HARK!
I hear…movie logic…
There is science: Gravity keeps us from flying away.
There is science fiction: Jet packs let us fly away.
And there is “Matrix” science: Take this pill to see the real-reality—and once you free yourself of the oppression of a fake society, you’ll be able to fly! And do all kinds of cool slow-motion stuff…
Or something like that.
When movies make up the rules as they go along, with little rhyme and a savage lack of reason, I call that “movie logic.” Now playing on big screens and HBO Max, “The Matrix Resurrections” (photo above courtesy of Getty Images) is brimming like Santa’s bag with movie logic, also known as complete-and-utter-b.s.
This is the latest, possibly last (but probably not, if it makes bushels of money) in the series that began in 1999, with Keanu Reeves trying to figure out what was real and what was, like, really-real, in “The Matrix.”
This time around, his Thomas Anderson—his alternate-universe name is Neo, a play on “The One”—is a superstar coder who came up with a video game based on his life, not to mention the previous three “Matrix” flicks.
Of course, he soon gets tempted to take a pill (it’s red vs. blue, perhaps some subliminal political message) and is sucked into the what-is-what and who-is-who.
I’m sure it all makes perfect sense…if you’ve seen the previous three movies about 15 times each, frame-by-frame.
For non-nerds, it’s best just to take a chill-pill, not try to figure out all the indecipherable movie logic and wait for the next cool fight scene. They come about every 15 minutes.
Usually, the big martial arts choreography is preceded by Keanu’s character diving through a mirror; don’t try this at home, no matter how drunk you are.
This bloated, two-and-a-half hour movie has a few wink-wink moments, but is mostly deadly serious. Too bad, it might have been a great comedy:
“Bill and Ted’s Excellent Matrix.”
Picture The Befuddled One, his face frozen in confusion.
“Uhhhh…is it the red one, or the blue one?”
Shrugs. Takes them both.