The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Finally got around to giving this one a spin. I went in as cold as I could, though there was no escaping the buzz that this entry acted in large part like a soft reboot of the original, and that there was a meta element.
Anyhow, it's not great. The martial arts quotient is paltry and poor, and the gunfighting is perfunctory and dull (not to mention icky, in our regular-mass-shootings age). The new-Morpheus character seems pointless, and I have no idea why new-Smith did what he did in the third act, and then stopped doing that. This flick should not have been 2.5 hours long (the longest of the four).
That said, I really enjoyed it. I dug the meta first act, and I liked its eventual explanation (which had serious Phil Coulson in
Agents of SHIELD S1 vibes). The heist/rescue caper was popcorn-munching fun. Jonathan Groff and Neil Patrick Harris were both electric and mesmerizing, and it was surprisingly great to see Reeves and Moss back in their roles (and wow, does Moss look great!). The runtime, while excessive, flew by. I'm not bummed the movie flopped, because I think this is a nice coda on which to end the franchise (much better than
Revolutions), but I'm glad I bought the Blu-ray from Redbox for $4. On the scale of soft reboots, this is about on par with
Ghostbusters: Afterlife - far better than
The Force Awakens, but not as sugartastic as
Jurassic World+Fallen Kingdom.
Grade:
B+