Summary
- The Matrix franchise's legacy has been tarnished by underwhelming sequels, with scenes like the rave in Zion and the Architect's exposition dump contributing to the disappointment.
- The Matrix Resurrections insults legacy sequels by rehashing iconic moments for cheap fan service, while recasting characters like Agent Smith falls flat compared to the original.
- The Matrix Reloaded's "Burly Brawl" was hindered by terrible CGI effects, and The Matrix Revolutions' literal Deus Ex Machina and pointless return of the Merovingian dragged down the overall story.
The legacy of The Matrix franchise has been tarnished by increasingly underwhelming sequels filled with terrible scenes that ruined the movies. When it was released in 1999, The Matrix was hailed as a masterpiece and became a cultural phenomenon. It masterfully blended thought-provoking philosophical themes with mind-bending visuals and high-octane action. But all three sequels that followed struggled to replicate that success. The Matrix Reloaded was praised for its action scenes, but criticized for its lack of thematic substance. The Matrix Revolutions was a messy, contrived conclusion to the trilogy, and the belated fourth film, The Matrix Resurrections, was entirely unnecessary.
There are promising elements in every Matrix sequel. The Matrix Reloaded has a thrilling highway chase sequence. The Matrix Revolutions has an epic showdown between Neo and Agent Smith in the pouring rain. The Matrix Resurrections is the most meta movie of the bunch, deconstructing the franchise itself within a new Matrix where Thomas Anderson has unwittingly told the Matrix story from memory in video game form. But they’re all let down by awful scenes like the rave in Zion or the Architect’s long-winded, nonsensical exposition dump or the appearance of a literal “Deus Ex Machina.”
10 The Matrix Reloaded's Rave In Zion
When The Matrix Reloaded visits the underground city of Zion, it has the surprising revelation that, in the future, all humans wear tank tops and dance in big groups at raves. Morpheus, Link, and hundreds of extras all cut a rug at this rave, which the elders of Zion oddly refer to as a prayer service. The rave scene is only a couple of minutes long, but it’s so bizarre and out of place – and contributes so little to the overall plot – that it feels like it goes on for a lot longer.
9 The Matrix Resurrections Insults Legacy Sequels
When Warner Bros. forced Lana Wachowski to make a fourth Matrix movie under the threat of making one without her, she made it a major plot point in the movie. The Matrix Resurrections begins with Thomas Anderson’s boss telling him that their parent company, Warner Bros., will make a sequel to the trilogy with or without him. It was a bold move to make the sequel this self-aware, but The Matrix Resurrections ended up falling into all the same traps as the legacy sequels it mocked, like rehashing all the original movie’s most iconic moments for cheap, nostalgic fan service.
8 Trinity's The Matrix Revolutions Death Scene
Trinity is as much the hero of The Matrix franchise as Neo, but she got an insulting death scene in The Matrix Revolutions. She gets “fridged” as her death serves only to motivate Neo to save the day. After she dies in his arms, Neo negotiates a plea bargain with the machines. He agrees to enter the Matrix and erase Agent Smith, after which the Architect tells the Oracle that he will free any human that wants to leave the Matrix. Trinity’s death has no real purpose and feels like a disservice to such a beloved character.
7 The Architect Explains Everything In The Matrix Reloaded
At the climax of The Matrix Reloaded, Neo meets the Architect, the creator of the Matrix, who proceeds to unload pages and pages of really clunky exposition. It’s egregious enough that the Architect explains everything directly to the audience, which is a big screenwriting no-no, but he explains it so vaguely that it still doesn’t make sense. The Architect manages to say a lot without really saying anything, and words like “concordantly” and “pertinent” make it sound like his dialogue was written with a thesaurus handy.
6 Jonathan Groff Appears As Agent Smith
The Matrix Resurrections recasts two of the most significant roles in the franchise. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II replaces Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus and Jonathan Groff replaces Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith. Abdul-Mateen does an irable job of recapturing the mix of subtlety and bravado that Fishburne brought to the role of Morpheus, but Groff’s Smith is nowhere near as menacing as Weaving’s. Weaving’s Smith is one of the most iconic villains in movie history, but Groff’s Smith just delivers exposition with a smarmy smile.
5 The Matrix Revolutions' Literal Deus Ex Machina
A “deus ex machina” is a lazy literary device meaning “god from the machines,” referring to a contrived plot point that saves characters from a seemingly hopeless situation. The god from the machines is usually a metaphor, but The Matrix Revolutions has a literal machine god called Deus Ex Machina, the ruler of Machine City and mastermind behind the Matrix. Neo reasons with this machine god to resolve the plot. Deus ex machinas are always a lazy way to end a story, but especially when that deus ex machina is an actual god from the machines called Deus Ex Machina.
4 The CG-Heavy "Burly Brawl" From The Matrix Reloaded
The infamous “Burly Brawl” set-piece in The Matrix Reloaded squanders a cool premise – Neo fights a bunch of Agent Smith clones in a big battle royale – with terrible CG effects. Instead of just using CGI to add in Neo’s superpowers or paste Weaving’s face over a bunch of stuntmen, the Wachowskis used CGI to create the entire sequence. An uncanny-valley Neo fights uncanny-valley Agent Smiths with a CG weightlessness that takes away any impact the scene might have had. The Burly Brawl looks like a PS2 cutscene.
3 The Merovingian's Return In The Matrix Resurrections
The Matrix Resurrections brought back a lot of familiar faces just for the sake of it. While Fishburne’s Morpheus and Weaving’s Agent Smith are both absent, the belated fourth movie features Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe and Lambert Wilson as the Merovingian. The latter cameo is the most pointless. The Matrix Resurrections reduces the Merovingian to a one-note character who exists only to exact revenge against Neo for destroying the previous Matrix. The Merovingian’s scenes drag the movie down and don’t have any real purpose besides bringing back a character from the previous films.
2 Neo Being Carried Like Jesus
The fact that Neo is the messianic “chosen one” figure destined to save humanity from their robot overlords already makes him a Christ figure and draws parallels with the story of Jesus. In the first movie, Neo sacrifices himself for the good of humanity and then rises again, much like Jesus. But just in case the Christ metaphor wasn’t clear enough, the Wachowskis had Neo carried away like the crucified body of Jesus. This scene spoon-feeds the Biblical allegory to any viewer who was so inattentive or media illiterate that they failed to pick up on the most obvious signs.
1 The Matrix Resurrections' Post-Credits Scene
While the movie itself is pretty disappointing, The Matrix Resurrections has a somewhat satisfying ending, revealing that Neo was never “The One,” but rather he and Trinity were “The Two,” destined to save humanity together. But the post-credits scene ruins that ending. After the credits roll, the movie returns to the video game developer where Thomas Anderson made The Matrix games. One executive proclaims that all media is just “neuro-trigger response and viral conditioning” and pitches a cat-centric Matrix reboot called The Catrix. What could’ve been an interesting commentary on the media landscape that spawned a fourth Matrix film in the first place is reduced to referencing popular YouTube content.
