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The Matrix Resurrections Does What Disney's Star Wars Never Could
Despite being met with a decidedly mixed reaction from audiences, The Matrix Resurrections succeeds where Disney's Star Wars trilogy could not. Both Star Wars and The Matrix are franchises that hadn't been touched in theaters since the early 2000s, and have both recently been resurrected from the grave by their parent company. Disney gave Star Wars a complete rejuvenation, complete with a brand new flagship trilogy, several Disney+ TV show spinoffs, and even a few new video game licenses. On the other hand, however, Warner Bros. turned to Lily Wachowski to direct specifically one more installment in the Matrix series.
Instead of doubling down and simply remaking or rebooting the series, Lily combined those ideas into the concept for a direct sequel and weaves a story that is just as meta as it is literal. This time around, Neo and Trinity (and surprisingly Agent Smith) are reinserted into a new Matrix, one that has gaslit them all into believing that the events of the first three movies take place entirely in a video game. It's only with the help of the franchise's new additions that our characters get a chance to escape and take the fight to the machines once again.
Even though both the Sequel Trilogy and the fourth Matrix film are sequels to older, beloved franchises, both of them received wildly different reactions from both critics and audiences alike. Despite not being a box office smash, The Matrix Resurrections has a mixed reaction that's inspiring a heated and passionate response from fans, and it's because it manages to actually earn its existence as a work of art.
The Matrix Resurrections Explains & Justifies Making A Sequel
For better or worse, The Matrix Revolutions left a lot of open-ended questions for fans to wrack their brains over back in 2003. Particularly, Neo's sacrifice and the new peaceful simulation reboot that followed his death were all ideas that left audiences with more questions than answers. So with The Matrix Resurrections, Lily Wachowski had the perfect opportunity to revisit the world she and her sister created and answer some of those open-ended questions. This resulted in a screenplay that answered those questions by giving us a society where humanity and some of the machines were able to peacefully coexist after a civil war fractured the Machine City into two major factions.
But even beyond that, the movie veers into extremely meta territory by resurrecting Neo in the simulation as the creator of "The Matrix," a massively popular video game that "Warner Bros." is demanding a sequel for. The only way he finds an escape from the psychological conditioning that the simulation has trapped him in is by remembering his love for Trinity and the power they share. It's an extremely clever set-up that both justifies itself as a direct narrative sequel that reaffirms the connection between our two main characters, while also positioning it as a film that has a lot to say about the current state of studio IP culture and Hollywood's obsession with sequels, reboots and remakes.
Disney's Star Wars Sequel Trilogy Never Justified Itself
Conversely, the biggest problem of Disney's Sequel Trilogy is a bit of a paradox: it seems as if there was no consistent plan, yet also The Rise of Skywalker feels wholly unoriginal and derivative. With the exception of The Last Jedi (which still wasn't exempt from an overwhelmingly divisive reaction), Disney's entire live-action Star Wars experiment has been held back from doing anything new by its need to be beholden to both fans and the original series, resulting in movies and projects that don't advance the universe anywhere. Even though the ending of Return of the Jedi promises major change in the universe, when we pick up again years later in The Force Awakens, we're in a galaxy that is once again at war, with seemingly very little having changed.
On top of this, most of the movies lack any genuine thematic interest or real character work, electing for simple fan service and familiarity at the expense of cheapening certain plot developments given to us in the Original Trilogy. For example, The Matrix Resurrections honors Neo's sacrifice by having genuine peace develop between a faction of the machines and the humans, while J.J. Abrams undoes Anakin Skywalker's sacrifice and the Rebel victory by having Palpatine return in The Rise of Skywalker. Instead of giving the universe a new, definitive stamp on what Star Wars is and what it could be, the Sequel Trilogy ends on a thematic whimper, deferring back to comfort and familiarity for the sake of making money off of fans who immediately recognize the imagery being presented to them.
Why The Matrix Resurrections Succeeded Where The Star Wars Sequels Failed
Simply put, artistic intention is where the Star Wars sequels failed. Disney resurrected a beloved franchise and used it to jumpstart a money-making machine, giving us a wealth of content that varies in quality, but with the common denominator being the desire to make tons of money. This is why everything feels so familiar - from The Book of Boba Fett to The Rise of Skywalker, everything new is being designed with recognizable fan service in mind, to keep things from ever straying too far beyond what makes audiences feel comfortable. And in situations where new ideas were introduced, like The Last Jedi or Collin Trevorrow's unmade Episode 9, they were mostly ignored or outright abandoned due to the lack of planning on Disney's part.
On the other hand, The Matrix Resurrections, while definitely not perfect, is a movie that both champions the story told before while doing something completely new in its own right. It's a film that does something that a lot of modern blockbusters struggle with, which is that it finds a way to be both exciting and action-packed while also thought-provoking and thematically interesting. For a while, audiences weren't sure of what to expect from The Matrix Resurrections, but it turns out that it worked in the movie's favor, as having uncertain expectations made for an exciting storytelling adventure unlike anything seen in years.
