It’s never a good sign when a movie spends a decent portion of its runtime carefully explaining why it shouldn’t have been made. You can’t help but wonder: if the directors didn’t want to make this, why am I watching it?
I am, of course, talking about the ill-conceived The Matrix Resurrections. This picks up the story of Keanu Reeves’ Neo sixty years on from the events of The Matrix Revolutions, though from his perspective he’s only aged twenty years. What follows is a baffling story in which Neo is the creator of a video game called The Matrix and is being pressured to create an unnecessary sequel. Geddit?
While Reeves and Carrie Anne Moss return as Neo and Trinity, Hugo Weaving was (perhaps smartly) otherwise engaged, leaving Jonathan Groff to take over the role. Nothing against Groff, but let’s face it, he simply doesn’t have the same sinister charisma that Weaving brought to the role. Lawrence Fishburne didn’t return as Morpheus died in an online game RPG, so Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays a character who isn’t, but at the same time kinda is, Morpheus.
None of it works particularly well and even the action scenes – the franchise’s slo-mo piece pièce de résistance – feel flaccid.
As a result, Resurrections opened to mediocre reviews, little hype, and grossed a pitiful $40.5 million domestically and $118.7 million internationally. This failed to cover its $190 million budget, making it officially a box office bomb. That said, it was streamed day and date on HBO Max, which may have the kiss of death to its theatrical chances.
Since 2021 Resurrections has mostly been ignored, though is now somehow climbing the charts on FlixPatrol, who reports it as number 6 and rising on OSN. Perhaps people are hungry for any Keanu, though we can only recommend they exhaust the far superior John Wick movies instead.