Matrix: Terminated, Not Resurrected

Matrix: Resurrections is such an embarrassingly lazy, 'woke' bastardization of the original Matrix that it somehow makes even Revolutions look good by comparison.

I was fully onboard with Matrix: Resurrections for the first half or so. I really was.

We find Neo plugged back into a new version of the Matrix, one in which the original trilogy has been reduced to a video game designed by Thomas Anderson. His memories of events that took place couldn’t be entirely erased, so the Machines found a way to still incorporate them into his past while keeping Neo successfully blue-pilled. It made sense and it worked.

Then I noticed that the blue hue from this new Matrix, replacing the original green, was extended into the “real world”. The blue remained constant both before and after Neo’s unplugging, suggesting that he wasn’t actually unplugged and that what followed was just a further continuation of the same simulated reality.

I thought Neo would slowly come to recognize that he was still stuck in the same pre-programmed life as he continued to re-live more variations of the original trilogy; modified means that would lead to the same predetermined ends. Which would make sense, of course, if Neo remained in the new Matrix. But such parallels should cease if he were truly back in the real world… right?

My impression was that this new Matrix program was far more adaptable, capable of endlessly rewriting itself to alter enough details and circumstances in real-time to extend the believability of the false reality. But these alterations had limits, since the program had to adhere to the original designs that came before it. Same as a system update on a smartphone builds on the OS that came before it. OS 12.1 can’t exist without 12.0, just as 12.0 can’t exist without 11.9, etc. A completely “new” version isn’t possible without introducing an entirely new product.

So the one weakness of the Matrix program would be that it cannot escape its own prior incarnations, which would explain why key events and themes of the previous films were so consistently echoed. It wasn’t that Matrix: Resurrections was being unoriginal, but that it was logistically obligated to be similar.

Around the halfway point I figured Neo would have to become conscious that these repeated cycles were merely system updates of the new Matrix, designed to prolong the believability of his faux-reality. If he were to deviate too far from the preset narrative, the story he was being pushed to continuously repeat, then narrative would collapse on itself and something new, something free, would fill the void. Choice would return and Neo would truly start living a life of his own again.

The question for the remainder of the film at that point could have been: “Can free will still break through in a heavily-deterministic world? And can it even exist?”

All of this would have justified the film initially feeling like a reboot, because that is precisely what Neo would also have felt. He’d realize he was reliving the same life again and again, layers of fiction built upon layers of fiction, traveling through one continuous rabbit hole after another. A rabbit tunnel, you might say.

Thus the weak retreading of the original trilogy could have served as a meaningful plot device and toyed with the fourth wall in the process. Alas this was not the case.

If it were, Resurrections could have centered on Neo’s repeated attempts to break free of his own story, trying to find his way out of a seemingly infinite loop, to somehow outpace the program updates designed to keep him controlled.

That’s why I thought Agent Smith was there, as a surprise ally determined to kill Neo repeatedly so he could be freed faster than the Matrix could add convincing enough layers to the program to maintain the narrative. Recall that it wasn’t until Smith killed Neo in the original Matrix film that Neo truly became The One, arguably freeing him more than Morpheus ever had.

So if Smith again killed Neo in Resurrections and Neo awoke still in the Matrix, only to be killed again… and again… and again… then it could be a means of shocking him out of the dream world.

Oh, and I assumed Trinity was a mirage designed by the new Matrix to keep Neo tethered to the program. Neo would have to let her go, rejecting the digital imposter and finally accepting her death in order to fully reject the new Matrix and rejoin reality.

Something along these lines is where I thought the plot was going.

But apparently I read way too much into it and was giving Lana Wachowski’s script more credit than she deserved. Turns out we were supposed to accept that Neo really was unplugged the 2nd time, that the blue hue carrying over from the Matrix to the real world didn’t have any significance, and that the parallels from the previous trilogy in the real world was because… the script sucked.

THE MATRIX GETS WOKE

The nail in the coffin was when the power of the One transitioned from Neo to Trinity, an overt expression of writer/director Lana Wachowski’s transition from being Larry Wachowski. And what does Trinity do first thing after this transition has been completed? She beats up Thomas Anderson’s therapist, aka The Analyst played by Neil Patrick Harris, who tries to hold Neo back from remembering his true self.

Look, I won’t deny that I’m not onboard with this whole trans movement thing that my generation seems to be largely playing along with. I don’t understand how someone thinking he/she is a different gender isn’t a psychological problem (ie, body dysphoria/dysmorphia). The solution to a mental problem is treating the mind, not altering the physical body. It doesn’t make any sense to anyone who bothers to think about it for half a minute.

We never adapt reality to accommodate the delusions of a paranoid schizophrenic or excessively sterilize the world to put obsessive-compulsives at ease, do we? Of course not. A mental illness cannot be resolved by enabling delusions. This is entirely counterintuitive and only encourages deeper illness.

I know the trans-community loathes that perspective because they are deeply offended by the notion that their re-gendered identity isn’t real. But they also don’t have a rebuttal. Believe me, I’ve tried to challenge a few to a respectful debate. I’ve directly asked questions. Not once have I heard an answer with a scientific basis. What’s that tell you?

Transgenders also have a desperate habit of trying to latch on to society’s acceptance of homosexuals, but the latter group has genetic evidence to support that their sexuality is naturally occurring. Homosexuality is so natural that it’s not even unique to humans. There is no comparable science explaining transgenderism, which also happens to be exceedingly rare, accounting for 0.7% of adults 18-24 and 0.5% of adults 65 and older.

Compare that to the 4.4% of U.S. adults who experience bipolar disorder or the 2.3% who develop OCD. Even schizophrenia runs as high as 0.75% internationally. We don’t write those off as lifestyles too, do we?

Yet our ‘woke’ society carves out an exception for those with gender dysphoria and/or body dysmorphia and validated their mental illness with hormones and surgery, making their delusion into a reality rather than treating the actual problem. Of course, their chromosomes never actually change. Because human biology, not feelings, is what determines our gender. Too bad there’s massive profits to be made from all the drugs and procedures required to transition, ensuring that transgenderism continues to be legitimized rather than treated as gender dysphoria.

But good luck explaining any of this to a transgendered person or any of their ‘woke’ allies, who will only respond with knee-jerk outrage because objective reality is apparently too offensive for their subjective feelings to tolerate. Their relentless denialism shouldn’t be a surprising, since the deluded to not recognize their own delusions. They should be treated with care and support and should not be discriminated against in any way, but we must stop treating a mental illness as a cultural movement to be celebrated. They need an intervention, not a pat on the back.

So yes, I found it disappointing that Lana Wachowski would take her transition experience and weave that so overtly into the Matrix universe. If she wanted to make a subtle nod toward it, fine. Go ahead. It’s her cinematic world, after all. But to diminish the film into an allegory celebrating transgenderism felt like a non-sensical and self-indulgent betrayal at the expense of the franchise.

Matrix: Resurrections had incredible potential to be a truly worthy, mind-bending sequel, expanding the philosophical boundaries of the Matrix universe in a way that was meaningful and still honored what came before it. The first hour mostly worked. The lack of the iconic Don Davis score, the absence of Laurence Fishbourne, the underwhelming special effects, and surprisingly tame fight choreography aside, it still worked.

But then it devolved into self-indulgent pages from Lana Wachowski’s diary. Binary this, and binary that. It became a trans-activist film first and a Matrix film second. In the process we were robbed of the intellectual, trippy sci-fi flick fans had waited twenty years to see and were instead delivered a ‘woke’ Matrix that put audiences to sleep.

And most professional film critics will be too politically-correct to call it out, because they fear the cancel culture mentality of the ‘woke’ crowd, which prioritizes outrage against patriarchy instead of oligarchy, identity crises over climate crises, and silencing dissent rather than learning how to articulate a convincing message.

The Matrix is supposed to be about waking people up from false realities, not enabling further delusion. The irony is unfortunate.