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The Matrix Movies

Fans Ask Questions After First Trailer Released for 'The Matrix Resurrections' (theguardian.com) 140

Posted by EditorDavid from the there-is-no-spoon dept.
Moviegoers know that the Matrix trilogy's finale "heavily hinted that our hero will be back at some point in the distant future," writes the Guardian.. "Now he is..."

But does the first three-minute trailer for the soon-to-be-released sequel The Matrix Resurrections suggest Keanu Reeves' "Neo" character has been wiped from existence? In his place is a beardy, incredibly well-aged fiftysomething who looks a bit like John Wick, or possibly that brooding weirdo from The Gift. He meets Carrie-Anne Moss's Trinity in a coffee shop, but fails to recognise her despite all their adventures down the digital rabbit hole. Later he's seen training in what appears to be a dojo with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's unnamed character, who appears to be fulfilling the Morpheus role of martial arts mentor and guide to the Matrix. Is Abdul-Mateen playing a younger version of the human resistance leader, and if so couldn't they just have digitally de-aged him, given the entire movie probably takes place inside Adobe After Effects anyway?

The teaser poses further questions. Why is Neo taking blue pills as medication? Does this signal the new Neo's willingness to succumb to the virtual world that keeps him blissfully ignorant of the horrifying reality? And if so, what's been going on — didn't the pesky machines promise to free all humans from the Matrix...?

The great thing about Matrix movies is that all usual rules of film-making continuity can be easily placed to one side. Reality can be shifted and reconfigured at every opportunity in the interest of entertainment. This is like the bit in Doctor Who where one Time Lord's face morphs into the next. For all we know, Reeves could be playing the Mad Hatter and Moss a giant pot plant who just appears to be a human being...

There could be a genuinely fascinating reason why Neo and Trinity are back and ready to kick machine ass once again. We won't know for sure until just before Christmas, when the movie hits cinemas.
ABC News notes the new film "also stars returning Matrix co-star Jada Pinkett Smith, features series newcomers Jessica Henwick from Iron Fist, Christina Ricci, Mindhunters star Jonathan Groff, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas." Though as IndieWire points out, there's no sign (yet) of the original Morpheus, Laurence Fishburne.
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Fans Ask Questions After First Trailer Released for 'The Matrix Resurrections' More

Fans Ask Questions After First Trailer Released for 'The Matrix Resurrections'

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  • Anti aging, Rogaine and weight loss pill all in one. I'm not sure why they are making this movie unless they think it's going to make billions and billions.

    • Re:The blue pill is.... (Score:4, Funny)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday September 11, 2021 @09:19PM (#61786803)

      Anti aging, Rogaine and weight loss pill all in one.

      None of those are the "little blue pill" most commonly associated with aging men...

      • Anti aging, Rogaine and weight loss pill all in one.

        None of those are the "little blue pill" most commonly associated with aging men...

        That would explain why it's named "Resurrections" ...

    • I'm more concerned that a few idiots will stop taking their medication after watching the film.

      • Or pharma companies changing the colors of their blue pills to something else. ... everybody knows they changed the colors so you wouldn't know...

    • I'm not sure why they are making this movie unless they think it's going to make billions and billions.

      What you said. I see no reason for this movie to exist other than as an attempt at a money-grab. Pandemic or no, I might just wait for it to hit Redbox to see it, unless I hear many good things about it from sources I trust.

  • When do they not?

  • Looks great to me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Saturday September 11, 2021 @08:49PM (#61786769)

    I'm just a average fan, I really loved the first ones but never hated the sequels as much as others did...

    Personally I think this one looks maybe better than the sequels, and frankly to me it holds way more interest than any Marvel movie upcoming.

    I do hope the original Morpheus is back, perhaps they are saving that as a surprise. Or maybe he died somehow.

    Also between the original movies and this new one, Keanu Reeves has become a better actor and even better at action, so that's a part of why I think it might turn out well.

    So I'll go into this one with an open mind, it's interesting enough that I'll try to see it in a theater in the first few days of opening, pretty rare I go into a theater at all these days...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Jack9 ( 11421 )

      > Or maybe he died somehow.

      Morpheus died in the Matrix MMORPG - https://youtu.be/ToQvLlToA-o?t... [youtu.be] or
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].

      In-Game death cutscene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      Killed by some super-assassin (probably an "Oligarch") - or not? Depending on what you want to think of as Morpheus, since a copy of his consciousness resided in Zion by the end of the game.

      There was also a Sarah Edmontons (Thomas Anderson anagram) that appeared in the Matrix MMORPG.
      I expect the movie to use materia

      • For the kind of money invested in a movie, they wouldn't want to be beholden to video game major decisions about characters any more than Disney would to book story continuity for Star Wars.

        • Video games are a bigger industry than cinema.

          Also not following the books for Star Wars was a huge mistake, they ruined their own franchise. All they can do now is make content about previous events or explore alternative timelines.

    • Re:Looks great to me (Score:5, Funny)

      by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Saturday September 11, 2021 @11:10PM (#61786965) Journal

      I'm just a average fan, I really loved the first ones but never hated the sequels as much as others did.

      The sequels are why I'm skipping this one and waiting for The Matrix Refunded.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by unami ( 1042872 )
      Laurence Fishburn stated that he was not asked back, so that‘s that

    • There was no second movie. There was no third.

      There was a script [imsdb.com] for a second movie that really looked awesome, which made Morpheus an religiously blinded and genocidial zealot, Neo realize that all he does is to kill humans when he kills Agents and had the Agents create their own "Anti-Neo" to fight The One, but they never made a movie out of it.

    • Morpheus was great in the first movie, but seems to have forgotten everything he taught Neo in the sequels. He didn't even try to "bend the rules" of the matrix. That's why I thought he was a missed opportunity

    • It's been confirmed that Lawrence Fishburne will not be in this movie so if Morpheus does come back it's likely the younger actor in the trailer that would be playing him

    • I want to see the new movie. Never disliked 2 and 3.
      It was pretty clear that in the first movie you still had the good guys and the bad guys and when it was over peace was made. You don't make peace with the enemy if you want a successful movie. You have to utterly defeat the enemy. So I was fine with things becoming a bit more complicated.

      Unless it is a horror movie, then it all just starts over at the end.

    • This looks like yet another John Wick movie. The Wachowski's never really came out with another good film and the Matrix series is as good as it got for them. Already in the trailer I see they are rehashing stuff from the earlier Matrix films instead of making something different or more interesting. Emphasis on CGI over story to make up for script gaps. Just another franchise, move on.

  • WMG (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kaenneth ( 82978 ) on Saturday September 11, 2021 @09:18PM (#61786801) Journal

    Trinity is dead, Neo went back into the matrix to forget she died, and to be with a virtual Trinity, taking blue pills to keep the truth repressed.

    • Well that ruins the whole movie. Why does he want to leave in the end?

    • The "Hero's Journey" story template is one of the most popular. People want to hear that story again and again, with different characters and in different settings.

      Once the hero has "become," the story is over. So if we want the story again, some kind of metaphorical reset button must be pushed. Its either entirely new characters, or it is the same characters "starting over" due to lost memories, rebirth, resurrection, or what-have-you.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 )

        IIRC (it's been years since I've seen it) they both died in the third one. The oracle said neo and agent smith were opposites that will cancel each other out, so neo dies at the end along with smith.

        I don't recall in the second one which iteration of the matrix they were on, I think it was the 6th. What we're probably seeing is a 7th or later iteration of the matrix, only the Neo/Reeves character isn't the anomaly anymore. Probably the peace deal neo arranged didn't work and so they put all of the people ba

        • ghostbusters 3

          You're still crying about Ghostbusters ?

          Bustin' makes me feel good. Move on with your life. It was a good movie.

          • Actually I've never seen it. When I found out that they wouldn't have any of the original actors I just thought "meh". I'm mainly just tired of seeing reboot movies, and ghostbusters without Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd just wouldn't be ghostbusters, it's just some random movie that has similar themes in common with the two movies that came out in the 80's, but other than that no relationship between them. That they were all women alone had nothing to do with my not seeing it, otherwise I wouldn't have bother

      • The Hero's Journey is a great concept, but once the Hero has had his journey, it's time that he becomes the master of a new hero who then goes on his own journey.

        You can't do that Journey twice. It just doesn't work.

        • Re:People want the hero's journey again. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Sunday September 12, 2021 @06:37AM (#61787671)
          Which is why there is the Origin Story formula, and then you apply the Bigger Stakes formula.

          It goes something like this:

          while(true)
          stakes *= 10;

          Whats bigger than saving the universe? Saving the multiverse of course.

          The secret Marvel found is that you can actually crank out origin stories using the same characters. If its not the origin of Iron Man or Captain America, its the origin of The Avengers featuring Iron Man and Captain America, see? You can even origin the hell of out a sequence of villains, yeah? Ding.

          The origin of the sandman, featuring spider man, and so on. Thats coming. These origin stories will allow them to reset the stakes, which ends the problem plaguing these sorts of many-sequel productions, which is constantly raising the stakes by some large amount.

          • You don't even have to raise the stakes, all you have to do is change the villain's plan and you need a different hero to thwart it.

            Because at some point, the whole premise breaks down. That's something you learn quickly when writing storylines for RPGs, and it also applies to franchises: You cannot put the world at stake, with no alternative. Because then the player, or in the case of a movie, the spectator simply knows that they will succeed. Because else the world ends and so does the game, or franchise.

            • Exactly. If Frodo had not made it to Mt. Doom, life would have gone on, but dark and terrible until a new hero arose. If Luke hadn't landed those missiles, I'm sure it would have meant the tragic end to a few more planets, but life for most in the Galaxy would have just continued on as it had been under Empire rule.

              Then again, maybe Sauron wouldn't have been so bad, especially for many who, not through any fault of their own, weren't perhaps as innocent as your average Hobbit.

    • Sounds like the plot to Inception

    • In a system that cycles through the same people, at least 6 Neos, and several Trinities, there is no need these even be the same ones. For that matter, "whole crops were lost" suggests they could have a faster cycle that re-starts the minds of the same real world bodies in the pods.

      Agents reprogram the brains to control the bodies, brains have techniques uploaded. Why scrap a coppertop if things go sideways instead of just restarting them with a fresh factory load?

  • No, they promised... (Score:5, Informative)

    by srichard25 ( 221590 ) on Saturday September 11, 2021 @09:19PM (#61786805)

    didn't the pesky machines promise to free all humans from the Matrix...?

    No, they promised to free "the ones that want out". I assume that's a small percentage of the total number of humans.

    • You believed a machine to keep its promise?

      • At a certain point they'd realize that it's just easier to kick the humans out who don't want to be there. Saves them the trouble of constantly fixing things up over and over again. But then again the story is a bit silly if you stop and think about it too much. If humans are just there to be batteries, why not use chickens or some other kind of life form? It seems like the first order of business for the machines ought to be getting off the planet. Once they're free of that there's plenty of solar power.

        • The whole premise doesn't really hold too much water. I mean, no later than when someone says "Entropy" the whole thing starts to crack.

          Then again, and the second script (that sadly never made it into a movie, it sure was better than anything we eventually got) explained pretty well why it had to be humans. The machines needed the humans to actually create the Matrix. In the script, it's revealed that the Matrix was actually "written" in the company that Neo worked for:

          MORPHEUS: "Niobe, you're the liasion t

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Calydor ( 739835 )

          As I recall the original premise wasn't that humans were batteries - it got dumbed down to that thanks to executive meddling.

          The Matrix is too complex for hardware and so needs human brains to actually run, and the machines need the Matrix for their own existence.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      This would be consistent with the Hindu/Buddhist doctrine they've been half ripping off since the beginning.

  • lf the last one wasn't a finale, then this one won't be either.

  • ... couldn't they just have digitally de-aged him, given the entire movie probably takes place inside Adobe After Effects anyway?

    The Matrix is *inside* After Effects? (Whoa) That explains so much.

    (Now I feel really bad for The Flash.)

    • Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by infolation ( 840436 ) on Sunday September 12, 2021 @06:28AM (#61787653)
      VFX industry person here.

      Adobe After Effects was not used for any of the Matrix series.

      Compositing for the original 1999 film by Animal Logic and DFilm used Nothing Real's Shake (discontinued) [wikipedia.org] and Softimage Eddie (also discontinued) [xsisupport.com]. Since then the various effects vendors composited the sequels using The Foundry's Nuke [foundry.com].

      Simon Whiteley [imdb.com] designed the Matrix 'raining code' effect and it was animated at Animal Logic.

      Justen Marshall, R&D supervisor, Animal Logic:

      From a technical point of view, the code was animated in Softimage [wikipedia.org] and then rendered in mental images' mental ray [wikipedia.org]. "There was a bit of Houdini [wikipedia.org] being used there, too, or maybe it may have been Prisms [prism-pipeline.com] back then," says Marshall. "I think we may have been using Eddie for compositing. Very little of the direct shader was just rendered to make up the screen, it was all a fairly heavy process to get all those pixel effects and blurs and glows and things going on."

      Source. [beforesandafters.com]

      • Honestly, that line from the summary has got to be the most painful thing I've heard in a long time, almost a canned response to the prompt "tell me you don't know anything about VFX without saying so directly." It leaves me with the uncomfortable feeling that graphics will be the first victim and genuinely lost knowledge of the inevitable decline and collapse of civilization, even if that takes another thousand years to come about.

    • Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Megane ( 129182 ) on Sunday September 12, 2021 @07:10AM (#61787723)

      (Now I feel really bad for The Flash.)

      Yeah, thanks to Adobe, he can't run anymore. [slashdot.org]

  • I am relieved the trailer was at least *not bad*.

    Given Matrix has rebooted many times, and likely to reboot more in the future, and there is always a "One", but only once actually falling in live with Trinity... we can basically assume nothing from the trailer.

    It could be a prior iteration, where Neo did not fall in love, and shows how he fails humanity (or actually saves it, depending on interpretation)
    It could be a future iteration, where Neo missed the call to duty, since there was no threat, but the mac

    • If they're outside the Matrix, the world has recovered a lot in 20 years.

      So I think they're inside. Why would the Machines keep their promise?
      But Trinity surely died so maybe she is a program now.

      The Merovingian was a previous One, but I think they left room for a Keanu incarnation or two. I love the idea of seeing the Neos who failed. Keanu didn't recognise Trinity in the last iteration. But is there recognition there or just some Machine programming?

      • Given they can literally rewrite a brain in its entirety (agents do this) and not just upload skills, a quick reset of a coppertop to some factory default, without having to scrap the body, is well within possibilities.

        They even admitted to as much with their promise to Cypher to basically do this.

        • Just because they promised it to him doesn't mean that they actually could do it. As far as I know we don't have it as an established fact, as in, it was done to someone.

    • Ever pondered the idea that "reality" is just another Matrix and it's turtles all the way down?

      That last shot gives me the impression that Neo is in a different simulation this time, why else would that guy be astonished that he wants to go back to the Matrix when he's sitting in what very much seems to be like a Matrix simulated room? Of course, it could be that they're sitting in a Construct... you're right, the trailer doesn't give away too much.

      But I guess that's what a good trailer does. I mean, if it

  • Trailer looks great. But WTF is up with these brain dead questions, They are acting like logic plays a huge part in movie making, even most of the best movies have plot holes you could drive a cruise ship through so trying to deduce the detailed plot from that is moronic. Wait and watch the damn movie.
    • The question reads like astro turf advertising to me.

    • Movies these days are being mercilessly dissected by their audience, there's a whole online community dedicated to finding "unrealistic" and "illogical" bits and pieces in movies and parading them out to an audience of millions. You don't want to have that in a movie that you sunk 100m+ into, just to have some pimple-faced teen with a free copy of OBS studio tell the world that you don't have a clue about storytelling.

      Now, one may say why you should give a fuck about some pimple-faced teen's opinion, but th

      • I don't think that's true in an overwhelming sense. There are just as many review sites or personalities there to hype the film. Second, both audiences for those reviews is only a small subset of the overall film-going audience. People have ragged on Star Wars, Marvel films, Joker, and plenty of other movies with no discernible affect on their box office takes or made massive piles of money. Third, is that people aren't always honest and some who swear they hate a thing will watch it anyway, including the r

        • Uh... you've seen the box office result of Solo?

          The thing is, with franchises, you only see whether people liked the direction in the movies following the movie that was "bad". Because a die hard fan WILL go into a franchise film before even considering thinking about watching any reviews. What happens then, though, at least when he didn't exactly like the movie, is that he starts looking around online for reviews and dissections. Mostly to confirm his opinion about how "bad" the movie and how much it wasn'

    • They are acting like logic plays a huge part in movie making

      There is no spoon.

  • STOP FUCKING ANALYZING THE SHIT OUT OF MOVIES (Score:5, Insightful)

    by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Sunday September 12, 2021 @12:03AM (#61787061) Journal
    It's a fucking movie. Watch it and enjoy it or not. Stop teenage wanking on it and telling everyone else what they should think it means. Let everyone else just enjoy it themselves. Such utter nonsense.

    • I enjoy good stories. Good stories are coherent, with credible characters having character traits and being consistent in them. Yes, such stories do exist. No, few movies lately had that.

      And yes, that really sucks.

      More and more, when I watch a movie, I feel like the author didn't write a play but rather a D&D adventure. You have characters that are introduced, they have some character traits (and, just like in a RPG, race and class become really important these days, mostly because it more and more beco

    • In other words turn off your brain, don't think and above all don't appreciate the incredible nuances that writers and directors put into their work.

      No thanks.

  • Seems familiar. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mosb1000 ( 710161 ) <mosb1000@mac.com> on Sunday September 12, 2021 @01:32AM (#61787183)

    I think I may have already seen this movie.

  • Can only be crap (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday September 12, 2021 @02:34AM (#61787257)

    Let's be real: The Matrix story ended with the first movie. Everything after was just commercial uninspired crap. This will be too.

    • Pretty much this. See also El Camino after Breaking Bad. Jessie driving off, tears streaming down his face, laughing hysterically with relief at his improbable excape from doom, that was his ending. Nobody needed to see what happened next, much less more struggles of the same sort.

    • When I watched the Matrix when it came out in the cinemas, I liked it a lot, even though I was not ecstatic as some others due to having watched Dark City and Ghost In The Shell before it. However, when my friend at the cinema said "can't wait for a sequel", I did reply "don't be silly, the way they ended it they won't make a sequel, as it would have to be a pretty stupid movie". Well...

      • Re:Exactly this (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday September 12, 2021 @01:52PM (#61788627)

        They had a script for a beautiful sequel ready. Basically the story revolved around them going back in to bring the Matrix, represented by the building Neo worked in when he was still part of the Matrix, down, while Smith was trying to create his own "Anti-Neo" by grooming a person similar to Neo, just for his side.

        The showdown basically involved Neo starting to make the building crumble, easily defeating an army of humans moving in to stop him, and eventually fighting an army of Smiths, killing them left and right, until Smith asks him in a pause of the fight whether he doesn't get what he is really doing here, and when Neo looked around and sees all the dead bodies around him, dead humans that reverted back to their "true" self after him defeating the Agent that possessed them, and realizes that all he really does when fighting Agents is that he is killing innocent humans, which causes him to abandon the fight and escape by flying away.

        Later he talks to Morpheus about it on the phone, with Morpheus basically telling him that he shouldn't give a fuck about them coppertops and that all that matters is winning that war and screw the 8 billions that die when the Matrix goes poof, basically unmasking Morpheus as a religious zealot that doesn't give a fuck about humanity, and all he really wants is to win his holy war. Neo doesn't agree and he severs his ties with Morpheus and the "free" humans.

        The movie should have ended with a cliffhanger, with Neo sitting alone in a burned out church, unsure what to do, with Smith having his own champion ready to fight that "nuisance" that Neo is and everything set for a showdown in a third movie that would have certainly been epic.

        Instead we got ... well, you know.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          You know, that one actually sounds good!

          • I guess 2001 wasn't the time to make a movie about how you fight the army and government agents with a religious fanatic as one of your protagonists...

          • And there also were a ton of scenes that you can simply picture as how awesome and infinitely cool they would have played out. Picture this:

            TANKS and TROOPS are filling into the street ahead of them, coming from around the corner.
            THEY turn onto a different street. This street, too, is filling with troops. Worse, it's being lead by AGENT BROWN.

            NIOBE: "Tanks, or agents?"
            TRINITY: "Tanks."
            CHOI: "Yeah, tanks a lot."

            Right after a phone booth exploded around Choi who lost an arm (and healed it by concentrati

    • Sometimes a post deserves more than just a +5. This is one of them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Sometimes a post deserves more than just a +5. This is one of them.

        Thank you. Although I am in no way the only one that noticed.

  • I've been waiting for a sequel ever since I saw The Matrix. Really a shame that they never made a sequel 'til now.

  • Uhhhh, scary conspiracy incoming! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday September 12, 2021 @05:16AM (#61787503)

    The song you hear in the background through the trailer is "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane.

    A group that had its first public live performance in a club called "The Matrix Club" [needsomefun.net].

    The club since closed down [wikipedia.org]. Today, there's a bar in there called the "White Rabbit" [whiterabbitsf.com].

    Yes. It is a coincidence. But it couldn't fit any better if it had been planned.

    • I would imagine that someone involved in the production was familiar with this and did it intentionally as a bit of fun. Even if they didn't for that reason, it's not as though the song would be a bad fit in its own right.

      • Maybe as an afterthought, but if so, they would probably have played it up a bit.

        It's more that the song, and Alice in Wonderland in general, fits the theme and mood of the movie perfectly.

    • The great and powerful Oracle. We meet at last. I suppose you've been expecting me, right? The all-knowing Oracle is never surprised. How can she be, she knows everything. But if that's true, then why is she here? If she knew I was coming, why wouldn't she leave? (Smith smashes a plate of cookies on the table against the wall) Maybe you knew I was going to do that, maybe you didn't. If you did, that means you baked those cookies and set that plate right there deliberately, purposefully. Which means you are

  • There could be a genuinely fascinating reason why Neo and Trinity are back and ready to kick machine ass once again.

    Because money.

  • Wait until movie out. Watch movie.

  • Why is everybody assuming it is sequel?

    Prequel would explain the odd younger Morpheus.

    • And older Neo?

      According to the "expanded lore" (read: the computer game) Morpheus is dead. So probably we're looking at another "Morpheus type" character. Which kinda makes sense in the logic of the Matrix. The actual person doesn't matter as much as their function. Their role.

      I mean, whether my webserver has PID 1000 or 5000...

  • I'm just impressed at how great Carrie-Anne Moss looks in the trailer! She looks better than she did in Jessica Jones.
  • Most of the questions indicate the viewers failed miserably to watch the trailer with a critical eye.

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