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Why Keanu Reeves Is Finally Returning To Sci-Fi Movies Now
Keanu Reeves is finally making sci-fi movies again - but why did he step away from the genre to begin with? In many ways, the actor made his name with sci-fi, beginning with his turn as the time-traveling slacker Theodore "Ted" Logan in the 1989 comedy Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. He continued to work in the genre throughout the '90s, appearing in the now-cult film Johnny Mnemonic (which is set in the no-longer-distant future of 2021) and the action-thriller Chain Reaction, in addition to the sequel Bill & Ted's Bogus Adventure. Of course, his biggest sci-fi role came in 1999 when he played Neo in The Matrix.
He would go on to reprise the role a few years later in the first two Matrix sequels, along with the animated short collection The Animatrix. Reeves didn't step away from sci-fi after that either, teaming up with Richard Linklater a few years later for his Philip K. Dick adaptation A Scanner Darkly (a movie that was shot digitally, then animated using rotoscope). However, after playing the extraterrestrial Klaatu in the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, Reeves went a full ten years before working on a sci-fi feature film again.
The actor is now in the midst of a sci-fi renaissance thanks to his upcoming roles in Bill & Ted Face the Music and The Matrix 4. Admittedly, it's partly a matter of timing. The third Bill & Ted movie's been in the works since as far back as 2010 and spent years in development limbo before finally securing funding and a green-light in 2019. By comparison, The Matrix 4 was only announced last summer. Still, Warner Bros. had been working on ways to continue the franchise well before that, and it's no surprise they decided to bring Reeves back in his iconic role at a time when his action movie career is hot as ever thanks to the John Wick series.
Reeves' departure from the sci-fi genre also coincided with a downturn in his commercial viability as an actor. With the exception of his role in 2013's 47 Ronin (which bombed at the box office), he stepped away from big-budget studio movies to focus on smaller films in this period, including his collaborations with arthouse directors Rebecca Miller (The Private Lives of Pippa Lee) and Nicolas Winding Refn (The Neon Demon). Along the way, Reeves made his directing debut on 2013's Man of Tai Chi, a martial arts movie that was positively received by critics, but failed to take off financially. It's possible he simply wanted to mix things up, creatively-speaking, and that led him to (perhaps unconsciously) move away from the type of populist fare he'd made his name with at the time.
Either way, the unexpected success of John Wick in 2014 has since led to Reeves working on more mainstream films again, including those of the sci-fi variety. The actor made his formal return to the genre in 2019's Replicas, a dramatic thriller where he plays a scientist who uses cutting-edge technology to resurrect his family following their deaths. It was mostly ignored by audiences and dismissed by critics as an unintentional camp-fest, so as far as the majority of moviegoers are aware, Reeves is only just getting back to his bread-and-butter sci-fi movies. Here's hoping it's as successful as "return" as the revival of his action career.
Bill And Ted 3/Bill & Ted Face The Music (2020)
Release Date: Aug 14, 2020
The Matrix 4 (2022)
Release Date: Apr 01, 2022
