The Matrix: Resurrections writes the latest chapter in a story that began with a bona fide sci-fi classic

Movies have always had a unique ability to capture the zeitgeist, and, on rare occasion, may continue to shape popular culture long after a theatrical run has ended. It’s no surprise science-fiction is over-represented when considering such movies, because the best examples from this genre always manage to speak to the time in which they were made by imagining a future yet to arrive. Fritz Lang achieved it in 1927 with Metropolis, as did Stanley Kubrick in 1968 with 2001: A Space Odyssey, and, of course, there’s George Lucas’ Star Wars in 1977, arguably the gold standard when it comes to cultural impact. With The Matrix: Resurrections hitting cinemas on Boxing Day, it’s worth looking at why The Matrix belongs on the list, too. Released in 1999, this techno-noir masterpiece, written and directed by the Wachowski siblings, tapped into society’s latent pre-Millennium anxiety, while simultaneously exploiting our growing fascination with the internet. At a time when many people were still connecting to the net with dial-up modems, the Wachowskis imagined a future where a person could upload their consciousness into a virtual reality construct. This construct, the titular Matrix, was a tool of subjugation wielded by Earth’s machine overlords, who, in a dystopian future 200 years from now, found it to be an effective way to control a human population that were little more than living batteries for the machines. At the centre of the film’s plot was computer developer Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), also known by his hacker alias Neo, who comes to realise the true nature of his reality when he meets Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), an intense warrior/sage-type, with a penchant for offering new acquaintances a choice. Option 1: Swallow a red pill, escape the Matrix and join the human resistance in what is left of the real world. Option 2: Swallow a blue pill and continue to live in blissful ignorance that your body is actually floating in goo in an electricity farm, while your brain is fooled into living a virtual existence. A simple narrative device, but it’s testament to the film’s lingering influence that the red pill/blue pill dilemma is still used as shorthand to describe a person’s willingness to accept the reality in front of them or delve deeper to see what lies beneath. Arriving at a time when we were questioning what an increasingly online future may look like, the Wachowskis’ “glitch in the Matrix” vision in 1999 challenged how we perceived reality. Similarly, it also challenged our notions of what was possible in terms of filmmaking. With the virtual world of the Matrix rendered in a de-saturated, greenish hue, a pulsating techno soundtrack and characters clad exclusively in black coats, sunglasses and skin-tight PVC, this cyberpunk opus was incredibly stylised. In creating said style, the Wachowskis drew as much from William Gibson and Philip K. Dick as they did Greek mythology and the Bible, while taking visual cues from legendary Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell (The Matrix’s digital-code “rain” was inspired by the opening credits of Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 movie). The Wachowskis’ film, which was shot in Sydney, also boasted special effects that were revolutionary for its time, with the most obvious example being the super SloMo “bullet-time” effect, which allowed characters to contort out of the path of projectiles. This effect influenced how action movies were made for years to come. The fight choreography was just as impressive. Wanting to incorporate the wire-work of Hong Kong action movies, something that had previously been relatively unknown to Hollywood studios, the Wachowskis hired martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-ping to coordinate the film’s many fight scenes. In return, Woo-ping, whose earlier credits included directing Jackie Chan’s 1978 kung-fu classic Drunken Master, created action sequences that reverberated across the entertainment industry for years. His work on The Matrix helped create an appetite in the West for other wire-fu action movies, including ones he would later choreograph, such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Tarantino’s Kill Bill series. Woo-ping’s work with the Wachowskis also influenced Chad Stahelski, a stunt double on The Matrix, who would go on to direct Reeves in the John Wick franchise. The combination of style, storyline and action propelled the Wachowskis’ relatively unheralded movie to a worldwide box office take north of $651 million, which made it a no-brainer for Warner Bros to green-light two sequels. Shot back-to-back in Sydney over a lengthy and often challenging 18 months, the sequels — The Matrix: Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions — failed to meet the impossibly high bar set by the original. Critically panned, the sequels were nonetheless commercially successful, generating a combined box office of more than $1.64 billion, as audiences flocked to see the evolution of Neo as he became “the One”, and the blossoming love story with the uber cool and kick-ass heroine Trinity, played by Carrie-Anne Moss. Serving as antagonist through it all was Australia’s own Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith, a megalomaniacal computer program intent on dominating man AND machine. Now, a little over 20 years since the original movie was released, Lana Wachowski has taken it upon herself to revive the franchise with The Matrix: Resurrections, a film that sees Neo and Trinity back in the Matrix, for reasons yet to be revealed. Gone is the green-hued world, replaced instead by a reality that seems perpetually bathed in a golden-hour glow. And in it we find Thomas Anderson, played by a noticeably older Reeves, who believes The Matrix trilogy is a popular video game series he designed with his business partner, a bloke named Smith (Jonathan Groff). Ominously foreshadowing surnames aside, the new entry to the franchise makes no apologies for getting all meta, something exacerbated by Mr Anderson’s frequent visits to a psychoanalyst during the film, who is played rather brilliantly by Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother). The trailer also suggests our hero may face the red pill/blue pill choice again, only this time Morpheus has been re-imagined as a younger, but no less intense, man, brought to life by rising star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Aquaman). Like Star Wars, the experience of watching the original Matrix movie for the first time is something that sticks with you. For Harris, who saw the film as a 26-year-old actor who had just starred in his own blockbuster, Starship Troopers, the experience was impossible to forget. “When I was watching the movie, I was overwhelmed by how it was made, because, don’t forget, back then there weren’t really virtual sets … now that’s very commonplace, and back then bullet-time was brand new,” Harris tells STM. “And I remember gasping when that happened, because that had never happened before, and, so, just at a cinematic level it made me very horny to make content.” Abdul-Mateen was still in high school when the first film came out, and, with no experience in movie-making at the time, he remembers The Matrix seeming to him as something akin to magic. “My 13-year-old self was just amazed at all the different ways that I could fight in my imagination, because it felt like the characters in the films, Neo, Morpheus, Agent Smith and Trinity, had the powers that you have in your dreams,” he tells STM. “The really cool glasses, the sleek, black, goth outfits, the boots, the motorcycles; I just thought that was just really, really impressive and I was blown away by the world-building.” While Abdul-Mateen admits the Wachowskis’ high-concept plot went well over his then-teenage head, Harris was right in the sweet spot – old enough to understand the themes and young enough to still dream of the possibilities contained therein. In addition to the aforementioned cultural legacy, The Matrix also produced a fascinating thought experiment that lingers to this day: How do any of us know we’re NOT in the Matrix? And you could make the case it has never been harder to discern the answer to this question, given our reliance on the internet, the prevalence of social media and how all-pervasive algorithms are in shaping everyday life. “It’s a very interesting question, and I wonder about that, too, sometimes,” Harris agrees. “Because technology right now, in the year that we are in, is so algorithmic based, and overtly so, (that) if you are very interested in 3D printing, then suddenly 3D printing is all over your world. “But I like to blue pill myself enough to not just be constantly paranoid that something amiss is happening, or there’s bad agendas or intentions.” A lot has changed since audiences first ventured into the Matrix a little over two decades ago. There have been incredible advancements in CGI effects, for starters, and our relationship with technology has become far more symbiotic than it was in 1999. One thing that hasn’t changed is the on-screen magnetism of Reeves, who remains, all-black ensemble or not, one of the coolest actors on the planet. Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra is another who makes her franchise debut in Resurrections, playing an exiled program named Sati, a character Matrix tragics will recall as the little girl who befriends Neo in Revolutions. “He was amazing,” Chopra tells STM when asked to describe working with Reeves on the new film. “He’s just so gentle and polite, and just incredible to be around, very encouraging, and I think there’s a reason he’s the icon that he is.” “He’s the nicest guy on the planet,” Abdul-Mateen adds. As Morpheus, the man who played Black Manta in Aquaman shares numerous fight scenes with Reeves, and Abdul-Mateen came away filled with nothing but respect for the 57-year-old’s commitment to his craft. “He worked very, very, very hard,” Abdul-Mateen says of his co-star. “By the end of the rehearsals, he’s all sweaty, he’s dripping sweat, and he’s icing and getting his body ready to recover, so he can come back and do it all again the next day.” The 35-year-old, who also played historical civil rights activist Bobby Seale in The Trial of the Chicago 7, says it felt “surreal” to act opposite Reeves. Harris can relate, and has his own theory to explain it. “There’s something about Keanu Reeves that is immediately sort of startling, because he’s so recognisable,” Harris says. “And then he’s like bamboo, because he’s not rattled by much of anything, and so there’s a calmness to his presence that makes you feel both kind of frightened and also very much at ease.” Harris, who first rose to global prominence as a child star playing Doogie Howser on TV, says Reeves is “very comfortable in his own skin” and doesn’t gossip on set, which also made him, at times, seem a little elusive. “I was probably over-chatty and wanting to connect, and he was just lovely, he couldn’t have been lovelier as a person, and he couldn’t have been a better scene partner,” Harris reveals. “He was always present, he didn’t go to his trailer between takes and was able to run lines if you wanted to … and the more I spent time with him the sort of more nuanced he became to me and even more impressive.” The special effects of Resurrections will have to be even more impressive than Reeves’ personality traits for the film to match the impact of the original, and Abdul-Mateen is quietly confident based on what he saw on set. “I know that there was some camera rig that I’ve never seen before, and there was some shots that I had no idea about,” the actor enthuses. “But I’m really, really excited to see just how they pushed the boundaries of what we can do on film, and, hopefully, (The Matrix: Resurrections) will be able to last for another 20 years just as the first one did.” The Matrix: Resurrections is in cinemas now.

The Matrix: Resurrections writes the latest chapter in a story that began with a bona fide sci-fi classic

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