The Matrix Quadrilogy Review Guide

When it comes to The Matrix franchise, despite four feature-length films (and one Direct-to-DVD animated anthology and countless comic books and video games), the first film is generally remembered as a masterpiece, while the subsequent three films are generally not remembered. If they are, it's essentially that they get worse as they go along, and that they aren't really worth watching. 
The first film, released in 1999, is indeed a masterpiece. The subsequent films do indeed get worse as they go along. However, for the most part, they are worth watching. Here is The Nicsperiment's guide to the four theatrically released Matrix films, immediately after all four have been freshly rewatched by the reviewer.

The Matrix (1999, Written and Directed by the Wachowski Brothers) 

Rating Score: 10/10

Thomas Anderson's daytime life is far from fulfilling. His office job as a computer programmer feels visually and thematically akin to the central protagonist's jobs in fellow 1999 films Office Space and Fight Club. He shows up late to work and barely awake, always feeling on the verge of getting fired, and can barely work up the will to care. However, at nighttime, Anderson is Neo, a talented hacker who steals and sells stolen data, driven to answer a question he has stumbled upon, "What is the Matrix?" One day, he meets a leather-clad woman named Trinity, and everything changes. Neo is brought to a mysterious man named Morpheus, who gives him two options: live in predictable drudgery or have his eyes opened about the world around him, learing the truth about what The Matrix really is.

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I have often commented that every frame of The Matrix could be exhibited in The Louvre. I'm not joking. Bill Pope's cinematography is stunning, some of the most beautiful, well-composed and lit images put to film, the ultimate in 1999 excellence, 1999 being the greatest year in the history of cinema. Meanwhile, The Wachowski's put everything into the film's directing and script. The Matrix is one of the greatest distillations of Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey, as Neo receives and refuses the call, before fully embracing his role and undergoing a sort of resurrection. The distillation is so perfect, thousands of different meanings have been ascribed to the film, and all of them could work.  From religious allegory to the creators' own later reassessment of the film, The Matrix is a movie for everyone, a film full of ideas, where everyone can easily find meaning and connect with the hero's journey.
As that hero, Keanu Reeves performs the trick that's kept him steadily working in successful movies for four decades--he brings exactly what the film needs. The Wachowskis give an everyman slate to Neo, and Reeves is both incredibly cool in the role, sometimes wide-eyed, sometimes stoic, a perfect fit, someone everyone would want to be. Carrie-Anne Moss carries both authority and conviction to the role of Trinity, while Laurence Fishburne imbues the film with a near religious fervor as Neo's mentor-figure, Morpheus. Meanwhile, as the nihilistic central villain, Agent Smith, Hugo Weaving is an enigmatic menace. 

The Matrix is perfectly paced, flying by, even at 136 minutes. The visual mastery and mystery, leading to a revelatory twist, a new world, and then a final act that's just one incredible action set piece after another lends itself as well to repeat viewings as any film ever made. The cherry on top, along with the film's general sound design, is Don Davis' rousing score, a masterful work that's inseparable from the film for which it's crafted. I haven't even mentioned the still revolutionary special effects, an absolutely perfect blending of practical and CGI that the 90s seems to have mastered.

There simply aren't enough good things to say about The Matrix. The acting, directing, filmmaking, production values, choreography, audio, visuals are all hitting together in perfect synchrony at the highest level. There aren't many films on this level. The Matrix is perfect.

The Matrix Reloaded (2003, Written and Directed by the Wachowski Brothers) 

Rating Score: 8/10

The Machines are ready to strike back! After Neo has transcended The Matrix, and begun to wake more people up to its truth than ever, the Machines now set their sites on the last remaining human refuge of Zion. Neo keeps having a nagging dream, though, and after speaking with The Matrix's seemingly all-knowing Oracle, finds that if he can travel to The Matrix's Source, he might just be able to save Zion, and thus, all of mankind. However, an entirely new cadre of evil programs and a mutated, upgraded Agent Smith stand in Neo and his friends' way.

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I'll be the first to admit that I like 2003's The Matrix Reloaded far more than most. I liked it the first time in the theater, gleefully explaining The Architect's speech to my confused friends in the parking lot afterward, and I enjoyed it just now when I watched it for the first time in a while, almost 23 years later.

First the film's flaws--the first hour is a bit slow and quiet, a lot of quiet conversations, with a few action beats tossed in. The film does do some heavy-lifting in the world-building department in these scenes, though. However, the trilogy's worst moment also comes during this first hour. Yes, it's the infamous "orgy scene," where the lovebirds, Trinity and Neo, go off to have sex, and it's intercut with the sweaty, barely clothed citizens of Zion rubbing against and gyrating on one another to club music. The Wachowskis were into some truly bizarre, some may even say heinous stuff during this time period, and this scene feels like the only moment in the film where that stuff bubbles to the surface. Also, the kissing scene with possibly the most beautiful woman who ever lived, Monica Bellucci, feels like it is supposed to be a major plot point, but on rewatch, it's just a character beat for someone with five minutes of screen time, and a moment to shine more light on the Neo/Trinity romantic bond. Also, I like Harold Perrineau as an actor, but he's often used for audience hand-holding reaction shots here.

The rest of The Matrix Reloaded, I love. I love the broadening of the world, even The Matrix, which it turns out is full of programs in the guise of human figures, some altruistic to the human race, some less so, and some purely antagonistic. I love how great the central trio are. I love the climactic Architect speech, which is dense, but an extremely hard swing that I think connects--it's a total gutpunch, a philosophical takedown of Neo as a Christ figure, which is firmly rebuked both by Neo's actions immediately after hearing it, and Neo's entire storyline and ending in the third film. But most of all, I love the action!

The Matrix Reloaded contains easily one of the best action sequences of the century. The 20-plus minute sequence kicks off with a fight between Neo and a gang of mythologically-empowered fighters in the visually stunning lobby of a mansion, immediately leading into an insane car chase featuring Morpheus and Trinity fighting (while driving!) in a car against two ghostly warriors (a scene that I think had to have influenced 2014's The Raid 2), which then morphs into a motorcycle chase, which eventually leads to Morpheus fighting an agent on the roof of a quickly moving 18-wheeler USING a samurai sword! The stunts, the driving, the insane ingenuity has seldom if ever been matched before or since. Add to that the perfect merging of Juno Reactor's blood-pumping electronic music with Don Davis' incredible symphonic work, and you have 20 minutes of cinematic perfection. Carrie-Anne Moss is again great as the steely-eyed Trinity, but it gets no more badass than Laurence Fishburne's Morpheus in this scene, as he's both incredibly cool and an absolute force of nature.

As for Neo, as mentioned above, I have always been a Keanu Reeves apologist, as I think he brings whatever the film he's in needs. Reeves is pensive here, yet determined, and just as badass as Fishburne. Both his dedication to the fight choreography in his films and the way he treats his fellow fighters and stuntmen is legendary, and this comes out clearly in The Matrix Reloaded. Sure, the "burly brawl" scene around the film's midpoint unfortunately sees its reach exceed its grasp in the special effects department, but it's still incredibly fun, even if it's the only moment in The Matrix Reloaded where the otherwise stellar, boundary-pushing special effects don't totally hold up. And regardless, sans this moment, Reloaded is still visually and aurally stunning.

Anyway, I really like this movie.

The Matrix Revolutions (2003, Written and Directed by the Wachowski Brothers) 

Rating Score: 6.5/10

Neo is unconscious after somehow bringing his Matrix powers into the real world, and disabling a murderous group of "squid" machines. Neo has just come from The Source, where he received the soul-crushing news that his role as The One is a farce, that he is just one in a long line of Ones, that his role is simply to restart The Matrix and select a small handful of people to restart Zion, which the Machines purposely allow to exist, after they destroy the old ones. Now, Neo's consciousness lies in a strange waystation between The Matrix and the real world. Neo's two closest friends, Trinity and Morpheus, who received the devastating truth of The Matrix from Neo before he was rendered unconscious, have to go in and save him. Save him they must, as The Machines are now moments from attacking Zion, and despite the anti-Messianic news Neo received from The Matrix-creating Architect about his role as The One, Trinity, Morpheus, and the people of Zion still believe Neo is the only one who can save them.

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It is almost absurd that the early 00's saw such huge trilogies come to a close, from 2005's Revenge of the Sith, to 2003's Return of the King, to 2003's The Matrix Revolutions  (just one month previous to King). But while ROTS and ROTK were hits in their time and are lauded now more than ever, the far more difficult, and unfortunately, less excellent The Matrix Revolutions seems to have left no cultural impact.

Revolutions certainly has considerable flaws. The film takes a long time to get going...the first hour, outside of a few actions beats, is pretty staid. The Wachowskis, up until this point, have largely kept their freak flag under wraps: just a lot of leather in the first film and the famous "orgy scene" in Reloaded. However, the S&M gear in Revolutions' early club action scene (that is otherwise pretty badass) is definitely the biggest WTF?! of this trilogy. Finally, the actual events of the film aren't exactly crowd-pleasing, as the fate of the central hero is left up in the air, and our two other leads are greatly downgraded in importance. Also, in regard to the expression "lost in the weeds," The Matrix Revolutions practically lives there.

I was greatly disappointed by Revolutions in the theater on 11/5/23 (I attended on release night!), but the bad taste was immediately washed out of my mouth the next month by the sweet, timeless nectar of Return of the King, which might be why the public at large so quickly forgot about Revolutions as well. However, in the years since, upon re-watch, I have found that there is quite a bit to enjoy in The Matrix Revolutions.

For one, the film's actual plot is not bad, just not what is expected. The story here is very grim, and outside of a big moment with an EMP and Neo's final sacrifice, doesn't contain many victories. Indeed, even those two victories are muted. However, in the context of the other two films, Revolutions' trilogy-concluding plot is quite logical, and successfully closes out Neo's metaphorical Christ figure storyline. The production values, meanwhile, are insane--if this film had left more of an impact, people would still be talking about how great the melding of practical and CGI is, how incredible the Zion battle looks, how great the art and design are--perhaps one day, they will. Don Davis continues to deliver incredible, memorable music, and it's again melded well with electronic music.

There are two huge action setpieces here. The first is the incredibly intense, 20-minute-plus battle of Zion, which seems to take a page from the opening sequence in Saving Private Ryan, never letting up in brutal, grim intensity from start to finish, never cutting away to what Neo and Trinity are doing on the surface. However, this sequence is marred by some pretty dreadful girl-bossing, which may be why the scene isn't constantly referenced now. For clarification, I'm not saying that women can't be action badasses in films or even in these films in particular--Trinity is incredibly badass throughout this trilogy, and all of her action moments work because they AREN'T at the expense of the male characters. It's when a film pulls its men down and degrades them so that women can do the men's part in an action sequence that I'm referencing, and unfortunately, that's not something that was just born in the mid-2010's. The girl-bossing is bright and clear here in 2003, when Nona Gaye and an extremely butch woman school all of the incompetent men in Zion, as they are the only two who can successfully attack The Machines with their bazooka (though the extremely butch woman does eventually die horribly). Another instance features everybody's least favorite celebrity, Jada Pinkett-Smith, as she is the only person capable of piloting a ship into Zion, so that a machine-killing EMP can be triggered. Pinkett-Smith shouts down the men who dare oppose her, which is just absolutely grating, especially since, in real life, studies have shown that risky piloting is the kind of task in which males are most capable. Morpheus is reduced to Pinkett-Smith's sidekick, though at least, after she succeeds, she responds to his "You did it" with "We did it!" I still think the sequence in its entirety is incredible, but it is still marred by those two elements, which is unfortunate considering it features some of the greatest blending of practical and CGI effects to ever see the screen. The Battle of Zion also redeems Harold Perrineu's character, who goes from reaction shot stand-in to active participant, as he plays a key role in the fight.

The second big action sequence is the final fight between Neo and a super-powered Agent Smith, which features far more special effects and less actual fight choreography than their previous battles, but which is still visually stunning and works better on rewatches. This fight leads into the film's difficult ending, where Trinity and Neo are presumably dead (though Machines do drag Neo away and appear like they are about to venerate him in some way) and a delicate truce has been declared between the humans and Machines. Morpheus' dream has come true, but his future is uncertain, and then the film ends on a philosophical discussion between the trilogy's enigmatic Oracle and Architect--not exactly a final, uplifting moment for the movie-going masses who spent four years watching this seven hour trilogy.

Still, I've found age has overall been kind to The Matrix Revolutions. No, it's not Return of the King. Nothing is. If Revolutions had found some way to make Pinkett-Smith's character as likeable and believable as Éowyn, it still wouldn't come close.  Still, I think Revolutions is a fitting end to a unique and mostly great trilogy, and I hope it gets a positive public reassessment in the future. It's a fallen warrior who loses many battles, but in the end, wins the war.

The Matrix Resurrections (2021, Directed by: Lana Wachowski, Written by: Lana Wachowski, David Mitchell, and Aleksandar Hemon) 

Rating Score: 3.5/10

Neo is back in The Matrix as Thomas Anderson. The Machines revived and repaired him, and now he's keeping it going once again, thinking he is just Thomas Anderson, visiting a therapist to talk about his strange visions of his past life as Neo. Soon, he's reawakened from The Matrix by a new group of freedom fighters, and he has one goal: reawaken and reunite with his true love, Trinity. There's a problem, though. His therapist is actually "The Analyst," the creator of this new Matrix, who took over for the discontinued Architect after a Machine Civil War. The winning faction of Machines decided that humans must be enslaved again, but this new Matrix won't work unless Neo and Trinity are both plugged in, while experiencing unrequited love for one another. This means that Trinity and Neo must remain plugged in...and The Analyst will do anything to make sure that happens.

It took me four years to give The Matrix Resurrections a second chance after my first abysmal theater viewing(Yes, I saw all four of these in the theater!). I figured I had to since I just rewatched the others. Unfortunately, Resurrections is still terrible. It's the poster child for enshittification. We've gone from two Wachowskis writing and directing at their prime, to just one Wachowski who has made one feature film in the last decade...this lousy movie. Everything here is a poor facsimile of the original film.

Plenty of people in 2021 said "The Matrix Resurrections is terrible on purpose," as if the filmmakers' possible winks that the film was going to be made by the studio anyway, so they might as well make it so bad, no one will ever want to touch the series again somehow actually make this a good film. The Matrix Resurrections does have a few good, very meta in-jokes. It's still terrible--whether on purpose or not. I suspect the one Wachowski was trying to actually make something good and the result is horrific regardless, considering this is half the duo whose last film was 2015's Jupiter Ascending, one of the greatest atrocities against cinema ever created, just six years before. The duo never made anything together again.

Everything in Resurrections is enshittified to the max. The plot is an enshittified meta take on the first film, but for some reason, Resurrections is far longer than any of the films in the original trilogy, and it takes nearly three times as long for the now aged Neo to take the red pill than it did in the first film, leading to an incredibly dull first act that's even longer than this sentence. Then, the Wachowski pulls a dumb reincarnation act, where Neo and Trinity are still played by their original actors, but they barely seem to care, Agent Smith has now been recast by what is essentially a gay loaf of Wonder Bread, and the once incredibly charismatic and enigmatic Morpheus is recast by the "why are you trying to make this guy a thing?" guy, who, like many characters here, feels like a kid playing dress up. I'm not trying to be mean--almost every new actor that's gotten multiple prestigious roles in the past decade has been the "why are you trying to make this guy a thing?" guy. The new cast of additional characters absolutely fail to register any impact, even a blue-haired Jessica Henwick, who I actually think is kind of stunning in real life, but who is made to be a sort of androgynous, blue-haired pickle in this film.

The production values are also highly enshittified, from the props that look like they came out of an old box of Pretty Pretty Princess (check the eyepiece that the film's equivalent of Tank is wearing...woof!), to the unconvincing and strangely yawn-inducing special effects and rudimentary, community theater level costumes and fight scenes. The film frequently cuts to moments from the first film, which is a huge mistake, as this highlights Bill Pope's stunning cinematography from that 23-years older film, and contrasts it against the pedestrian visuals in Resurrections. Don Davis' composer replacements aren't expected to equal the previous series work of that maestro, but they don't even leave an impression.

The worst part is...I actually think the lore-building aspects of The Matrix Resurrections aren't bad. The Machines did indeed keep some aspect of Neo alive, as it appeared they would at the end of The Matrix Revolutions...and the reasons they did the same for Trinity actually make sense. The way the power-drained robots eventually fought a civil war after Revolutions, over whether or not they should re-enslave the human race to get electricity again, also makes sense. While the Neil Patrick Harris-casted The Analyst lacks the gravitas of The Architect, I like the idea of him. I even like that Neo and Trinity get a happy ending together here, though the logic behind the final sequences that lead to that are as airtight as a cheese grater. If the film around these things I enjoyed had actually been good, Resurrections could have been a highly satisfying experience. Instead, it's a joke, a gag, a turd sitting for years in a broken toilet in an abandoned apartment. Instead of hitting theaters, someone should have just flushed it and let this series be.

In conclusion, I think the original trilogy, despite its growing flaws as it moves along, is fantastic. Treating the original, by far the greatest film in the series, as a standalone also works--it is just that singular, that great. However, particularly the second film, but also the third are worth watching for their incredible action and high-level production values, as well as some of their ideas. The fourth film...it's worth watching once just for some of the lore, but the movie itself defies rewatch...it's just lousy.