The film ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ – 2021

Obviously, I had read in BBC that the Matrix 4 was to be released in December 2021. I am interested in anything to do, even vaguely, with the Matrix films.

Reloaded

When The Matrix Reloaded was released, I had just got back from South Africa and was visiting Pune (Maharashtra, India). Pune was not yet the cosmopolitan city it is today. My cousins mentioned going to watch a movie. Before I had thought things through I mentioned The Matrix.

Now, in my experience people either love the Matrix movies or don’t get them (I think hate is probably politer). As one of my friends said ‘What a useless movie, He goes into the matrix, comes out of the matrix, which is which?’. A few sentences later I realised that he thought Thomas Anderson lives in the real world and Neo is from the Matrix. Enough said.

Back to my cousins, I was not sure if they were agreeing to see the movie out of politeness (I was the foreign returned cousin, who had studied in English medium) or whether they really wanted to see it. I made it clear that I was ok to watch any other movie they preferred, but the ‘cat was out of the bag’ and there was no turning back. One of them had seen the first film and said, it was an ‘action film’, so that settled the matter. We navigated the traffic, reached the theatre.

Then, another pang of doubt when, having purchased the tickets, my cousin sister suddenly asked, ‘Arre Ajay hey bhashantaran tar nahina?’ (Hey Ajay, this not a translation na?). Luckily, it wasn’t and we went in to watch.

There was a lot of action alright, but then came the ‘Architect’ and there was this long exchange of dialogue, spoken almost inaudibly. Anyone who has seen movies in India pre-multiplex era will remember that Indian cinema halls used to be huge, with at least five hundred seats. There would always be characters in the theatre who cannot keep quite. Five minutes into the Architects talk there were murmurs, ‘Kitti boltoye ha.’, ‘Action sumple ka?’. To this day I have not yet fully seen this scene (you know rewind, listen, rewind, listen/watch). But whenever I come to this scene, I cannot help but smile.

Revolutions

The story of how we got to see The Matrix Revolutions, or rather almost not get to see it, first day first show, as they say in India, is equally amusing and one my best memories. This time I was in Bangalore (as it was called then) we (friends and colleagues) had been keenly waiting, with lots of anticipation, for this movie. Revolutions was to be released at exactly the same time world wide. A first for any movie. 11:40 as it turned out in Bangalore.

My friend Ashok, arguably the most ardent fan (worldwide) of The Matrix was furious. When Ashok is furious, the words are garbled, punctuated with some choicest cuss words, all I could make out was ‘F@*#ers booked theatre, some shit corporate crap’.

This was the day before the release. We learnt, once he had cooled down sufficiently to speak properly, that some company had booked the entire theatre under some corporate booking deal, for its employees. This made us all very angry and furious. But there was nothing we could do. I and others resigned ourselves to watching the movie in a few days when things had cooled down.

Then at around 9:30 in the evening I get a text from Ashok ‘Be at Symphony at 11:00’. Ashok is ‘Dramatis persona’ as ‘V’ would call it, so I decided to go along be at Symphony at the suggested time.
Following day I got on my bike and reached Symphony at the suggested hour. I immediately spotted the others in the gang and went up to them. There were questioning looks all around and then we saw Ashok walking towards us waving tickets in his hand.
‘How the hell did you manage this?’
‘I called Arun to cuss about this corporate bullshit and he sent me the email address of Warner Bros India director. I wrote a scathing email. How can Warner Bros allow this? Can the company guarantee that everyone will actually turn up for the show? What about fans like us? We have been waiting for the last six months for this? It is the theatre going crowd like us (not the fellows who watch camera print as home) who make it profitable for the studios…’
‘And then?’
‘An hour later his secretary calls back saying ‘Sir please go to the theatre an hour before the show, there will be 6 tickets waiting for you.”
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’

Resurrections

With all this history, I was really not sure how to react when I read, in the BBC, that Matrix 4 was going to be out soon. I didn’t know what to expect. The Matrix story, as far as I was concerned was complete. With no more chapters to be written. ‘Why fix what ain’t broken?’ ‘What more was there to say?’
So, The Matrix Resurrections was not the movie we went in to watch. We went in to cinema to watch the Spiderman movie No Way Home, we reached late, then decided to watch the next show, In the next show the projector malfunctioned, we waited for 40 minutes, decided to look for an alternate, noticed that they had the Matrix running and we decided to go for it.
While I don’t regret watching it, Unlike ‘Kabhi Khushi, Kabhi Gum or Mohhabatein (I had to, It was The Matrix.). I was really very disappointed by it.
What can I really say about the film.
‘There is Neo’.
‘Ok. And?’
‘He is shown as the chap who created The Matrix game.’
‘Ok, Why did they put him back in the Matrix?’
‘There is the blue pill and the red pill.’
‘Yeah right, So?’
‘There is the daughter of Ramachandra, you know the chap from the train station. And Priyanka Chopra.’
‘Right, ok, I have forgiven her for marrying this American dude (I don’t know why I was so fussed about!), Fine there is an India connection. What else?’
‘There is Niobe.’
‘Yes, instead of a council of Zion, we have one old grumpy lady.’
‘There is Trinity.’
‘Ok, fine I give you that, she still is, beautiful and I can understand why Neo wants to go back for her. And not for the reasons the psych(o)iatrist gives us. ‘
‘Then there is Morpheus’
‘Oh C’mon, get lost, I don’t even know where to start. I am so pissed with what they have done to him.’
‘What about Merovingian?’
‘Fucccckkk oooffffffff.’
There. That’s it. Shall I rant on some more? The most ridiculous character in the movie is that psychiatrist dude.

I blame it all on this ‘Millennial’ movie making, some mumbo jumbo story, throw in loads of CGI shit and we have a movie. Martin Scorsese (hope I spelt that right) puts it much better than I ever can (obviously).

They should have simply had a new black character instead of murdering Morpheus, if they really wanted to tick the ‘must have a black Morpheus’ checkbox. It would have been much more palatable. No?
They should have let Merovingian be. They took away all his dignity. ‘You can’t do that to someone man’. Why would an actor want to play/reprise their part when it has been made into, into, into shit, basically.
I bet Hugo Weaving burnt the script and blocked Warner Bros’ number after reading what they had done to his character. Thank god for it.
Keanu Reeves sleep walks through the film as if, after all these years he finally decided to take cypher’s advise and bought himself a lifetime supply of the blue pills.

Where are the scenes like the ‘bending spoon’, “it is not the spoon that bends but it is you that bends”, “What is real?…” “Do you want to know what it is?” ‘Neo running in the suburban tunnel but ending up at the same place’.
Even the action sequences, Trinity on the motor bike (I was told, by Ashok, who else?, That they had built a 4 mile long highway just to shoot that scene), The training session, Neo flying, Neo fighting hundreds of agent Smiths, or Morpheus producing the battery as he says ‘Turning us into this…’ CGI was just 20% of the previous films.

None of this was there is The Matrix Resurrections. And even if I have missed/not appreciated some super scene in the movie, it is probably because half an hour into the film, I could not be bothered. And That’s that.