Following the release of an eye-popping first trailer for The Matrix Resurrections offering a semiological smorgasbord, which has enough nostalgic beats to pique this Gen Xer's interest, Warner Bros. has released an official synopsis seemingly suggesting The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions will be ignored in the third sequel.
“The Matrix Resurrections is a continuation of the story established in the first Matrix film. It reunites Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss as cinematic icons Neo & Trinity in an expansion of their story that ventures back into the Matrix and even deeper down the rabbit hole.
A mind-bending new adventure with action and epic scale, it’s set in a familiar yet even more provocative world where reality is more subjective than ever and all that’s required to see the truth is to free your mind.
Twenty years after the first film, the franchise that helped define pop culture at the turn of the century is back for a continuation and extension of the original movie. The Matrix remains in the zeitgeist as a film that has changed the way we look at cinema and reality itself. With its game-changing action and visual effects, The Matrix helped pave the way for films to follow.”
This wouldn't be the first time a franchise has ignored previous sequels (see The Terminator). However, this could be a misdirect and there's always the possibility the filmmakers will deconstruct the concept of a reboot within a reboot. How very meta.
The Matrix Resurrections is in cinemas and on HBO Max on 22nd December. Our very own Agent Smith, Nick Smith, will be reviewing the highly-anticipated sequel this holiday season.
Are you looking forward to The Matrix Resurrections? Let me know in the comments below.
I am looking forward to this very much. Making sequels in today's culture is an exercise in squaring the circle, or in solving a paradox: "How can you innovate without abandoning your fan base, who have an infinite memory bank and an insatiable desire for one-up-manship, knowit-allness, and smug self-promoting arm-chair Siskel-Ebertism. It's not easy, for sure. However, since the Matrix can play with tropes it has created itself, and since it plays out in a computer-generated universe, a modern day Alice in Simuland, it has the permission, and the obligation to pull a few new tricks out of the Matrix. I would not even put it past them to create a Russian Matrushka doll story-stunt, but postulating an illusion within an illusion within an illusion, like a variation on Nolan's inception, but not going down from the real in to ever deeper layers of dreamscape, but coming up from simulated dreamland into ever more highly resolved layers of real until we find ourselves confronted with our own self-conscious reflection of what is real. Just like the first time we got taken for this tumble down the rabbit hole.
ReplyDeleteErudite observations as always. This has all the makings of The Matrix Awakens!
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