Initial Non-Spoilery Thoughts about The Matrix Resurrections

I just finished watching The Matrix Resurrections, one my most anticipated movies of the year (after Dune, of course). The best spoiler-free review is the shortest: Whoa.

Me, watching The Matrix Resurrections

But if I were to say more than that, I would say that I really, really loved this... Sequel? Reboot? Ret-con? Reimagining? All or none of the above? I was smiling and laughing out loud a lot (at home on HBO, so as not to disturb the moviegoing public, who is a bit too maskless for me these days to be honest). But I wasn't laughing in the derisive, cynical way that seems to be the only way some people laugh these days. 

No, these were laughs of pure glee of not only seeing old favorites, but new expansions of old ideas. And above all some new questions along with the old ones.

It's maybe cliché, but apropos nonetheless: I can't tell you what The Matrix Resurrections is. You have to experience it for yourself.

Yet The Matrix movies were always better at asking questions than answering them, which is why they're such great philosophical films. This is something I love about the series. And, yes, the whole series. I rewatched the oft-deplored sequels in 2018, and I didn't hate them. I watched them again in the last two days, and I have to admit: I now unabashedly love the Matrix sequels for expanding this universe in interesting ways. Don't @ me. 

So in the spirit of asking questions, along with my desire to avoid spoilers, here are just some of the many questions that might come up as you watch The Matrix Resurrections. Whether they will be answered, well, that's for you to decide.

• What the hell is going on with Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in this movie? Didn't their characters die at the end of Matrix Revolutions? Are these the same characters? Do they still know kung fu? Are they still amazing?
• Why aren't Laurence Fishburne or Hugo Weaving in this one? Could the answers be more complicated than you think?
• How has The Matrix itself entered into our larger culture? How can you make a sequel 18 years later with a series like this? What would it even be about? Would it make sense as anything other than a nostalgia-soaked cash grab in a more jaded, polarized world? 
• How would a new Matrix movie fit into the Culture Wars of 2021, where "red pilling" has become something often drastically different than the Wachowskis intended? The previous films were ahead of their time in terms of diverse representations in big budget films, so how will this one fare now this this has become more normal? Do we still have further to go? Will Sense8 fans see a few old favorites?
• What happened after the truce between humans and machines at the end of Matrix Revolutions? What does this tell us about our relationship with technology, especially now that technology has shaped our lives even more than when the original films were released?
• Do we ever really make free choices? Do we have free will? What does that mean? Do most people want to be free? Is freedom an illusion? Is it okay that you already know what you're going to do if you know enough?
• What is real? How do you know what's real? 
• Does our inability to know what's real make us suffer, as many Buddhists would claim? Does some part of us want to suffer in ignorance rather than seek the truth? But again, how do you know what that is?
• Are we prisoners of capitalism? Other peoples' gender concepts or societal expectations? Can you ever really be free of those things in the world we live in? Can we imagine otherwise in other worlds? How would we make those worlds real?
• Does nostalgia ever get at what really happened, how things really were? Or is it the feeling of it that does the work? Can nostalgia be toxic?
• Does the plot of this movie totally make sense? Will you have to watch it again? Does it matter? Or is, as with the original films, the fact that you can interpret it in so many different ways an artistic strength?
• Is this movie just what we need as we (hopefully) rethink things about ourselves and our societies as we live through a pandemic?
• Are there any cats?
• Why has Keanu Reeves hardly aged in two decades?