff  — in the trailer, he asks mockingly about “The Matrix,” and earlier teasers on the WhatistheMatrix site show extended bits from that scene with his mouth “erased,” just like  Neo’s was in the original movie . We also get a returning Daniel Bernhardt , who previously played Agent Johnson in the original trilogy and reprises that role, presumably in a much larger capacity, in Resurrections .

Oh, and We Might Be the Bad Guys This Time

If you recall, The Matrix Revolutions ends with a truce of sorts between the Machines and Humanity (after Neo convinces the head machine, the “Deus Ex Machina,” that rogue Agent Smith was the true threat to both worlds). The Oracle and the Architect share a sunset chat during which it’s revealed that humans will now have a choice as to whether or not they wish to stay plugged into the Matrix. It’s possible that Resurrections will show that humans are now willingly enslaving themselves – hence the daily bottle of over-the-counter blue pills – and how Neo might be an unwelcome threat to the new status quo. But we’ll just have to wait and see…

The Matrix Resurrections  is in theaters and on HBO Max on December 22, 2021.

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‘the matrix resurrections’: film review.

Neo is back in Lana Wachowski’s very self-referential fourth ‘Matrix’ film.

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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Given the peculiar nature of Lana Wachowski ’s The Matrix Resurrections and the plot’s reliance on details many will consider spoilers, it seems wise to get something out of the way: If you loved The Matrix and hated the sequels (or simply found them unsatisfying), go see this one. Have a blast. (But wear a mask.)

If you’re in the much smaller club that believes the sequels were underappreciated examples of brainy mythmaking, it’s possible Resurrections will break your heart: While it doesn’t pretend the jumbo-sized plots of those two films didn’t happen, it does jettison much of their self-importance, and feels little need to blow viewers’ minds with new ideas or technical inventions.

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Release date: December 22 (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Jada Pinkett Smith

Director: Lana Wachowski

Screenwriters: Lana Wachowski, David Mitchell, Aleksandar Hemon

It is, in other words, the kind of sequel Hollywood wants most — practically the same thing as the first, with just enough novelty to justify its existence — albeit one that thinks it can have it both ways, both bowing to and sneering at the industry’s need for constant regurgitation of familiar stories. It’s impossible to explain that sentence without revealing details of the film’s premise, so read on at your own risk.

Whatever exactly happened to Neo when he appeared to sacrifice himself at the end of film three, he’s back in the digital simulation now, living again as a two-decades-older Thomas Anderson. Anderson has become a successful video game designer whose greatest creation was (get this) a trilogy of hit games called The Matrix . Part of Anderson knows these games are a story he actually lived, but he has allowed the squares around him to convince him he’s mentally ill: He regularly sees an unnamed analyst (Neil Patrick Harris) who gives him meds (blue pills, natch) and helps talk him through the violent episodes in which he imagines the whole world is a simulated reality he needs to escape from.

Anderson hasn’t exactly left his fight against the Matrix behind — he’s written bits of code, “modals,” in which AI characters play through variations of scenes he can’t stop thinking about — but professionally, it’s his distant past. Imagine his shock when an associate tells him that “our beloved parent company, Warner Bros.” has decided it’s time to make a Matrix sequel, and is going to do it with or without Anderson’s involvement.

Something like this apparently happened in our own world: Several years ago, there was talk of a Wachowski-free reboot being written by Zak Penn, possibly to star Michael B. Jordan. Two years later plans had changed, with Lana Wachowski, sans original partner Lilly, on board to direct and cowrite.

Whatever the meaning of Lana’s go-it-alone move, or its possible relation to the film’s pairing of sole-creator Thomas with a morally and creatively suspect business partner (Jonathan Groff), there’s no misunderstanding what comes next onscreen. In a long sequence where shallow youngsters brainstorm Anderson’s new game for him, the filmmakers distance themselves from their project. They make fun of moviegoers who found the sequels’ philosophical ambitions pretentious, imagining the audience as lunkheads who just want more bullet time. And once this self-serving interlude is finished, that’s almost exactly what they give them.

In a sequence intentionally reminiscent of its counterpart in the first film, Thomas Anderson gets another chance to follow mysterious strangers out of the simulation his brain lives in. Things are a bit different with this extraction, but not too different: As the film condescendingly notes, “a little nostalgia” goes a long way to soothe anxiety in those transitioning from one reality to another. (Maybe that explains why Wachowski uses so many clips from the earlier films, needlessly illustrating Neo’s memories throughout this adventure.)

Eventually we’re with Neo in the “real” world, where flesh-and-blood survivors have learned to work with some of the machines they once battled. This community, still stuck far below Earth’s surface, has seen ups and downs since Neo left. Without giving anything away (or pointing out the screenplay’s unanswered questions), let’s just say Resurrections has a satisfying explanation for why Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus has been replaced with one played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.

Another familiar face or two will appear, but Neo’s most important teammates are newcomers who were inspired by legends of his exploits to make their own escapes from the Matrix. Chief among them is Bugs (Jessica Henwick), who can kick a lot of simulated ass despite wearing sunglasses whose frame swipes straight through the middle of her field of vision. (The movie’s outré wardrobe, designed by Lindsay Pugh, is a lot of fun, but those glasses cross the line.)

Carrie-Anne Moss features prominently on the movie’s poster, but prepare to wait a long time for Trinity. She’s been re-Matrixed too, and the fictional life she was given there has a hold on her. Machine guns, flying robots and pods of goo notwithstanding, some of the picture’s most engaging scenes are those in which Neo/Thomas interacts with Trinity in that world, where she’s a married mother named Tiffany, and tries to coax her into remembering the life they once shared.

Rescuing Trinity becomes the sole point of the film, allowing us to mostly stop keeping track of all the Oracles and Architects and Keymasters and whatever that bogged the sequels down. As that mission develops, we piece together the ways Wachowski (writing with novelists David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon) has reconceived some figures from the original trilogy. These reimaginings mostly make sense, and they open up new interpretative possibilities for fans who feel these action blockbusters merit close analysis. But they tend to work better on paper than on screen, failing to crystalize meaning, sound and image as perfectly as, say, Hugo Weaving did as Agent Smith.

As for the action, it’s thoroughly enjoyable even if you’ve mostly seen it before. Ordinary inhabitants of the Matrix sometimes get transformed into a mindless swarm of attackers — not as chilling as watching Agent Smith possess other people’s bodies, but good for some zombie-apocalypse-style battles (and for a fight on a Japanese Shinkansen that owes something to Train to Busan ). Bullet time gets tweaked, not as a tool for cinematic excitement, but as a way to knock the air out of Neo’s sails.

Resurrections leaves plenty of things unexplored. For a movie that so loudly makes reference to the real world, its failure to address the place “red pill” symbolism has found in right-wing propaganda comes as a mild surprise. (The dialogue even contains the word “sheeple,” a favorite of those selling conspiracies online.) And there’s nothing here to inspire hope that, should Warners or whomever insist on more sequels, they’d be worth seeing. But as someone who watched Reloaded and Revolutions more than once, trying unsuccessfully to believe they were good (and who’d happily take a blue pill that erased them from my memory), I actually look forward to seeing this one a second time.

Full credits

Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures Production companies: Village Roadshow Pictures, Venus Castina Productions Cast: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Jada Pinkett Smith Director: Lana Wachowski Screenwriters: Lana Wachowski, David Mitchell, Aleksandar Hemon Producers: James McTeigue, Lana Wachowski, Grant Hill Executive Producers: Bruce Berman, Jess Ehrman, Garret Grant, Terry Needham, Michael Salven, Karin Wachowski Directors of photography: Daniele Massaccesi, John Toll Production designers: Hugh Bateup, Peter Walpole Costume designer: Lindsay Pugh Editor: Joseph Jett Sally Composers: Johnny Klimek, Tom Tykwer Casting director: Carmen Cuba

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The astonishing, angry Matrix Resurrections deals with what’s real in a world where nothing is

A furious Lana Wachowski fights back with a love story

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[ Ed. note: Minor spoilers for The Matrix Resurrections follow.]

The story: A man named Thomas is told that the world is not what he thought it to be, and despite the passion of the messenger and the void in his own life, he refuses to believe. He wants to see for himself. He wants, as the Gospel of John recounts, to feel the wounded flesh of the resurrected Christ, to feel where the nails were hammered into his hands. In his doubt, he becomes a myth, the first man to doubt the gospel, only to believe there is truth there when he’s standing in front of the gospel’s corporeal form.

Another version of the story: A man named Thomas Anderson lives a respectable life at the end of the 20th century, a gifted programmer at a nondescript software company. Everything is as it should be, and yet there is a void in him. Messengers find him and tell him his suspicion is correct, that this world is an illusion, yet he refuses to believe. Not until he takes a pill and wakes up in a nightmare, where he, along with everyone else he thought he knew, is plugged into a machine from birth until death, living in a simulation he never doubted until he could feel the wounds in his own flesh, where the machines jacked him into a digital world called the Matrix. Over the next 22 years, Mr. Anderson’s story in The Matrix becomes a different, newer myth, disseminated through the burgeoning internet and refracted through various subcultures. Depending on which set of eyes it encountered, the story’s symbolism and themes took on new meanings, some thoughtful and enlightening, others strange and sinister.

The Matrix Resurrections ’ third version of this story: Once again, there is Keanu Reeves’ Thomas Anderson, a gifted programmer who suspects his world is wrong, somehow. Once again, he is contacted by people claiming to confirm his suspicions. Once again, he refuses to believe. For a little while, the story seems the same, to the point where it doesn’t seem worth telling. Yet the world it’s being told to — our world, the one where we’ve returned to see a new film called The Matrix for the first time since 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions — is very different. In the final days of 2021, Thomas, just like those watching him, has much more to doubt. And Resurrections finds its meaning.

Directed by Lana Wachowski from a script she co-wrote with David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon, The Matrix Resurrections is about doing the impossible. On a very basic level, it’s about the insurmountable and inherently cynical task of making a follow-up to the Matrix trilogy, one that breaks technical and narrative ground the way the first film did. On a thematic one, it’s an agitprop romance, one of the most effective mass media diagnoses of the current moment that finds countless things to be angry about, and proposes fighting them all with radical, reckless love. On top of all that, it is also a kick-ass work of sci-fi action — propulsive, gorgeous, and yet still intimate — that revisits the familiar to show audiences something very new.

Reloading, but not repeating

The Matrix Resurrections soars by echoing something old. A familiarity with The Matrix and its sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions , comes in handy when entering the new film, as the first task Wachowski, Mitchell, and Hemon go about resolving in Resurrections is extricating Thomas Anderson — better known as Neo — from his fate in Revolutions . Slowly, they reveal how Neo, seemingly deceased alongside his love and partner Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), may or may not have survived to once again become Thomas Anderson, a blank slate who has trouble telling what’s real and what is not.

This Thomas Anderson is also a programmer, but now a rockstar of game development, responsible for the most popular video game trilogy ever made: The Matrix. These games are effectively the same as the Matrix film trilogy that exists in our world, a story about a man named Neo who discovers that he is living in a dream world controlled by machines, and that he is The One destined to help humanity defeat them.

Like Lana Wachowski, who co-created the Matrix films with her sibling Lilly decades ago, Thomas is asked to make a sequel to the Matrix trilogy, one that his parent company — also devilishly named Warner Bros. — will make with or without their input. So, as Thomas goes about his task, his reality takes on an M.C. Escher-esque level of circuitousness. Was the Matrix trilogy a series of games of his making? Or did they really happen, and he is once again a prisoner of the Matrix? Why is there a woman named Tiffany (Carrie-Anne Moss) in this world with him, one who strongly resembles the deceased Trinity of his fiction? Wachowski layers these questions in disorienting montage with voyeuristic angles, presenting Thomas’ presumed reality with just enough remove to make the viewer uncomfortable, and cause them to doubt, as Thomas does.

Casting the previous films as in-world video games allows The Matrix Resurrections to function as a refreshingly heavy-handed rebuke of the IP-driven reboot culture that produced the film, where the future is increasingly viewed through the franchise lenses of the past, trapping fans in corporate-controlled dream worlds where their fandom is constantly rewarded with new product. That video games are the chosen medium for The Matrix Resurrections ’ satire is icing on the cake: an entire medium defined by the illusion of choice, a culture built around the falsehood that megacorporations care about what their customers think when they have the data to show that every outrage du jour will still result in the same record-breaking profits.

As one of Thomas’s colleagues bluntly puts it: “I’m a geek. I was raised by machines.”

Bugs in the system

The opening act of The Matrix Resurrections is wonderfully confounding, a delicious way to recreate the unmooring unreality of the original to an audience that has likely seen, or felt its influence, countless times. Yet as it replicates, it also diverges. This is not, as the hacker Bugs (Jessica Henwick) notes early on, the story we know.

Bugs is our window into what’s new in Resurrections , a young and headstrong woman dedicated to finding the Neo that her generation knows only as myth. Her zealotry puts her in hot water with her elders; outside of the Matrix, humanity has eked out a small but thriving post-apocalyptic life, resting on the uneasy treaty between man and machine that Neo brokered at the end of the original trilogy. By constantly hacking into the Matrix to find Neo, Bugs threatens that peace — yet it’s a risk that Bugs and her ragtag crew (which includes a phenomenal Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in a role that’s not quite who viewers think he is) feel is worth taking. Because despite the war fought to free humanity from machine enslavement, much of humanity is still choosing to remain in the Matrix. The real world being real is not reason enough for anyone to wake up from the dream world.

But the hope of rescuing Neo is only half of the story. Wachowski makes a dazzling pivot halfway through The Matrix Resurrections , one that underlines a focal shift from individual freedom to human connection: The Resistance learns that it may be possible to free Trinity again as well, although by means never tried before. It’s a mission that isn’t likely to succeed, but in this strange new future, it’s the only one worth living and dying for. In pivoting to a mission to save the theoretical Trinity, Resurrections takes the messaging of the original film a step further. It’s not enough to free your mind; in fact, it’s worthless if you don’t unplug in the interest of connecting and loving those around you.

This back half gear-shifts into something much more straightforward, and frankly, it whips. It’s The Matrix as a heist movie. Because of this genre pivot, Resurrections ’ action takes on a different flavor from that of its predecessors. While weighty, satisfying martial arts standoffs are still in play, they’re not the centerpiece, as “Thomas” and “Tiffany” are the heart of the film, played by actors 20 years older and a little more limited in their choreography. Instead, The Matrix Resurrections chooses to dazzle with gorgeous widescreen set-pieces, big brawls, and visual effects that once again astonish while looking spectacularly real. Wachowski and her co-writers split the action as Bugs and her crew — who don’t get enough screen time but all make a terrific impression — race to find where their heroes may be hidden in the real world, and “Thomas” tries to get “Tiffany” to remember the love they once shared. All of the heady philosophy that these movies are known for is put into direct action, as the machines show off the ways they’ve changed the Matrix in an effort to not just keep a Neo from rescuing a Trinity, but to imprison him again.

In this sequence and throughout, The Matrix Resurrections relishes in being a lighter, more self-aware film than its predecessors, a movie about big feelings rendered beautifully. Its score, by Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer, reprises iconic motifs from original Matrix composer Don Davis’ work while introducing shimmery, recursive sequencing, a sonic echo to go with the visual one. While legendary cinematographer Bill Pope is also among the talent that doesn’t return this time around, the team of Daniele Massaccesi and John Toll bring a more painterly approach to Resurrections . Warm colors invade scenes from both the Matrix and the real world; the latter looks more vibrant than ever without the blue hues that characterized it in the original trilogy, while its digital counterpart has now changed to the point where it’s painfully idyllic, a world of bright colors and sunlight that is difficult to leave.

Embodying those changes is Jonathan Groff as a reawakened Smith, Neo’s dark opposite within the Matrix. Groff, who steps in for a role indelibly portrayed by Hugo Weaving, is the audacity of The Matrix Resurrections personified: He nails a character so iconic that recasting it feels like hubris, yet also finds new shades to bring to an antagonistic role in a world where villains only appear human, when in fact they’re often ideas. And ideas are so hard to wage war against.

Systems of control

If the old Matrix films are about lies we are told, the new Matrix is about lies we choose. In spite of its questions, 1999’s The Matrix hinges on the notion that there is such a thing as objective truth, and that people would want to see it. On the cusp of 2022, objective truth is no longer agreed upon, as pundits, politicians, and tech magnates each present their vision of what’s real, and aggressively market it to the masses. Our current crisis, then, is whatever you choose it to be. You just have to choose a side in the war: one to be us, and another to be them.

“If we don’t know what’s real,” one character asks Neo, “how do we resist?”

In returning to the world she created with her sibling, Lana Wachowski makes a closing argument she may very well not get to have the last word on. The Matrix Resurrections is a bouquet of flowers thrown with the rage of a Molotov cocktail, the will to fight tempered by the choice to extend compassion. Because feelings, as the constructs that oppress humanity in the Matrix note, are much easier to control than facts, and feelings are what sway us. So what if Neo fights back with a better story? A new myth to rise above the culture war?

It doesn’t have to be a bold one. It can even be one you’ve heard before. About a man named Thomas who can’t shake the idea that there’s something wrong with the world around him, that he feels disconnected from others in a way that he was never meant to be. And when others finally tell him that he’s living in an illusion, he doesn’t quite believe them — not until he sees something, someone, for himself that reminds him of what, exactly, he is missing: that he used to be in love.

The Matrix Resurrections hits theaters and HBO Max on Dec. 22.

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The Matrix Resurrections Is a Messy, Imperfect Triumph

After all this time, what does the blockbuster have left to offer? At its platonic ideal, a big-budget, mass-marketed movie induces pleasure. With swift and bright characterization, it allows actors to operate in a grander register, aching to fill the space of dizzying visual landscapes around them. Bombast and awe on all fronts. Maybe it’s difficult to identify an ideal blockbuster in contemporary Hollywood, drawn as it is to weak craft, characters with little interior dimension, and an understanding of representation that reduces gender, race, and sexuality to items on a marketing checklist rather than world-building attributes of a story. This is the cinematic reality into which The Matrix Resurrections enters, over 20 years after its original incarnation debuted in 1999: A universe laden with sequels and reboots and constantly updated IP. A universe in which imagination has curdled into what can most easily be bought and sold. And yet here is Lana Wachowski, pushing back against the tired form and offering audiences something fresh, curious, and funny as hell.

Teetering between a meta-reckoning with the legacy of the first trilogy and a sincere blooming of a whole new story that feels boldly romantic, Lana Wachowski’s first solo feature is a thrilling triumph. It is impossible to overstate the influence of the previous three movies — particularly 1999’s The Matrix — on American culture, launching “red pill” into dark internet circles, prompting the kids I grew up with to nonchalantly wear latex and leather in the Miami heat, forcing action films of its time to claw upward in the direction of the Wachowski sisters’ cyberpunk-inflected aesthetic, which itself pulled from a wild array of influences. The world has changed dramatically since Neo first bent out of the way of incoming bullets, and yet The Matrix Resurrections easily makes a case for its own existence. After decades of audiences attempting to slot the franchise into one category of interpretation or another, the film argues against any imagined binary to show that beauty is found between such extremes. Wachowski builds on what of the greatest and most singular aspects of the original trilogy: its queerness.

Playing with ideas of memory and nostalgia could have led Resurrections to have a self-satisfied, airless quality. Instead, it feels emotionally expansive and intellectually sly. Much of the first act works to actively critique nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, and how it is exploited by those in control, whether machine overlords or Hollywood studios. (“Nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia,” Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Morpheus says.) Resurrections is messy and imperfect, too, often eschewing easily digestible plotting in favor of an ambitious eccentricity, a reminder that bombastic storytelling is best translated by artists who are willing to fail. From the revelatory production and set design to the warmth of the cinematography by John Toll and Daniele Massaccesi to the updated action scenes, Lana Wachowski proves how powerful a blockbuster can be in the hands of those with vision and ambition. But it’s the kind of film whose very foundation makes it tricky to discuss in depth without tracing the narrative and emotional shape of it. I recommend going into the film with an open heart, an open mind, and little knowledge of the nitty gritty turns in the story, some of which I’m about to examine. You’ve been warned.

Early in the film, inside a slick high-rise office overlooking the nearly too-perfect San Francisco skyline, a gaggle of video game developers argue about what the Matrix is an allegory for. Is it trans rights and politics? Is it capitalist exploitation? The scene has a rhythmic dexterity, as the developers volley forth opinion after opinion. It’s poised to be hilarious, and it is. Among the developers is Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), who in this new world is a famous video-game designer who created a game called The Matrix to much acclaim. He’s a suicide survivor, having once lept from a building on a clear sunny day believing he could fly. When his business partner (Jonathan Groff) says he must design a new Matrix game despite his vowing not to, his reality starts to slip. Is he losing his mind or is the Matrix he supposedly created something more than a game?

Wachowski and co-writers David Mitchell and Aleksander Hemon play out this anxiety with a consistent intrusion of clips from the previous films, a strategy that doesn’t always work. But when it does, it’s sublime. Like in the scene where Thomas Anderson slips from this therapist’s (Neil Patrick Harris) grasp and realizes he is indeed the Neo of his video game. His memory of meeting Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne then, Abdul-Mateen II now) is projected onto a ripped projector screen that acts as a doorway, figuratively and literally. Freed from a prison once again, Neo learns it has been 60 years since he and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) traveled to the machine city, sacrificing their lives for their revolutionary cause. He must determine: Can he free Trinity, too, or is she happy in this false new world where she is a married mother of two with a penchant for motorcycles? Neo never truly believed in himself as the One, but Trinity did. How can he be what everyone believes him to be without her?

The Matrix Resurrections might lack the ground-shaking originality of its 1999 predecessor, but it manages to chart a stunning, divergent path, philosophically and cinematically. Whereas the previous Matrix films were committed to a green-dominated, cool-toned color palette, Resurrections simmers with far greater warmth — amber-hued sunlight streaming through the real world. The fight choreography, from John Wick ’s Chad Stahelski (Reeves’s Matrix stunt double, who plays Trinity’s husband in the new film), is more chaotic and rough-hewn; bodies crash into one another haphazardly, lacking the grace and fluidity Yuen Woo-ping brought to the original movies. The costume design led by Lindsay Pugh brings back gothic sensibilities with restraint, forgoing fetish wear but remaining committed to the epic-ness of flowing silhouettes. The sets are littered once again with mirrors that glisten with thematic resonance. The film commits to granting audiences joy in ways that feel primal (exceedingly hot, well-dressed people are kicking unholy amounts of ass) and earnest (Wachowski does not abandon the previous films’ core belief in hope and community building).

That joy emanates through the cast. Harris’s naturally haughty, self-satisfied miasma works perfectly. Groff is cheeky and charismatic as a rebooted version of Agent Smith, his fight scene with Neo in an abandoned building being one of the highlights of the film. Decked in finely tailored suits the color of marigolds and deep ocean waters, Abdul-Mateen II slinks and struts with the grace of a true movie star, winking at Morpheus’s love of theatrics. (The fact that Fishburne wasn’t asked to be a part of the franchise rebirth hangs over the performance, though.) Jessica Henwick exudes hope, grounding the unexpected coalition that pins the movie together. The new actors, even when they’re playing old characters, are so much more than energetic doppelgängers of the Matrix heroes and villains who came before them, absorbing well the aesthetic differences between this reboot and the trilogy.

But for all its strengths — retreading and remixing the franchise while charting a bold new course for the canon — The Matrix Resurrections would fail if it wasn’t for the chemistry of Reeves and Moss. The former has by now solidified his place as a major movie and action star several times over, seamlessly moving from tickled bewilderment to sincere fear to absolute control on screen. Watching Moss, with her cutting gaze and sharp physicality, I can’t help but mourn for the career she deserved. Together, there is an inherent optimism — about the human spirit, about the will to overcome a narrowing force — that flits open when they share a scene. It’s along the arc of Neo and Trinity’s romance that Resurrections separates itself from its recent blockbuster brethren. Behind a meta-narrative storytelling approach and all that stylistic gleam, The Matrix Resurrections is ultimately a love story — romantic, yes, and a paean to the community necessary for that romance to blossom into resistance. Wachowski is bold enough to argue that in a strategically queer-fashioned world, where boundaries break and the limits of the human body are rejected, choosing love is still a radical decision.

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The Matrix Resurrections review: After an 18-year gap, it's time to get red-pilled again

Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss reunite for a sequel that's surprisingly romantic.

Senior Editor, Movies

All that's old is Neo again. But before we dive back into Matrix mythology for this belated-but-welcome sequel, it's worth recalling what a lumbering mastodon the sci-fi-action genre had become by the late-1990s: Phantom Menace dullness and two killer-asteroid movies. In its moment, 1999's The Matrix vibrated with ideas, not merely "bullet time" but internet paranoia, hacker fashion, and (whoa) kung fu. Even if the movie's two sequels cribbed too much from the messianic-hero playbook, the good work was done.

Less one Wachowski (Lana directs while Lilly steps away), The Matrix Resurrections could never be as radical as the original. But credit a meta screenplay by Wachowski, David Mitchell, and Aleksandar Hemon for finding an inspired way in: Today's Thomas Anderson ( Keanu Reeves ) — older, salt-and-pepper-bearded, and lent the extra indignity of lanky Belushi hair — mopes in his San Francisco office, a game designer past his prime. His corporate overlords (Warner Bros., showing good humor) want a sequel to his classic Matrix trilogy.

Already we know something's off, even as the clues pile up: Jefferson Airplane's psychedelic "White Rabbit" on the soundtrack; a smarmy therapist ( Neil Patrick Harris ) prescribing blue pills for anxiety; flirty looks from that cute mom in the Simulatte coffeehouse, Tiffany ( Carrie-Anne Moss , just as fierce two decades on). Soon enough, another dapper Morpheus ( Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ) strolls out of a stall in the company bathroom and we're zooming into — out of? — a different reality.

It's a do-over without a full share of wonderment, but still a lot of fun. Wachowski retains a singular eye for shiny plasticity and sharp edits, even if you miss the verbal tartness of OG cast member Hugo Weaving ( Hamilton 's bitchy King George, Jonathan Groff , does what he can with a new antagonist). And like many of today's epics, there's an expositional sag in the middle.

But Resurrections does eclipse its predecessors for full-on, kick-you-in-the-heart romance: Reeves and Moss, comfortable with silences, lean into an adult intimacy, so rare in blockbusters, that's more thrilling than any roof jump (though those are pretty terrific too). Their motorbiking through an exploding city, one of them clutching the other, could be the most defiantly sexy scene of a young year. B+

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The Matrix Resurrections is more interested in being self-aware than being good

A fantastic setup to a tepid sequel.

By Adi Robertson , a senior tech and policy editor focused on VR, online platforms, and free expression. Adi has covered video games, biohacking, and more for The Verge since 2011.

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The Matrix Resurrections warned me its existence was a bad idea, and I kept watching anyway. I really have nobody but myself to blame.

The Matrix Resurrections is, to its credit, a fairly weird film — but one that’s often more concerned with being self-aware than being good or enjoyable. Directed by Lana Wachowski instead of the typical Wachowski-sister duo, Resurrections starts with an intriguing bit of metatextual loopiness before devolving into a tepid sequel. It’s a gratingly uncool and reactive cut-up of an effortlessly cool and timeless work, albeit seemingly deliberately so. It seeks to dissect the adulation and mythos that have grown up around The Matrix over 22 years but without the masterful craftwork that inspired that adulation in the first place. And worst of all, the kung fu isn’t very good.

Resurrections is a direct sequel to 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions , continuing the story of Neo, Trinity, and a few other well-known characters from the Matrix trilogy. (If you don’t know who these people are or you haven’t thought about them much since then, I would strongly recommend brushing up.) But in spirit, it’s a sequel to the entire Matrix cultural phenomenon that began in 1999. And without getting into specifics, I don’t mean this in some abstract thematic way. Resurrections’ narrative is very directly responding to decades of people analyzing everything from The Matrix’s bullet time sequences to its transgender subtext .

It’s a promising premise for a new installment in the series, and the early execution is fantastic. Resurrections’ opening calls back to an iconic Matrix scene while stylishly introducing new characters and teasing a compellingly trippy plot, complete with a new palette that spices up the series’ classic monochrome with patches of slick color. It’s followed by an effectively cringeworthy sendup of a specific media industry that will remain nameless. It echoes Matrix contemporary The Thirteenth Floor — as well as its predecessor, the Rainer Fassbinder film World On A Wire — with a story about losing track of the line between reality and fantasy but freshly made for a world where that philosophical dilemma has permeated pop culture.

If you want to know as few plot points as possible about The Matrix Resurrections, you can skip this paragraph. But if a little context is helpful, the film begins with Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie Anne-Moss) having been reinserted into a version of the Matrix simulation. The pair don’t know each other and have no memory of their earlier selves, and the former has achieved lonely fame inside the simulation while the latter has a family and a quiet life.

Keanu Reeves’ rubber duck is just as good in context

Reeves is a lot of fun to watch in the film’s first act, where he’s playing a world-weary man who’s sick of being lauded as a visionary for creating something he now finds fundamentally silly even as it nearly ruined his life. (A shot of him lying in a bathtub with a rubber duck on his head is as good in context as it was in the film’s trailer.) Moss gets to try out a less austere and more human version of Trinity, and her story touches on interesting questions about what attachment means inside a virtual world. The original Matrix was about a young, alienated loner, but Resurrections takes more seriously the idea that you could find meaning with other people in an activity that remains essentially fake.

From the beginning, though, the writing often feels disposable. Where The Matrix yearned to talk about big ideas like free will and the nature of reality, Resurrections is a series of burns on techbros, obsessive fans, the media industry, people who think quoting movies makes them cool, and other lesser contemporary villains.

The original film was obviously also a product of its time, riffing on tropes about corporate cubicle workers, virtual reality utopianism, and 20th-century ennui. But it used these specifics as the building blocks for a world that was self-contained and compelling even after the underlying cultural moment passed. In The Matrix Resurrections , these elements are tangential commentary that never anchors itself in a larger plot — particularly because when that larger plot does barge in, it’s flat at best and vicariously embarrassing at worst.

Like the original Matrix trilogy, Resurrections eventually revolves around questions about Neo being “the One,” a figure with the power to control the Matrix. But unlike those films, Resurrections doesn’t establish why it matters.

Resurrections centers Neo and Trinity’s love story but in a disjointed and frustrating way

The Matrix set its stakes high by painting a nightmarish future where humanity was perpetually at the brink of total enslavement, and its few free members lived a life of constant fear, and the One was a weapon that resistance fighters had spent their whole lives searching for. Its oft-maligned sequels eased up on this grimness, but in exchange, the films introduced characters with homes and families and orgiastic dance parties — most of them cared about Neo, not because of some idol-like affection, but because he might save those things. (The key exception, a figure introduced in The Animatrix dubbed “The Kid,” had his hero-worship played as a poignant joke.) Even a character like Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus, who built his life around finding and protecting Neo, was motivated as much by the concept of faith as a personal attachment to the man.

There’s none of this in Resurrections . For one thing, the film barely bothers explaining what happened as a result of The Matrix Revolutions’ ending, when Neo’s powers finally helped him broker peace between humans and machines. Far from ignoring the sequels, it directly incorporates footage from them and features some returning characters. But it also quietly reverses large parts of them for no satisfying reason, making the import of everything Neo and Trinity did in those films unclear.

For another, the film’s new characters have virtually no motivations outside a fandom-like obsession with Neo. The heroes, who are functionally almost interchangeable except for the blue-haired Matrix escapee Bugs (Jessica Henwick), think he’s an awesome guy and want — as a literal stated mission — to help him get his “mojo” back. The villains are obsessed with tormenting him for underexplored reasons, even when that gets in the way of their theoretical actual job.

Meanwhile, Neo himself has no interest in anything except rekindling his relationship with Trinity. The Matrix films made the love story between the two an ever-larger part of the narrative as the trilogy progressed, and it’s obviously what Wachowski wants to focus on here. But it’s written in a way that makes Neo come off as either selectively amnesiac or chillingly unconcerned about the fate of the human race. His incuriosity about anything except Trinity also wastes opportunities to help explain foundational plot points, which instead get brought up and almost immediately abandoned. And the pair’s interactions, despite being the supposed heart of the film, are oddly disjointed. Wachowski has definitely read all those essays about Trinity Syndrome , but Trinity’s character arc is still patchy and weak — full of moments that describe the existence of conflicts instead of letting them unfold.

The Matrix’s sequels had countless flaws, but they showcased the Wachowski sisters’ straightforward knack for visually memorable set pieces and elaborate choreography. Resurrections has only one sequence that even approaches the fun of The Matrix Reloaded’s sprawling car chase or The Matrix Revolution’s giant mech battle, and it’s over far too quickly. It barely tries to capture the magic of the original Matrix’s gunplay and wire-fu, either. Its fight scenes draw more strongly from the post- Bourne Identity school of choppy pragmatic combat, and they become progressively more perfunctory, more pointlessly derivative, and harder to follow thanks to a penchant for crowd scenes involving the film’s equivalent of zombies.

But most frustratingly of all, Resurrections seems dedicated to shooting itself in the foot — and distinctly not dodging the bullet — with Matrix callbacks that undercut its own strengths.

In a couple of casting decisions that are technically spoilers but have been confirmed online already, the film introduces Watchmen’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as a new iteration of Morpheus and Mindhunter’s Jonathan Groff as a new version of the villain Agent Smith. It suits the film’s stated theme of evolution and repetition in theory, but in practice, it puts both men in the position of rehashing past iconic performances — in Abdul-Mateen’s case, from one of the most powerfully charismatic actors in Hollywood. He ends up playing little more than a collection of glib quips in an admittedly great suit, while Groff gets his shot at a uniquely hateable performance smothered by intercuts to Smith’s original actor Hugo Weaving.

There’s no good reason to do this. Narrative continuity doesn’t demand either man appear: Smith’s destruction was a central element of The Matrix Revolutions , and Morpheus was canonically murdered in a video game by flies . Both roles could have been more compellingly written as original characters. The film runs in too many directions for the reincarnated Smith and Morpheus to spend time grappling with their evolution, they retain almost none of their original motivations, and Neo is too busy worrying about Trinity to engage with either. (The fact that Fishburne and Reeves had by far the most chemistry and the best-shared arc of any two Matrix cast members makes this doubly sad.)

Smith’s presence is particularly unnecessary because he’s not even the primary antagonist. That dubious honor goes to a new character who’s written like a chatbot trained on the comments in a “high-IQ rationalist skeptics” subreddit, except that this description at least implies some kind of explanation for why he would exist.

The film’s recast roles feel like an act of cynicism

Instead, the recasting feels like an act of frustrated cynicism, the logical conclusion of Marvel-style storytelling where viewers can only care about a new character if they’re a reincarnation of an old one. Given the explicit narrative of the film, I’d even believe the awkwardness of it is intentional. Resurrections spends its entire first act telling audiences that a new Matrix installment would be a hollow byproduct of corporate coercion dressed up as an innovative reworking of a classic. Like almost any recent major franchise film or game that supposedly “deconstructs” its predecessors, it’s given the freedom to posture at subversion before delivering the exact thing it’s required to.

As someone who was shaped deeply by The Matrix , it’s a little sad to walk away from The Matrix Resurrections with the impression that fandom and franchise-based media have soured its legacy badly for Wachowski. I was a tween when it premiered, and it’s the first film I can remember processing as a kind of overwhelming aesthetic experience instead of a story that happened to involve moving pictures. Watching it decades later, it’s a perfect gestalt of memorable dialog, alluring conspiracism, kinetic camera work, and stylish violence. The Matrix is more than ripe for a self-aware joke — but not one built for a machine that won’t allow it the decency of a punchline.

The Matrix Resurrections will premiere December 22nd in theaters and on HBO Max.

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'The Matrix Resurrections' Proves It's Worth Returning to the Well for Love | Review

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'Flipside' Review: Judd Apatow-Produced Doc Is a Hidden Gem

The 10 best action-adventure movies of the 2000s, ranked, the 10 worst robots in the 'transformers' movies, ranked.

Editor's note: The following review contains mild, non-plot spoilers for The Matrix Resurrections.

Action filmmaking has seen several pivotal titles that singularly redefined the genre over the decades, with movies that tested and in many cases broke through the ceiling of what audiences and even creators thought could be achieved on-screen. In the year leading up to the millennium, no film succeeded at this more than The Matrix . In fact, you could probably divide most sci-fi movies into two categories from that moment on: those that came before The Matrix , and those that came after. The first Matrix movie wasn't just a breath of fresh air in Hollywood filmmaking; it became a cultural moment that permeated our society, a work of fiction to be dissected by fans, a fame vehicle for its young lead Keanu Reeves , and eventually, fodder for plenty of MTV Movie Awards parodies. The massive success of the film would go on to spawn two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions , filmed back-to-back in one long run of production and released in the same year of 2003, although each follow-up was met with diminishing critical response in spite of being box office hits. The growing franchise also led to the release of The Animatrix , a series of short anime movies. Pretty soon it became obvious that Warner Bros. just wanted to keep the Matrix train running by whatever means necessary.

When a long-awaited sequel was announced back in 2019 , it was anyone's guess how the creators would approach the concept, especially since it's a question that has loomed over the sisters' heads even as they worked on other films together like Jupiter Ascending and Cloud Atlas . Eventually, Lana Wachowski came back to make The Matrix Resurrections solo, directing and co-writing the film alongside her Sense8 series finale collaborators David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon — which, if you know the Netflix show, should already clue you in about the type of sequel movie you're in for. With these three at the helm, The Matrix Resurrections becomes an acutely meta and epically romantic film — one that also asks us to question things like our own instinct to reach for nostalgia, or our reliance on sequels and reboots to comfort ourselves rather than wholly original ideas.

The Matrix Resurrections is set approximately twenty years after the events of the last movie — coincidentally, almost as many years as it took this sequel to come out. Neo (Reeves) is living what appears to be a rather mundane life in San Francisco as Thomas Anderson, a virtuoso game programmer whose most successful and award-winning title to date is, surprise-surprise, The Matrix . He's clearly going through some shit on a personal level, evidenced by his constant visits to his therapist ( Neil Patrick Harris ), who prescribes him suspicious blue pills when he confesses to having odd visions and dreams, as well as the strange desire to try jumping off of buildings to see whether he can fly. He's also captivated by a woman ( Carrie-Anne Moss ) that frequents the coffee shop near his office but is still trying to work up the nerve to introduce himself to her. When Anderson's business partner Smith ( Jonathan Groff ) approaches him about the heavy demand for a new Matrix game, it sends Neo into a spiral of ennui and creative listlessness, one that is unexpectedly broken when he's approached by two strangers, the blue-haired Bugs ( Jessica Henwick ) and a man calling himself Morpheus ( Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ).

Summarizing up the film aside, what do you do when you've already smashed through the ceiling as far as action moviemaking is concerned? If you're Lana Wachowski, apparently that involves focusing on the bigger question hovering around this sequel by textually wrestling with what it means to contribute to franchise culture by making Resurrections in the first place. It's evident from the jump that Wachowski's script, at least in part, serves as a mouthpiece for her to make one thing plain to fans — the overlords at Warner Bros., as Groff's Smith so directly states to Neo, were planning to make a Matrix sequel with or without the original creative team. It's a moment in the movie that's played for humor, but the underlying cynicism rings distinct: you wanted me to make another Matrix film? Well, here it is, and you can take it or leave it. There's also even more weight to the scene when one recalls the fact that Resurrections almost never saw the light of day; when the movie had to halt production for pandemic reasons, Wachowski reportedly considered leaving it unfinished and had to be convinced by the cast to come back and resume filming.

RELATED: Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss on ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ and When They Realized What Trinity Means to People

Fortunately, what results from Wachowski's return to the franchise is well worth plugging back in for — and while Resurrections does afford screentime to plenty of action as well as keen philosophizing about free will vs. choice and the switch to manipulating feelings over facts in this new version of the Matrix, it's never been clearer that the crux of this franchise is a love story. In a realm defined by technology and science, Neo and Trinity have been linked by the most illogical concept of all: fate. Although the movie introduces each of them as having no idea who the other person is or what they even mean to one another, there's still an unconscious charge that happens the first time they shake hands, a magnetic pull that continually brings them into each other's orbit in spite of greater forces conspiring to keep them apart. Their romance in this movie is not implicit by any means, and the love that Wachowski still openly holds for that story persists through every single emotional beat of its script. When Neo finds himself awakened to the reality of this new Matrix, courtesy of a red pill from Morpheus 2.0, his sole mission becomes about how to save Trinity — and his love for her defines every single choice he makes from that moment on. Reeves and Moss sell the relationship between their characters in every scene, from quiet conversations over a coffee shop table to standing on the precipice of a skyscraper, weighing whether or not to jump into the unknown together.

Cast-wise, there's as much to love from the crop of newcomers as there is with the franchise's legacy players. Henwick's Bugs is the character whose unwavering optimism drives most of the story as she works tirelessly to free Neo from the Matrix. Abdul-Mateen's Morpheus serves as less of a guiding figure in this new iteration and more of a force designed to shake Neo out of his complacency, as well as inject plenty of levity. As the Analyst, Harris is responsible for delivering much of the sequel's metaphysical monologuing, which he commits to with a blend of menace and sangfroid. And Groff absolutely makes a meal out of the scenery as the newest incarnation of Smith, capable of alternating between charming and sinister energy without missing a beat.

The place where Resurrections does fall a little short is with its action. The sequel continues to emphasize all of the ways in which the Matrix eschews the laws of physics, resulting in many thrilling visuals, but the film, at many points, oddly veers away from the wire-fu and wide camera angles that the first movie became defined by. The result is a lot of frenetic and close-up perspective on certain sequences that makes the action very difficult to parse. It's a minor quibble in the overall delivery of the plot, but this is one particular instance in which leaning on nostalgia might have served the sequel better rather than trying to deliver something so divergent in terms of camerawork.

The most common question that circles around sequels, especially ones that are finally released after years of waiting, is whether they were even worth making to begin with. With The Matrix Resurrections , Wachowski has succeeded in not simply providing her own answer but conveying a film that represents the story she was most interested in telling after all this time, for better or worse. The Matrix Resurrections is an admirable follow-up in that it's less concerned with being the movie any fans might believe they want and instead serves up a sequel that will invite lots of conversation, encourage us to parse through the story code, and ultimately linger behind in our minds long after the credits roll.

The Matrix Resurrections premieres both in theaters and on HBO Max on December 22.

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‘The Matrix Resurrections’ Review: Slipping Through Dreamland (Again)

Keanu Reeves plunges down the rabbit hole once more in this familiar-seeming mind-game movie, the fourth in the series.

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By Manohla Dargis

After she chases the White Rabbit down a very long tunnel, Alice enters a low, dim hall. There are doors up and down the passageway, but they’re all locked. As she walks through the hall, Alice wonders how she’s ever going to get out. You may find yourself asking much the same question while watching the fourth movie in “The Matrix” series, as it alternately amuses and frustrates you with its fantastical world.

The series first invoked Lewis Carroll’s elusive bunny in the first movie, the 1999 genre game changer that was jointly directed by the Wachowski siblings and soon set audiences’ heads on fire. “ Follow the white rabbit ” Neo, a.k.a. the One (Keanu Reeves, cinema’s ideal savior), reads on his desktop monitor, shortly before doing just that. The chase continued and at times seemed never-ending as it endured through two sequels, comics and video games. It also provided grist for reams of articles, dissertations and scholarly books (“The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real”), taking its place as one of contemporary pop culture’s supreme interpretive chew toys.

The series resumes in “The Matrix Resurrections,” which nudges the cycle forward even while it circles back to swallow its own tail. Once again, Reeves plays both Thomas Anderson and Neo, who exist in separate yet conjoined realms. Anderson’s world resembles our own (though airlessly art directed) but is a software program called the Matrix that’s run by artificially intelligent machines. Here, human avatars go about their business believing themselves free. In the series’ wittily perverse take on the circle of life, these machines keep human bodies — Anderson’s included — imprisoned in goo-filled vats, using the energy from these meat puppets to power the Matrix.

Directed solely by Lana Wachowski, “Resurrections” announces its intentions after the opening credits, with their streams of cascading green code. Somewhere in the illusory world, a woman with short hair fights unsmiling men in suits and shades, a setup that mirrors the banging preliminaries in the original film and makes you ache for Carrie-Anne Moss’s Trinity, Neo’s comrade in arms. Don’t worry, she’s onboard, too, just wait. Now, though, two others are also watching the action along with us, including a guy wearing a headset (Toby Onwumere) who analyzes the action like a sports commentator just before Bugs (Jessica Henwick) jumps into a very familiar fray.

What follows plays like a loving, narratively clotted tribute video to the “Matrix” cycle itself complete with innumerable bullets and almost as many flashbacks to the younger Neo. (You don’t need to revisit what happened earlier in the cycle, the movie does it for you.) Once again, Anderson is in dreamland writing code, this time for his role as a video game designer working on a project called Binary. Speaking of which: As before, he also has an apparent choice to remain ignorant about his existential condition or embrace its painful truth. He also meets a mysterious figure called both Agent Smith and Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, whose velvety, sepulchral voice adds shivers of danger).

There have been some significant cast changes since the third movie. Alas, missing in action are both Hugo Weaving and Laurence Fishburne, who added gravitas and much-needed wit. Instead, a silky Jonathan Groff now prowls around menacingly, his boyishness having been nicely weaponized for his role as a sly trickster. A less happy addition is Neil Patrick Harris, who delivers an unhelpful, one-dimensional performance as the Analyst. Still, not much here is different other than some of Reeves’s facial creases and salt-and-pepper hair. Characters still wear fetish clothing or nubby threads, and still keep fighting the fight as they brawl and yammer through the labyrinth.

Some of that yammering is amusing simply because “The Matrix” (and its successors) are exemplars of what’s been called mind-game movies, “a ‘certain tendency’ in contemporary cinema,” as the film theorist Thomas Elsaesser put it. Like others of this type, “The Matrix” plays with the perception of reality held by both the protagonist and the audience, poses questions about the limits of knowledge and addresses doubts about other minds and worlds. What makes mind-game movies especially fascinating — and helps explain their cultish appeal — is how they draw spectators into the game, partly by showing them worlds that they recognize. Or, as Morpheus put it once upon a time: “You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world.”

So, yes, “You have many questions,” as a character called the Architect tells Neo in “The Matrix Reloaded.” No kidding! That movie offered some persuasive, or at least tantalizing, answers: The world is an illusion, a simulation, an ideological prison, but it’s possible to escape with lots of guns and cool kids in black, that is until the sequel. The first movie offered viewers doors that they — unlike Alice — could open, allowing them to enter more rabbit holes. Once there, one of the more resonant readings, as the critic Andrea Long Chu has explained, is that “The Matrix” has been embraced by trans women as an allegory for gender transition. In this take, the world of illusions is the gender binary.

Whatever the limits of allegory, this interpretation is both intriguing and touching. (Lana’s sister Lilly Wachowski has said “that was the original intention.”) It adds emotional resonance to “Resurrection,” which gets a great deal of mileage from its — and our — nostalgic yearning, appreciatively stoked by Reeves and Moss’s reunion. The actors’ sincerity and effortlessly synced performances have always been this series’ greatest special effects, and watching them slip back into their old roles is a pleasure. The movie they’re in is still as beholden to the same old guns and poses as the earlier ones, the same dubious ideas about what constitutes coolness, the same box-office-friendly annihilating violence. But it’s still nice to dream of an escape with them.

The Matrix Resurrections Rated R for extreme gun and other violence. Running time: 2 hours 28 minutes. In theaters and on HBO Max .

An earlier version of this review misidentified the movie in which the Architect was a character. It was “The Matrix Reloaded,” not   the first “Matrix.” 

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Manohla Dargis has been the co-chief film critic since 2004. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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The Matrix Resurrections Reviews Are Online, See What Critics Are Saying About The New Movie

Should you check out the fourth movie in the Matrix franchise?

After nearly two decades, Neo and Trinity are back in the fourth installment of the mind-altering sci-fi action Matrix series with The Matrix Resurrections . The film will be released both in theaters and on HBO Max on Wednesday , December 22, and the reviews are in to help you decide if, when and how you want to check out this latest sequel . It is, as they say, the most wonderful time of the year to question your reality.

Despite dying in the third film, The Matrix Revolutions , Neo ( Keanu Reeves ) and Trinity ( Carrie-Anne Moss ) are alive and living ordinary lives until a new Morpheus ( Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ) reopens their minds to a more dangerous Matrix than they previously knew. Along with Reeves and Moss, the film sees the return of director Lana Wachowski and co-stars Jada Pinkett Smith and Lambert Wilson. 

Let’s dive in and see what the critics have to say about The Matrix Resurrections , starting with our own CinemaBlend review . Eric Eisenberg rated the new sequel 3.5 stars out of 5, saying the beginning of The Matrix Resurrections is so good it raises viewers’ expectations to a level that the rest of the movie can’t meet. Overall enjoyment of the film will likely be determined by which section sticks out most prominently to the viewer. 

The new blockbuster is mostly successful, as it builds on the established canon, has its own raison d'etre for bringing back the world and characters, and unleashes a series of explosive set pieces – but it’s also a production that stands out as being exceptionally uneven. The first act of The Matrix Resurrections is an absolutely blissful cinematic experience; the second act is a slog burdened with the over-familiar and heavy doses of plot; and the conclusion is fortunately solid enough to make up for the missteps that precede it.

Amelia Emberwing of IGN gave The Matrix Resurrection a 4 out of 10, saying it is “jaw-droppingly misguided,” but still has good and nostalgic aspects. The reunion of Neo and Trinity is delightful, and the additions of Jonathan Groff and Jessica Henwick to the Matrix franchise are possibly the best part. But its attempts at being meta — telling the audience that reboots are silly — miss the mark and only strengthen the argument of those who say remakes and sequels are blatant corporate cash grabs. 

I’d go so far as to say that The Matrix Resurrections is made up almost entirely of good ideas. The problem is that it’s not a good movie. It’s a bunch of individually neat ideas stacked in a trench coat like a bunch of kids trying to buy a ticket to an R-rated film. Cleverness is met with laughably bad execution at nearly every turn here.

Riley Silverman of Nerdist gave the film a 3 out of 5, saying it certainly feels like it belongs in the Matrix franchise, and while it brings a surprising number of comedic moments and a “skin-crawling” final action sequence, how much viewers enjoy the previous sequels may play a part in their impression of this one.

Similar to the previous sequels, when it hits its highs, it delivers. The ambition of it is obvious, the pacing rarely stalls out, and Keanu has a lot more fun with the role than he did in the trilogy. He brings a lot of his relaxed vibe from more recent years. Though Lana Wachowski directs solo this time, fans of the sisters’ trademark visual styles will be happy to know there’s plenty on display here. We have no modern equivalent to the groundbreaking bullet-time moment of the first film. However, a series of visuals in the final climactic action sequence that is skin-crawling, visceral, and horrifying.

Joshua Rothkopf of EW graded the movie a B+, and while he says it’s not without its faults, he makes specific note about the romance between Keanu Reeves’ Neo and Carrie-Anne Moss’ Trinity — an aspect that is lauded in a number of critics’ reviews.

Resurrections does eclipse its predecessors for full-on, kick-you-in-the-heart romance: Reeves and Moss, comfortable with silences, lean into an adult intimacy, so rare in blockbusters, that's more thrilling than any roof jump (though those are pretty terrific too). Their motorbiking through an exploding city, one of them clutching the other, could be the most defiantly sexy scene of a young year.

William Bibbiani of The Wrap agreed that the depth given to Neo and Trinity’s relationship actually makes the previous three movies retroactively better. And overall, the self-awareness of the movie begs audiences to ask if the reboot culture of Hollywood is another Matrix itself. 

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But if we absolutely must have another 'Matrix' movie, if we can’t just let it be, then let it be this weird one. Let it be a film with an existential crisis. Let it be a film that’s half a nostalgia cash-in and half a biopic about a filmmaker who’s forced to make a nostalgia cash-in. Let 'The Matrix Resurrections' leave fans half-satisfied and wondering if maybe the fan-service system in which Hollywood has invested for so many decades is itself just another Matrix — keeping the throngs content with low-risk throwbacks and preventing audiences from getting brand-new and truly ambitious stories that push the medium and the culture forward.

As expected with this franchise, the critics are split over whether or not the meta reboot angle of The Matrix Resurrections landed with its audiences. What seems to be pretty universally agreed on is the prevalent chemistry between its stars and welcome addition of new villains to the universe. If the red pill is your choice, you can catch The Matrix Resurrections in theaters and HBO Max starting Wednesday, December 21. Be sure to check out our 2022 Movie Release Schedule to see what’s coming up in the new year.

Heidi Venable is a Content Producer for CinemaBlend, a mom of two and a hard-core '90s kid. She started freelancing for CinemaBlend in 2020 and officially came on board in 2021. Her job entails writing news stories and TV reactions from some of her favorite prime-time shows like Grey's Anatomy and The Bachelor. She graduated from Louisiana Tech University with a degree in Journalism and worked in the newspaper industry for almost two decades in multiple roles including Sports Editor, Page Designer and Online Editor. Unprovoked, will quote Friends in any situation. Thrives on New Orleans Saints football, The West Wing and taco trucks.

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The Matrix Resurrections Review: I Just Entered The Mehtrix

From visionary filmmaker Lana Wachowski comes The Matrix Resurrections,  the long-awaited fourth film in the groundbreaking franchise that redefined a genre. The new film reunites original stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in the iconic roles they made famous, Neo and Trinity. Can this sequel live up to the long awaited hype? We’ll talk about that in this review.

The Matrix Resurrections Trailer:

The Matrix Resurrections Video Review:

The best thing about The Matrix Resurrections is having Keanu Reeves back in the role of Neo. Thanks to a lot of nostalgia baked into the movie, experiencing Neo’s character again felt like riding a bike after a long period of time. Although he is a bit older and little stiffer, it really doesn’t matter as Reeves pretty much owns this role. It was an unexpected treat to see some of the supporting cast step up more than anticipated. Jessica Henwick (who played “Bugs”) was a definite highlight.

Her action scenes were some of the best moments in the film, and I could easily see a spinoff movie or series being built around her character. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was also great as “Morpheus”. He really brought to life his version of the character and completely made it his own.  I will say, however, that it was a bit disappointing to see  the visual choices made with his character for the majority of the film.

The Matrix Resurrections doesn’t want to be a traditional sequel, and you can tell from the plot of the film. What I liked about it was the unique approach to be self aware and very meta in different scenes. There are a lot of references and jokes thrown into the film that only the audience will understand. One can appreciate these callbacks, not just as a fan of the Matrix, but also for the play on the philosophical theme the franchise is based on. (Simulation theory) It was really intriguing to learn about the aftermath and relationship between both the machines and humans.  This was one of the few moments in the film that felt like the essence of what was always intended in the innovative science fiction this franchise touted.

I wanted to really like the action scenes, but I just couldn’t get there. The fight scenes came off to be more of a rehash of what we’ve seen so many times before. Given the vast amount of possibilities that come along with downloading various fighting styles or techniques, The Matrix Resurrections barely bothered to tap into anything that would expand the fight scenes. Sure, we get some explosions, lots of guns, and super powered punches being thrown; but is that all this film has to offer?

To make matters worse, when you really look at what this franchise setup, it seems like even Neo has reached his limit. Every Matrix movie introduced some sort of new ability for the character. This time around, we get a slight variation of a known ability. The first time I saw it, I was happy to see his minor upgrade. Then after the fourth and fifth time of usage in the film, I realized that this Neo hasn’t really grown much at all. For a character who literally could do almost anything they want, this was a missed opportunity to dazzle audiences.

One other issue is the overly saturated themes at play. Don’t get me wrong, the “power of love” concept is an oldie, but a goodie. It makes perfect sense (on paper) to make this concept the biggest difference maker between humans and machines. However, The Matrix Resurrections gets extremely heavy handed with this to a fault. This theme would’ve worked better as a secondary (rather primary) focus of the film. It almost gets a bit corny with how literal it’s taken by the end of the film too.

The Verdict:

The Matrix Resurrections is an ambitious sequel that trips up on its own trailblazed path. It’s full of bold ideas with poor execution. Maybe it’s a victim of time, whereas we should’ve gotten this movie at an earlier time. It’s not out of the question to suggest that Hollywood has sucked everything out of the Matrix franchise, and thereby leaving nothing much else for audiences to be wow’d by. Maybe the lack of the other Wachowski sibling could be to blame too. Either way, The Matrix Resurrections took a swing and a miss. It totally gets an A for effort, but it lacks the “it factor” that put the franchise on the cinematic map.

As a HUGE Matrix fan, I have to fully admit that my expectations could play into my viewing experience here. I rewatched the trilogy before going into this film. I saw how the first film still maintained the magic even though it’s been over 20 years. I didn’t care about the outdated and crappy CGI in the second Matrix because I loved how it threw everything at us full bore. I still give a pass to T he Matrix Revolutions , because aside from the boring Zion battle, I appreciated Neo’s journey coming to an end. So naturally, I was hoping that The Matrix Resurrections would learn from it’s long hiatus. Maybe the Wachowski’s would see what’s been done, and give us something fresh and new from a visual standpoint. Alas, I didn’t think this stuck the landing, and as a result, I can’t say I’d even care to give this movie a second viewing.

I know expectations are a personal issue and/or bias, but I don’t think we can completely rule it out either. The Matrix franchise is, and was, a big deal. It literally created a new playing field for action and sci-fi movies that still borrow from it to this day. I think that if viewers can go into this movie with lowered expectations then this will be an OK watch. Don’t expect to be blown away, and you’ll avoid potential disappointment. Either way, I’d still say that if you’re a Matrix fan, The Matrix Resurrections is worth the watch. It’s available in theaters and on HBO Max on the same day.

Director: Lana Wachowski Writers: Lana Wachowski & David Mitchell & Aleksander Hemon Stars: Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Christina Ricci, Telma Hopkins, Eréndira Ibarra, Toby Onwumere, Max Riemelt, Brian J. Smith, and Jada Pinkett Smith THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS is in theaters and on HBO Max December 22, 2021. Be sure to follow E-Man’s Movie Reviews on Facebook, Subscribe on YouTube , or follow me on Twitter/IG @EmansReviews for even more movie news and reviews!

About Emmanuel "E-Man" Noisette

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• Classic films like Titanic and The Shawshank Redemption are notably absent from Rotten Tomatoes' list, highlighting the unusual formula that it uses.
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Rotten Tomatoes recently released a new ranking of the 300 best movies ever, but the list is filled with odd surprises when analyzed in detail. The list uses a formula which takes into account a movie's audience score as well as its critical reception. (via Rotten Tomatoes ) This formula has thrown up plenty of strange choices, and the list is quite unlike any other ranking of the best movies of all time.

One big surprise is that the 1997 crime thriller L.A. Confidential is in the top spot, rather than one of the usual candidates such as Casablanca, The Godfather or Seven Samurai. Some classics aren't even on the Rotten Tomatoes list . Vertigo, Titanic and The Shawshank Redemption are all missing, showing how unusual the Rotten Tomatoes methodology is. These are far from the only oddities that have come from the controversial ranking.

The 55 Best Movies Of All Time

Screen Rant breaks down the best movies of all time, from old classics to modern masterpieces across multiple genres of cinema.

Citizen Kane Is Ranked At Number 33

Orson welles' masterpiece has topped plenty of other lists of the greatest films ever.

Orson Welles' masterpiece Citizen Kane appears on practically every "best movies ever" list , and it frequently pops up near the top of these lists. The Rotten Tomatoes list has Citizen Kane sitting in the number 33 spot, which is still impressive, but it's much lower than it has appeared in many other lists and polls. For a film which so often cracks the top five, this is a strange anomaly.

Citizen Kane was ranked number one in the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list, and it also claimed top spot in the BFI's Sight & Sound poll five times in a row over the course of 40 years.

Citizen Kane and Casablanca are often the heavyweight contenders for the title of "best movie ever". Rotten Tomatoes has Casablanca in third place. Citizen Kane was ranked number one in the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list, and it also claimed top spot in the BFI's Sight & Sound poll five times in a row over the course of 40 years. Its Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 90% is low enough to drag it down beneath movies like Spotlight, How to Train Your Dragon and Selma.

4 Movies From 2023 Are Ranked Higher Than Oppenheimer

Christopher nolan's oscar-winner is at number 199.

Although Christopher Nolan's biopic Oppenheimer won the Academy Award for Best Picture, the Rotten Tomatoes list suggests that 2023 produced four movies that would have been more worthy winners. The highest-rated movie from last year is The Holdovers , which sits at number 36. Also ranked higher than Oppenheimer are Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and John Wick: Chapter 4.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and John Wick: Chapter 4 all place higher than the Best Picture winner.

While these are all great movies, it's a little surprising that they outrank Oppenheimer , which is placed at number 199. The Rotten Tomatoes system takes audience opinion into account, so crowd-pleasing blockbusters tend to do well, even if they aren't the types of films which are geared toward awards-season success. This explains how movies from the Mission: Impossible and John Wick franchises place so highly.

7 Of The Last 10 Best Picture Winners Are Absent

Oppenheimer is a rare exception.

Although Oppenheimer 's relatively low ranking is a surprise, many Best Picture winners are completely absent from the list. The only three Best Picture winners from the last decade on the Rotten Tomatoes top 300 are Oppenheimer, Parasite and Spotlight. Other winners like Birdman, Moonlight and The Shape of Water were more popular with critics than they were with regular moviegoers.

The only three Best Picture winners from the last decade on the Rotten Tomatoes top 300 are Oppenheimer, Parasite and Spotlight.

Best Picture winners aren't always popular with audiences , and the Rotten Tomatoes list favors movies which have a broad appeal to accompany their critical success. This explains why a lighthearted and creative family comedy like Paddington 2 makes the list over a dark and unusual romance like The Shape of Water, although both movies were released in 2017. The Academy doesn't take audience opinions into consideration.

The Two Towers Is 161 Places Higher Than The Next Best Lord Of The Rings Movie

Peter jackson's three lord of the rings movies are usually on an equal footing.

Peter Jackson's brilliant Lord of the Rings trilogy is often regarded as one of the finest film series of all time, and it's not uncommon for all three movies to appear in lists similar to the Rotten Tomatoes top 300. For example, all three movies are in the top 12 of IMDb's Top 250 Movies . For some reason, the Rotten Tomatoes has them much more spread out, with The Two Towers the only Lord of the Rings movie in the top 100.

The Fellowship of the Ring is ranked at number 201 and The Return of the King is at number 205. It makes sense that these movies are practically level with one another, but it's strange that The Two Towers is 161 places higher up.

The Fellowship of the Ring is ranked at number 201 and The Return of the King is at number 205. It makes sense that these movies are practically level with one another, but it's strange that The Two Towers is 161 places higher up. Although The Return of the King is the one which was showered with awards, it has the lowest audience score of the trilogy, possibly due to the common criticism that the ending drags on for too long.

Stanley Kubrick Has Just 1 Movie In The Top 100

Dr. straneglove is kubrick's only movie anywhere near the top of the list.

Any director would be honored to have one of their movies in the top 100, but Stanley Kubrick's body of work includes multiple movies which are considered among the best of all time. His Cold War comedy Dr. Strangelove is at spot number 38, just below Inside Out, but his next highest-rated movie is all the way down at number 161, with Paths of Glory. The Killing is his only other movie to creep into the top 300, at number 297.

Kubrick's admirers may have expected to see A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Barry Lyndon or 2001: A Space Odyssey in the top 300.

Dr. Strangelove deserves its place, but Kubrick's admirers may have expected to see A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Barry Lyndon or 2001: A Space Odyssey alongside it. These movies all have high Rotten Tomatoes scores with critics and audiences, but they aren't enough. Other legendary directors have a little more luck on the Rotten Tomatoes list. Alfred Hitchcock has four movies in the top 100, while Francis Ford Coppola has three.

Daniel Day-Lewis Has Just 1 Movie On The List

My left foot is on the list, but lincoln, there will be blood and phantom thread are not.

Daniel Day-Lewis has won three Oscars, four BAFTAs, and countless other accolades. In a career spanning almost 50 years, he developed a reputation as one of the greatest dramatic actors of all time, and his movies were routinely showered with praise from critics. This outstanding success doesn't translate onto the Rotten Tomatoes list, however, as only My Left Foot makes the cut.

There Will Be Blood, In the Name of the Father and Lincoln are all hugely popular with critics and audiences alike, but they clearly aren't quite popular enough.

Many more of Daniel Day-Lewis' best movies wouldn't have looked out of place on the list. There Will Be Blood, In the Name of the Father and Lincoln are all hugely popular with critics and audiences alike, but they clearly aren't quite popular enough. Day-Lewis' presence in a movie is all but a guarantee of quality, but he may not have the kind of general appeal that other actors do, since he focused on standalone dramatic works rather than splashy blockbusters or comedies.

There Are Some Sci-Fi Classics Missing From The List

Many of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time are nowhere to be seen.

Some genres appear more frequently than others on the Rotten Tomatoes list . Horror classics don't always receive glowing critical reviews, and comedy movies are more subjective, so it's no surprise that the methodology behind the list made it hard for either of these genres. The lack of some sci-fi classics is a little more surprising, since sci-fi can often please critics just as much as regular movie fans.

Even Everything Everywhere All at Once, which might have benefited from its recent popularity, doesn't crack the top 300.

Many of the best sci-fi movies of all time are absent from the list, despite their impressive Rotten Tomatoes scores. The Matrix, Jurassic Park and Blade Runner all have great scores, but they aren't quite high enough to make it on to the list. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is often cited as the pinnacle of the sci-fi genre, but it is also absent. Even Everything Everywhere All at Once, which might have benefited from its recent popularity, doesn't crack the top 300.

There Are No Movies From 2005

2005 is strangely under-represented.

For some reason, 2005 is the only year within the last 40 that doesn't contribute a single movie to the list . Even the lean pandemic years are able to add one or two movies. Recency bias seems to be an issue with the Rotten Tomatoes list, as the 21st century is disproportionately represented, but 2005 is the one year that doesn't benefit from this phenomenon, despite delivering a few films now considered classics.

Brokeback Mountain, V for Vendetta and Sin City are just three candidates that would have made sense on any best movies of all time list, but they don't have high enough Rotten Tomatoes ratings to qualify.

Brokeback Mountain, V for Vendetta and Sin City are just three candidates that would have made sense on any best movies of all time list, but they don't have high enough Rotten Tomatoes ratings to qualify. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was probably closer to being included, as it has a 95% critical score, but its 79% audience score may have held it back.

Pixar Has 6 Movies Ranked Higher Than Any Disney Animation

Every toy story movie is on the list.

One thing that stands out from a cursory glance over the list is the abundance of Pixar movies. Toy Story 2 is the studio's highest-ranked movie in the number 8 spot. This also makes it the highest-ranked animated movie of any kind. Before Disney Animation makes its way on to the list at number 32 with Zootopia, Pixar also has Toy Story, Up, Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3 and Coco.

Before Disney Animation makes its way on to the list at number 32 with Zootopia, Pixar also has Toy Story, Up, Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3 and Coco.

Many of Pixar's best movies pop up throughout the list, including Soul, Ratatouille and Monsters, Inc. All four of Pixar's Toy Story movies, not including the spinoff Lightyear, hold a place in the top 50 , which makes it the most successful franchise by far. Disney Animation movies simply can't compete. While there are a few inclusions, like Moana and Aladdin, these fall further toward the bottom of the list.

Curtis Hanson's Only Movie In The Top 300 Is In The Top Spot

L.a. confidential is the list's big surprise.

One of the most obvious surprises of the list is that L.A. Confidential sits at number one . The 1997 retro thriller is undoubtedly a great movie, but it still raised plenty of eyebrows when it beat out classics like Casablanca and The Godfather. What's even more surprising is that L.A. Confidential is Curtis Hanson's only film in Rotten Tomatoes' top 300, while other directors have plenty of entries.

Hanson also wrote and produced the neo-noir crime drama, based on the novel by James Ellroy.

Curtis Hanson's other movies include 8 Mile and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle . None of them have achieved the same level of critical acclaim as L.A. Confidential. Hanson also wrote and produced the neo-noir crime drama, based on the novel by James Ellroy. For whatever reason, he seems to have clicked with the project, making it by far his most critically successful movie.

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Jupiter ascending pitch meeting.

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5 Reasons Why Jupiter Ascending Isn’t As Bad As People Say It Is (& 5 Reasons It Is)

Ryan gosling's sci-fi movie project hail mary begins filming revealed in bts photo, a goofy movie's roxanne gets spot-on cosplay from classic disney film.

• Jupiter Ascending was a critical and commercial flop, holding the lowest critics score for the Wachowskis in the directorial chair on Rotten Tomatoes.
• The film's rushed and overstuffed plot, lackluster writing, and odd character dynamics were humorously critiqued in the latest episode of Screen Rant 's Pitch Meeting series.
• While the Wachowskis' prior films found more success, Jupiter Ascending marked a disappointing final chapter in their directorial partnership as they've since moved on to solo projects.

As one of the duo prepares to return to the directorial field, Screen Rant 's own Pitch Meeting series is looking back on the Wachowskis' Jupiter Ascending . The 2015 movie revolved around a woman who learns of her heritage as a royal for an intergalactic family and the rightful owner of Earth, only to swiftly be pulled into a war between another family of royal siblings who look to acquire the planet to harvest people to extend their life spans. Led by Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum, Jupiter Ascending was a critical and commercial flop on release, holding the lowest critics score for the directorial duo on Rotten Tomatoes.

Nearly a decade after the movie first hit theaters, Screen Rant 's Pitch Meeting series has set its sights on Jupiter Ascending . The video, as seen at the top of this article, humorously pokes fun at the 2015 movie's various issues, including the simultaneously rushed and overstuffed plot, repetitive formula and lackluster writing. The episode also mocks Kunis' titular character, namely her lack of any actual agency and odd connection to Tatum's Caine.

Jupiter Ascending Marked An Unfortunate Final Chapter For The Wachowskis

In the lead up to its release, there was a fair amount of anticipation for Jupiter Ascending from fans of the Wachowskis , as it marked the first original title from the filmmaking duo in over a decade after having put their focus on adapting both Speed Racer and Cloud Atlas for the screen. As they teamed with a variety of frequent collaborators from throughout their career and promised themes akin to those explored in their groundbreaking Matrix trilogy and the Star Wars franchise, it seemed the duo would once again dominate the sci-fi sphere.

Here are some of the reasons why Jupiter Ascending isn't as bad as its reputation suggests and some of the reasons why its critics are right.

Unfortunately, Jupiter Ascending not only landed the duo their worst critical score on Rotten Tomatoes, but also failed to break the duo out of their box office slump. Grossing $184 million internationally, the movie not only failed to recoup its reported $210 million production budget, but also couldn't surpass its fellow competition of The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water and the holdover release of American Sniper in its domestic opening weekend, having to primarily rely on international territories. See how Jupiter Ascending compares to the Wachowskis' other movies on Rotten Tomatoes and the box office below:

While it may not have been the last of their efforts in the directorial chair, as Lana would return to co-write and direct The Matrix Resurrections without her sister Lilly, Jupiter Ascending did ultimately mark a disappointing final chapter in the Wachowskis' partnership in movies. With Lilly announcing earlier this year that she would be making an indie drama entitled Trash Mountain by herself, and Warner Bros. also moving ahead with a fifth Matrix installment with Drew Goddard writing and directing and Lana attached to executive produce without her sister, it remains unclear if the duo will ever be able to redeem the 2015 movie.

Source: Pitch Meeting

Jupiter Ascending

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From visionary directors the Wachowskis, Jupiter Ascending follows Mila Kunis' Jupiter Jones, a cleaning woman from Chicago who discovers that she is actually the heir to a vast intergalactic noble house. With the help of genetically modified soldier Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), Jupiter must fight to protect Earth from the greedy clutches of Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne) who is intent on taking over the planet for his own means. 

• Pitch Meeting

Prime Video movie of the day: 12 Angry Men is a claustrophobic courtroom drama that deserves its perfect Rotten Tomatoes score

12 Angry Men is as powerful today as it was back in the 1950s

Every day, we cut through the bottomless list of streaming options and recommend something to watch. See all our  Netflix movie of the day  picks, or our  Prime Video movie of the day  choices.

Widely regarded as director Sidney Lumet's best movie, 12 Angry Men (out now on Prime Video ) is one of the best courtroom dramas ever to grace the silver screen. Released way back in 1957, age hasn't dimmed its considerable power, either, as this powerhouse movie remains a masterpiece to this day.

For anyone who hasn't seen or heard of it: 12 Angry Men takes place in a single location – a small courtroom, to be more precise – where as 12-strong, male-only jury must decide whether the teenager at the center of this trial is innocent or guilty. The catch? 11 jurors think he's committed the crime in question, with just one of the group – Juror 8, who's simply known as Davis and is played by Henry Fonda – thinks he's innocent. The movie follows Davis' attempts to persuade his fellow jurors that the murder accused isn't guilty of said offence. Without spoiling anything further about its plot, 12 Angry Men is a masterclass in acting and writing, and needs to be watched on one of the world's best streaming services ASAP.

• Watch 12 Angry Men on Prime Video

Why 12 Angry Men deserves its 100% rating

Not convinced? Allow the following reviews to explain why 12 Angry Men is easily one of the greatest movies that you can stream on Amazon 's main streaming platform.

Let's start with Empire magazine , whose reviewer opined: "On paper, this courtroom drama had little to get excited about – a one room setting, a dozen old-timers spouting off, a first-time director, a non-event. But, on film, 12 Angry Men is transformed into a superlative brew of acting prowess and dynamite direction". Given that it's a feature with "no action, no effects, [and] no wizzy camerawork, [and one with] just powerful dialogue, finely etched characters, and a beautifully worked plot", you start to realize why it's more than a relic of its time.

Sure, it's quite a stage play-esque movie – it was originally written as such a production. Even so, Slant magazine suggested that this actually made the flick better, adding: "the film takes a confined, almost completely banal real-world location and makes it completely dynamic, using incredibly nimble camera movements to establish character motivation and theme." Famous critics Roger Ebert agreed, explaining that "this is a film where tension comes from personality conflict, dialogue and body language, not action." 

My opinion? It's must-see and certainly deserves a spot on our best Prime Video movies list. But, hey don't take my word for it – with its perfect 100% critical and near-perfect 97% audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes , the jury has made its decision, and I rest my case.

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Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall ( Twitter ) has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man , is on sale now. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band HAVR .

• Tom Power Senior Entertainment Reporter

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