The first time I saw Resurrections, I was lol'ing at the brainstorming montage, as I saw it as her explicitly sticking her finger in the eye of all the haters and crackheads out there. But the second time it was cringe. I mean, the first Matrix was this unabashedly bad-ass movie that was so fresh, and then by the time number 4 rolled around, it hates itself and everyone else so much that most of the screen time is spent just trying to get even...with whom? Screw those stupid critics; make a kick-ass movie that completely leaves those morons in the dust. Instead, the more I think about it, the more it just drags everything into the muck.

I think there's a way to make Matrix 4 that looks upon its own legacy and destroys that baggage, "kill your darlings" and all that, and even maybe many of the scenes filmed in this one could be present in that movie.

But the film we saw in theaters is not the quality version of that meta-textual film, it is often very confusing with poor writing, execrable action scenes, and plot that is far less clever than its ambitions. Some of the dialogue sounded like the crummy lines from modern Hollywood superhero and other blockbuster movies, a far cry from the at least tonally-consistent writing of the original films.

I rewatched the original recently and that dialogue is not exactly a strong point either. Really devoid of subtly or even the barest hint of humor. A pretty unbelievable amount of exposition, telling rather than showing.

I think I looked past it when it came out because I was a kid, and the world building was interesting to me.

The original had the capacity to convey awe, for its time. The first sequel felt like the franchise was treading into Star Wars prequel territory- the danger of a fantasy disappearing into the self-seriousness of its own contrived, convoluted lore. By the time of the second sequel all was lost, it became self-parody in many points with oblique pointless philosophical meanderings, even subplots that were brought up to be instantly dropped (just what was up with the "eyes of the Oracle" anyway?).

This third sequel is knowingly a self-parody, but imo its sins are a mix of the old (ponderous self-seriousness) and the new (unsubtle modern blockbuster cringe- "hey did you hear that everyone who served with him died?" "I was... shook."). This new one just feels lacking in the taste or sophistication of the previous ones.

It feels like a film made during a global pandemic where people have to go into lockdown and can't really sit down to hash out any of the details.

Well, they went even further during the film shoots:

https://www.indiewire.com/2021/11/keanu-reeves-matrix-4-rehe...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbXSLzrs38Y

https://www.reddit.com/r/matrix/comments/rqh76p/the_matrix_4...

That aside, I do think the pandemic likely messed a whole lot of the production, which explains how the action got so lackluster.

I recently learned that Baudrillard (author of "Simulacra and Simulation", referenced in the first Matrix) criticized the first film as being something that The Matrix would have produced itself, to feed its prisoners an illusory red pill. I can't help but wonder if Lana took that criticism to heart.

She lost people in her life, and used the resurrections of Neo and Trinity as a way to cope with the loss. Past that I think she didn't really care that much. Good for her, she got that paycheque nonetheless!