“The Matrix Resurrections” by Lana Wachowski in the cinema: Pill addicts – culture

Yes, admittedly, it all sounds a bit strange today. But there was a time, around the turn of the millennium, when the idea of ​​the “matrix” was considered somehow subversive and mind-expanding, even revolutionary. It was then that a young hacker named Neo discovered that the world that looked like ours, and which he (like all of us) took to be real, was really just a computer simulation.

Basically, you just had to swallow a special red pill to look behind this so-called matrix and discover something terrible: The people had long been enslaved by the machines, they were caught in a kind of coffin with nutrient fluid and produced bioenergy, and that So-called life, which they believed they were living, was projected into their heads by an artificial intelligence only so that the flow of their energy would not dry up.

You had to think carefully about whether you really wanted to swallow the red pill or rather the blue one that kept you sleeping. The two creators of the idea, who were then called Larry and Andy Wachowski, made this clear in their first “Matrix” film. Because behind this great step in knowledge, which should be a moment of shock and amazement, there was no turning back. The rest was simply an endless war between a few liberated people and a lot of clever machines, as the two “Matrix” sequels also showed.

Neo doesn’t remember anything, but believes he can fly. Not entirely harmless

But can one simply forget such a shocking realization – hardly eighteen years have passed since the last “Matrix” film? That is the question that is currently being asked in “Matrix Resurrections”. The answer is: apparently yes. Because the hacker Neo is now real name again Thomas Anderson and lives a completely normal (yes, one must say: boring) life. He works as a game designer and knows nothing about the potential power of any machines. To do this, he swallows a blue pill every morning to make his tough everyday life more bearable.

Could this be the same man who has already awakened in the previous films, who has spectacularly freed himself from his bios coffin and who has taken up the fight against the machines with his partner Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), who has also been freed? Who had understood the great reality simulation so well that he could change its parameters, bend space, slow down time and remove gravity, which led to spectacular battle scenes in the simulacrum? Sure, it is. He looks a little older, has long hair, a beard and a woolen hat, but he’s still played by Keanu Reeves.

So it turns out that all of his “Matrix” adventures so far were just imaginary. In other words, he has created a trilogy of computer games that have exactly the same look and the same plot as the three existing “Matrix” films, which is why many old scenes can also be nostalgically faded in. He just took his own creation a little too seriously.

At some point he could no longer distinguish between play and reality, and even made a mother with two children from the coffee shop, with whom he fell in love from afar, into his partner Trinity in “The Matrix”. Because so much imagination is both profitable (his company makes millions with him) and dangerous (he almost died thinking he could fly), he is now being treated by an analyst, played by Neil Patrick Harris.

What if life is really mundane and there is no matrix at all?

That would really be a revolutionary thought in the cinema – that there is nothing more behind so-called life in all its banality. That the hot mom from the coffee shop is actually not up for an adventure. And that after many agonizing mornings with lots of blue pills, nothing comes next than the unspectacular and definitive end that awaits each of us. It sounds very seductive that there are no more secret findings. At a time when every vaccine opponent thinks they have seen through some kind of matrix-like delusion – how great would that be?

But no, the Wachowskis don’t believe in this kind of second-order salvation. After all, in the meantime they have discovered that they have lived in a kind of simulation themselves and are in fact women, their names are now Lilly and Lana. When the question became concrete, whether one could do something again with regard to the “Matrix”, Lilly no longer wanted, but Lana did. She is now directing alone, but the style and visuals are the same as always. And of course, as the first scene makes clear, the matrix and the machines still exist. You have just managed to incorporate Neo’s experiences into a new lie and devilishly lull him.

In other words, everything starts all over again. There is another red pill. It has to be swallowed again. And so on. On the one hand, this is reassuring because you can still rely on some things. On the other hand, it is also disappointing because, like all red pills in life, the effect is never as great as the first time. With the eternal sequel, the filmmakers keep the fans in a certain dependency. When it comes to the production of really new drugs, however, they are weakening like never before.

One of the consequences is that the cinema has to cope with more and more pills that it used to swallow. And, even more frightening: that the realization dawns that the number of active ingredients available in film history could be finite. Which just one theater further, for example, also leads to that there isn’t just one Spider-Man jumping around, but three. At the moment it still works for the audience, even sensational. Like any pill problem, it can’t be escalated forever. You can increase the number of Spiderman from three to six or from six to twelve, but the effect is less. And at some point … but huh, it works. Everything’s still going right now.

The Matrix Resurrections, USA 2021 – Director: Lana Wachowski. Script: Wachowski, Aleksandar Hemon, David Mitchell, camera: John Toll. Music: Johnny Klimek, Tom Tykwer. With Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jessica Henwick, Neil Patrick Harris. Warner, 148 minutes. Theatrical release: December 23, 2021.