I rewatched the Matrix trilogy last month, on 4k Blu-ray no less (but apparently without a subwoofer, which hurts my soul in retrospect), so that I would be prepared to say whether or not The Matrix Resurrections was a giant retcon, and whether it was a bad retcon, and whether it was a good movie. And I do have opinions on these points!

But first, a few words about makeup and set dressing. I appreciated that the omnipresent dark green drear was replaced by nonstop blues, representing of course the blue pill seen on the right. I won’t go into specifics, of course, but I liked the way the truth of the Matrix was kept while jettisoning the old color palette, and I liked that this occurred for a good in-story reason. As for the makeup bit, upon reflection it would be a pretty big spoiler, so I may bring it up later. But, I was equally impressed with someone’s job there as well.

Anyway, in order: it was not a giant retcon, and it was also not a bad retcon, by virtue of the retcon not being the one I expected. A retcon certainly occurred, but I approve on the whole. It’s the kind that reveals how the world really was always this way and we just hadn’t noticed, not the bad kind that gets a writer out of a dumb corner they could have avoided on either the front end or the back with no real trouble, had they but tried. And it was a good movie if you accept that all the fun being poked is at itself for existing and not at you for being suckered into paying for it to have existed. Or if you forgive all that because it used White Rabbit really well. (Man I love that song.)

The rest, below the spoiler cut.

So thing one is Smith. He maybe doesn’t make much sense, and that would have been more forgivable if Hugo Weaving had been able to return, but I’ll allow it on the whole, because the character continues to work. Or maybe works better retroactively? Which leads me into the best part of the movie, the acknowledgment that Neo doesn’t work without Trinity. It’s right there in the names, in retrospect. The One saves everybody, but the One doesn’t exist except for if there’s a Trinity in the first place, to borrow heavily from Christian mythology. Most of what this movie did right was make some parts of the trilogy make more sense.

Like, why did that ending[1] make sense? Because it kind of didn’t, unless you see Neo’s bier as a victory parade, and the machines already developing new plans for how to win. But he’s not the One unless he accomplished something after all, so we get that too, in that his message of peaceful coexistence resonated with some of the machines.

So yes, the new movie worked for me and made the middle movies at least a bit better and more resonantly true than they had been. The constant meta-jokes about creativity and familiarity and Warner Bros. are cringy if you want them to be, but I think that is not the spirit in which they are presented. And man, the make-up on Niobe! Until watching the credits, I was disappointed they hadn’t been able to get Jada Pinkett Smith back. Dang!

[1] The ending to Matrix Revolutions, that is