Since 1999, you have almost certainly encountered a Matrix reference, either from a friend or as a pop culture parody. Since the first Matrix film was released in theaters, phrases like “there’s a glitch in the Matrix” and “choosing between the red pill or the blue pill” have become part of our lexicon.
Not only has the trilogy altered the sci-fi action genre, but it has also changed the way we watch movies. Because of a young Morpheus, the teaser for ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ has piqued the interest of fans of the franchise, and most of them are knee-deep in hypotheses about the likely storyline and timeline. Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, who played Neo and Trinity in the original trilogy, will reprise their roles.
The Wachowskis infused the storyline lines with spiritual symbolism from several religions, which provided depth to the tale and helped the audience consider not just what was happening in the film, but also how much of it may apply to their own lives. Today, we will take a look back at the Matrix films from 1999 to 2003 and discuss the teaser for ‘The Matrix Resurrections,’ which will be released in theatres and on HBO Max on December 22, 2021.
Be Afraid Of The Future – The Matrix (1999)
The film opens with green numbers and Japanese alphabets filling the screen, and a phone conversation between Trinity and Cypher can be heard as they discuss Morpheus and the one. Suspicious that their conversation is being traced, Trinity drops the call and the scene morphs away from the green numbers and focuses on the policemen waiting nearby. The police decide to act on their own and not follow the agent’s orders to capture Trinity, as they underestimate her as one little girl.
This worries the agents in black and they assume that the cops are already dead. Meanwhile, in the hotel room, Trinity displays her fighting skills and escapes capture. The scene where she jumps up in the air in slow motion and kicks those around her sets the tone for the trilogy. The actors were trained in martial arts for six months before the shooting began. Because of their extensive training, the scene was pulled off in a span of four days.
After a thrilling rooftop chase sequence, we are introduced to the protagonist of the Matrix universe, Thomas Anderson, better known as the skilled hacker, Neo. It is hard to think about the Matrix movies without Keanu Reeves, but he wasn’t the first choice to play the iconic character.
Will Smith was offered the part for Neo, but he turned down the movie to appear on ‘Wild Wild West and he had found the script a bit hard to follow. Before the role went to Keanu, Johnny Depp, Val Kilmer, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ewan McGregor, and David Duchovny were considered for the part.
Neo had been searching for Morpheus and the truth behind the Matrix for quite some time. Before he can find what he is looking for, they find him. A cryptic message about the Matrix appears on his screen and instructs him to follow the rabbit. As a group of party-goers appears outside his door to collect a Simulacra and Simulation disk, the girl with a rabbit tattoo attracts his attention.
Curious about the message appearing on his screen, he decides to follow the group and ends up at a bar. Neo is visibly uncomfortable and out of place amidst the crowd. Interestingly, Keanu’s attire for the scene was intentionally ill-fitted to show how he never felt at peace with his surroundings. Trinity approaches the aloof hacker and introduces herself and he recognizes her as the famous hacker who had cracked the IRS Database.
Wasting no time on chit-chat, Trinity warns Neo that he is in great danger and she is aware that Neo has been searching for information about the Matrix. Prompted by the alarm clock, Neo returns to his monotonous job.
But it isn’t another typical day at work as he receives a phone call from Morpheus, who warns him about the agents who are about to take him. They offer to help him escape but Neo chooses otherwise and gets taken by the agents. The agents take him for questioning, as he had committed every cybercrime possible and has been living a double life as Thomas Anderson and Neo, the notorious hacker.
They offer to let him go in exchange for Morpheus but Neo lets them know his choice by flipping them the finger. Enraged by his actions, the agents refuse his request for a phone call and it takes an ugly turn as Neo finds his lips fused together.
He has been force-fed a shrimp-like bug and thrown into the interrogation room. Neo wakes up in his bed, assuming that the ordeal was a nightmare but a phone call from Morpheus indicates otherwise. Morpheus was sure that Neo is the one and instructs that the two of them meet.
Since the meeting, Neo continues to fall down the rabbit hole of the Matrix, just like Alice in wonderland. You have probably noticed how most of the dialogues in the film are rife with information about the world setting.
It’s because the producers made the Wachowskis add exposition in the dialogues, as most found the script too complicated to follow. Neo is asked to choose between a red pill and a blue pill, one will keep him oblivious to reality and the other will take him to the depth of the matrix. Needless to say, Neo takes the red pill and after a bit of struggle, wakes up in a pod.
Since then, he finds out that he is not the one, gets killed by agent Smith and comes back to life as the one. According to the Oracle, he’s the one destined to end the ongoing war between machines and humans.
After coming back as the One, he gains extraordinary control over the matrix and falls in love with Trinity. But there had been other Ones before him, and he had to decide whether to follow in their footsteps or take the road not taken. It has been over twenty years since the release of this movie and the sci-fi effects and action scenes still hold up; it has aged like fine wine.
Free your mind – The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
Just like the original, the sequel opens with Trinity taking down guards in an action-packed scene as she rides a bike and shows off her fighting skills. Caught between gunfire, a bullet manages to go through and she dies. Fortunately, it turns out to be a prophetic nightmare and Neo wakes up to see Trinity peacefully sleeping beside him. Carrie-Anne Moss not only trained hard for her role but she also performed some of the motorcycle stunts on the highly acclaimed highway chase scene.
The Wachowskis had shot ‘Matrix Reloaded’ and ‘Matrix Revolutions’ back-to-back and wanted to release them weeks apart, but the producers wanted a six-month gap between the sequels to market them better. The sequels failed to generate the intensity that made the original film confusing yet compelling at the same time. While Neo dwells over his recurring nightmares, Niobe alerts the crew about an impending threat to Zion. Only 72 hours were left before 250,000 Sentinels tunneled towards the city of Zion and put the red pills in danger. It was explained in the first movie how the machines turned volatile against humans.
The humans decided to nuke the planet and cover the earth with dark clouds to prevent the machines from powering up using solar energy. But it was a short-term solution and the rest of the humans now resided in an underground city, in cryogenic sleep, and lived a life of artificial simulation.
With the threat of the Sentinels approaching Zion, Morpheus still believes that Neo can save them all as he is the One. Meanwhile, Neo is conflicted about his recurring dreams and wonders what he can do to stop them from becoming a reality. As if things weren’t complicated enough already, Agent Smith, whom Neo had killed by diving into him in the original film, has somehow survived and has lost his status as an agent.
He has gained the ability to turn others into clones of himself. Before encountering Smith, Neo had a conversation with the Oracle. He was conflicted about the alliance of the Oracle as it was another code in the system but after learning that she was an exiled computer program, he feels at ease.
The Oracle tells Neo to find the Keymaker, who can create keys with the ability to transport people anywhere in the world. Nevertheless, he is a prisoner of the Merovingian. Did you know that the Warner Bros gave the Wachowskis the choice between working on the Batman franchise and finishing the Matrix trilogy?
After the duo chose to continue working on their passion project and finish the Matrix, Christopher Nolan picked up the then-dead Batman franchise and gave us the Dark Knight trilogy.
Neo comes face to face with an old enemy he had assumed to be dead and Smith had found a loophole to not get deleted by the source. He was no longer bound to the rules of the matrix. Neo finds himself in a battle with not just one but multiple clones of Smith. He fights them off for a while but gets overwhelmed because of being massively outnumbered.
Knowing that he cannot win against them; he manages to throw them off and escape from the hell hole filled with Smith clones. That particular scene was shot in a span of 27 days and only a few of the clones were played by the actor Hugo Weaving.
Multiple men with similar builds were cast for the scene and Hugo’s face was superimposed on them after the shoot. Morpheus, along with Neo and Trinity, reach the Merovingian in search of the Keymaker but the Frenchman refuses to cooperate.
Their efforts don’t go in vain, however, as the Frenchman’s wife leads them to the Keymaker, to get back at her cheating husband. But it wasn’t enough, as they still needed to go through the ghostly twins, police, and agents in a freeway chase sequence to get to the Keymaker.
The threat of the machines nears Zion as they work with the Keymaker to reach the source’s door. The Vigilant’s crew is tasked with destroying a backup power station but their mission backfires when they get bombed by a Sentinel, and all aboard die instantly.
On seeing the incident, Trinity takes it upon herself to blow up the backup station. Meanwhile, after many hurdles, Neo manages to reach the source and meets the creator of the Matrix, a bearded man known as the Architect. Before Helmut Bakaitis was cast for the part, Sean Connery turned down the role as he found the monologues borderline nonsensical.
‘The Matrix Reloaded’ makes it quite obvious that it was written with a sequel in the process. As a stand-alone, the movie doesn’t make sense and the monologues come off as philosophy lectures. The story of the sequel doesn’t feel complete without the follow-up and it fails to pack in the same punch as the original.
Everything that has a beginning has an end – The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
In the previous installment, Smith had managed to take over Bane and in the end, both he and Neo had slipped into an unconscious state. While Bane, still possessed by Smith, was in a state of slumber, Neo found himself trapped in limbo in the subway station of Mobil Avenue. The word ‘Mobil’ is an anagram of ‘limbo’ and representative of the state Neo was stuck in.
The subway station was a transition zone between the machine mainframe of the source and the matrix. Keanu Reeves doesn’t have a lot of screen time in the final part of the trilogy as he is asleep for most of the film. Despite appearing for a short time, he was paid 15 million USD for ‘The Matrix Revolutions. When broken down, he earned around 400,000 USD for each minute he graced the screen.
While stuck at the station, Neo learns that The Trainman controls Mobil Avenue, and his loyalty lies towards the Merovingian. The family of programs who update Neo of the program, also inform him that he is in exile.
Given the Trainman’s alliance towards the Merovingian, it was predictable when he knocks Neo off the train and doesn’t let him hitch a ride with the family. Meanwhile, Morpheus is contacted by Seraph on behalf of the Oracle. The Oracle now has a different appearance as it resides in a different shell.
The first Oracle was played by Gloria Foster, and she passed away before shooting her part in ‘The Matrix Revolutions. While searching for her replacement, Mali Finn, the casting director thought of Mary Alice, who had played Foster’s sister on a Broadway play for a long time. It seemed like an appropriate choice for the role to go to Foster’s Broadway sister.
Morpheus and Trinity learn about Neo’s state from the Oracle’s attempt to pursue the Trainman to help with the situation. But the program manages to escape and adds to their despair. They don’t give up easily and reach Club Hel searching for the Merovingian. They try to negotiate with him to free Neo but he demands the eyes of the Oracle in exchange.
Trinity, however, isn’t one to settle for absurd demands and she puts a gun to his head, as she’s willing to kill others to save Neo.
Meanwhile, Neo visits the Oracle and learns that he had developed a connection with the source. Neo now has the ability to use his powers in the real world as well. But if he loses the connection he will lose his abilities in the matrix as well as the real world.
The matrix itself is in danger as everything that has a beginning has an end, and someone out there wants to destroy the Matrix as well as the real world. No matrix movie is complete without a fight sequence between Neo and Smith.
This time Smith has another advantage as he had assimilated the oracle and obtained her ability of precognition. Meanwhile, none of the ship crew realizes that Bane has been possessed by Smith, as he claims to have amnesia after he wakes up. Neo too had woken up from his limbo and had taken charge of the situation in Zion.
While the threat of the sentinel army lingers on, chaos ensues in the ship when the crew finds out that Bane has killed one of the members. Before they can alert the others, Bane takes them down and takes Trinity hostage. In his fight sequence with Neo, he reveals his true identity shortly before blinding him.
But the move backfired as Neo was now able to see his programming. When Neo and Smith face each other again in the final scene, the raindrops pouring on the screen are single lines of the Matrix code as the Matrix had started to erode.
The tuning fork, a machine with the ability to rotate 360 degrees was constructed for the scene where Neo and Smith fight in the air. By the third part, the trilogy had lost quite a bit of the essence of the original one, but the action sequences and the special effects make the trilogy entertaining to watch even after two decades since its release.
The concept of man vs. machine has been a sci-fi trope for quite a while, but the genius of the Matrix lies in how it packed in philosophy, action, and sci-fi in the same story and made us question if given the choice, would you take the red pill or the blue pill?
What to Expect In The Matrix Resurrections [2021]
![What to Expect In The Matrix Resurrections [2021]](https://marvelousvideos.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/What-to-Expect-In-The-Matrix-Resurrections-2021-scaled.jpg)
The trailer of ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ raises a lot of questions, including what glitch would have caused Neo and Trinity to forget each other and their time in the Matrix. In the original movie, Neo had to take the red pill to wake up to reality but here he seems to be drowning in an ocean of blue pills.
As a song about the significance of the pills and the similarities of the Matrix and Alice in the Wonderland plays throughout the trailer, we see a distraught Neo pondering about his dreams about the Matrix that feel like a reality. Neil Patrick Harris plays his therapist and he has a lot of pictures of blue butterflies in his chamber, possibly symbolizing the butterfly effect, a concept that envisages that a butterfly flapping its wings can bring about a cyclone far away.
Just like Neo’s dreams about the Matrix can lead him down the rabbit hole once more and remind him of his ability to dodge bullets in slow motion. From the trailer and the official synopsis of the movie, we know that the Matrix is now stronger, more secure, and more dangerous than ever before.
Also, Thomas Anderson will face the same dilemma as two decades before, to wake up to reality or obliviously continue living in a make-believe simulation. Not only Keanu Reeves is returning in the role of Thomas Anderson, also known as Neo, but Carrie-Anne Moss will also be resuming her role as Trinity as well. Laurence Fishburne won’t return as Morpheus, as Yahya Abdul-Mateen II will be filling in his shoes.
Interestingly, Lauren Fishburne was the only actor from the original trilogy who understood the script of the first film and didn’t find the plot hard to follow. Yet, he was afraid the film might not go into production because of how smart the story was.
‘The Matrix Resurrections’ is set to hit the theatres this Christmas, with Lana Wachowski filling the role of producer, co-writer, and director. With the number of blue pills raining in the trailer, it might take more than the red pill for Thomas Anderson to remember the past.