The Matrix: Resurrections (a movie review post)

 

It was not without some amount of trepidation that I approached this movie. The original Matrix movie was, inarguably, brilliant, but the two sequels proved to be... well, disasters. And that's being kind. But this movie came with a not so unspoken promise of... redemption. Did I think it would deliver? No, not really, but I did hope in the possibility.

Which was a vain hope, as it turned out.

Yes, this review will contain spoilers. It's not worth your time, and you should know why.

The movie does open with some amount of promise, which just makes everything else worse. The duplication of the opening scene of the first movie is intriguing. So is finding Neo -- excuse me, Thomas Anderson -- is a game developer and that The Matrix is a video game that he created. These are interesting questions. What does all this mean for the "reality" of the other movies?

As it turns out, nothing. It all just turns out to be the set up for Neo re-taking the red pill so he can get back to the real world again.

Then there's a long-ass fight scene that was so long I got bored.

Which all leads us to the "real" point of the movie (and I think we're more than an hour in, by this time): to get Trinity out of the matrix in the same way she got Neo out in the original movie. The only difference is that we get to watch it from the outside rather than the inside. But it's still just the same story over again. Except with zombies. Which they call the swarm.

Every little piece of the movie that could have been interesting, they avoid dealing with. For instance, Morpheus is somehow now an Agent. He doesn't know it at first but the Agent in question somehow quickly realizes he's really Morpheus. Hmm... well, that's interesting! Do they delve into that at all? No... We just now have an Agent who can leave the matrix in a... nano-metal body? I don't know what to call it. It doesn't really matter. It's just an excuse for some cool special effects.

And there are robots on the side of the humans, but do they give that any kind of focus? No... It's just, "oh, yeah, they joined us after the third movie because of your sacrifice."

There's the whole character of The Analyst and his supposed understanding of humans, which makes him unique among the robots, but, again, it's just something that's stated and they don't explain or delve at all. There are ramifications here, man!

Not mention Agent Smith, who is now played by Jonathan Groff and is also playing both sides of the field, sometimes fighting against Neo and sometimes with him. The only explanation given to that is that The Analyst has had Smith under his control, somewhat like he's had Neo under his control, and he won't go back to that. So, fine. But what the fuck was he doing under The Analyst's control to begin with.

There are all of these things just dropped throughout the movie, like the people bombs in the final fight scene, and not a single one of them are explored. Neo and Trinity look old to other "people" in the matrix. Why? It can't even maintain a cool factor because they move on from it so quickly that it doesn't have any meaning. None of it does.

In the end, that's the downfall of the movie. None of it has any meaning. It's just The Matrix over again with a bit of 2 and 3 rolled into it so that we don't forget that those two movies exist. Even the brief glimmers of self-awareness that the movie has are squashed. Meaningless.

The actors are all fine. Completely adequate. No one stands out. Maybe Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. A little. It felt like he was going to bring some fun to the character of Morpheus, then all of that ended when he left the matrix. 

I don't know... the whole movie is kind of... meh. It's not bad; it's just not good. It definitely doesn't rise anywhere near to the level of the first one. It's more watchable than 2 and 3, for sure, but not that much more watchable. Probably not enough for me to ever go back and watch it again. If I had paid money to see it (rather than watching it on HBO), I probably would have been upset. It's just another Warner Bros. failure.

Trinity 2015: Part Three -- Other Stuff

Trinity this year was a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, because I was going to be away from the Demon Cat for a week (also known as Jack (here's a picture of him feeling ashamed of himself

(I'm lying; he's never ashamed))), I thought that I would actually take advantage of that by getting, you know, some sleep. Now, previously, when we've been, I've gotten up earlier than everyone else and sat on the deck with my mocha and used the time to write, but, no, this year, I slept in. I was under the false... um, no... I just had some bad logic that told me that I would somehow be able to write during the day when everyone wanted to do things. Yeah, that didn't happen. I didn't wise up and get up early to write until the last two days. Next year, I'll know better than to take the sleeping in option. I do think I came back slightly more rested than I went, though.

Here are some other pictures I took while there that I really like.

We found it this way, but I thought it was cool that someone took the time to make that.

Unless, of course, this is some kind of weird, naturally occurring formation.

We found one other before we left, not as tall as the first, but, see, maybe they are naturally occurring, and this one just hadn't grown as big yet.

Trinity 2015: Part Two -- The Critters

I took what is probably an inordinate amount of pictures of... well, I took a lot of pictures of bugs this year. No, I don't really know why other than that we didn't go to any new places, and I wanted to get pictures of things I hadn't taken pictures of before. So you're getting bugs. And some lizards. And, yes, if you think those lizards are doing something, that's because those lizards are doing something. The dude lizard even did a series of push-ups before hand to both impress the lady lizard and get ready for the deed.

However, it's still the dragonflies I find the most impressive. Having grown up in a place where I was always finding their shells, I never once saw a dragonfly "hatch," so this was a cool experience even if we only found them after they'd emerged. My son brought the shells home, even.

So, without further ado, the bugs of Trinity!

Trinity 2015: Part One -- The Lake

Life is hectic right now. Mostly, it's softball, which I haven't talked about at all this season. I meant to, but, well, other things came up which proved distracting. One thing came up which proved distracting and which lasted throughout, basically, the whole spring season. We're in the summer travel ball season, now, which is much busier and hectic than the spring rec season. So, yeah, as I write this, I just got in from softball practice with my daughter, and I will be gone all weekend at a tournament. Fortunately, I just got back from vacation, so I have a lot of new pictures!

The annual vacation is to the Trinity Alps where, ostensibly, the Trinity lake resides. However, this year, there was no lake. Thank you drought.

Those two pictures are where there should be lake.

My wife and I walked down there pretty close to dark the first night and couldn't see the water and just kept walking and walking and never found it. We went back, later, on our bikes and rode down to where the water is, but I forgot my camera, so this is all you get. [Also, there's a longer story to all of that, but I don't really have time for it, right now.]

The second night we were there, a thunderstorm actually blew through, which was pretty cool, though it didn't do anything noticeable to the water level. It was the first thunderstorm for my kids (because we really don't get that kind of thing where we live). The lady who works in the store at the campground said that sometimes it thunders so hard up there that it makes their automatic doors open. That I would have liked to have seen.

At any rate, I'm running short on time, so I'm going to leave you with rain in the mountains.

The Cat Stands (Stays) Alone

My wife and I had a disagreement. It wasn't a huge thing; there was no yelling or fighting or anything like that; it was a just a disagreement. It all started with the cat. Remember him?

Yes, he is walking on the back of a chair. No, I'm not sure what he's doing with his eye. Aiming his deathray? It's always hard to tell with him. But I digress...

Two years ago when we went camping, our cat didn't have us. [Yes, I could say "we didn't have the cat," but, clearly, the cat decided that we belong to him, not the other way around. He did move into our house like a little, furry squatter.] We took the dog with us and there was no problem. In anticipation of the camping trip last year that didn't actually happen, I bought a leash for the cat.

The leash was so that we could take the cat with us, but we didn't go, so the leash just sat around and I never bothered to train the cat with it. He acts like he's dying when you put it on him except when he's walking backwards, which is what he's doing in the below picture.

One time he walked backwards right up the wall and only stopped when he was looking straight down at the floor, then he just stayed like that, like he was lying on the wall.

So, when we started talking about camping this year,

I resumed my plans to take the cat... right up until my wife let me know that she didn't want the cat going with us. The conflict spread to the kids at that point, because they, also, wanted the cat to go. There was a lengthy debate. Well, sort of. It wasn't a debate that happened all at once. It was spread out over about two weeks with occasional comments that were always interrupted by one of the kids saying, "I want the cat to go." That always ended the discussion, because we didn't want the kids getting involved in the decision since they wouldn't be the ones to be taking care of the cat.

Long story short: The cat stayed (because, man, who wants to have to lug a litter box with your camping gear?) at home. Alone.

Now, before anyone says anything about the cruelty involved in leaving the cat locked in the house for a few days, I didn't just decide to do that. At some point, I had done some research about cats and what to do with them when you're going to be away from home, and I found that this is what a lot of people do, just leave the cat at home. They are, after all, pretty self-sufficient and, before Jack (the cat) came to live with us, he had lived alone outside for a long time.

Still, it was not without some trepidation (and anxiety) that I did it. Going off and leaving your pet, unless it's a fish, locked in your house is no small thing. [And before you start giving me options, I considered them. (Especially the one about having someone come in each day, but Jack is an expert at waiting just inside the door and hopping out as you come in -- sometimes without you even knowing he's done it -- and I didn't want to have to deal with a missing cat while I was not home and able to deal with it).] But I made sure he had plenty of (dry) food (there was still some left when we got back, so I did okay on that), what I thought was plenty of water (that was almost gone, but I think that's because he normally gets wet food, so he drank more water to make up for what he wasn't getting from his food), and a big pile of fresh litter.

When we got back, the first thing we noticed was that the house was still here. That was a positive, because I wasn't sure the cat wouldn't box it up and run off with it while we were gone. Heck, that could have been his plan all along (that cat definitely has some kind of plan). I went into the house, first, and the cat met me as I came in the door and was actually more interested in seeing me than in hopping out the door (he saved that until a few nights ago to do to my oldest son as he was coming home from rehearsal). So all is well, and the cat has been way more affectionate this past week than he has been in a while.

And, hey!, the house wasn't even booby trapped Home Alone style when we got back, so I guess the cat really does like living with us. Or something.

Still, I'm going to keep working with him with that leash. Either I have to get him to go forward, or I have to learn to walk him backwards. That could be interesting. I'll have to try get some video footage of that.

* * *

In other news, I have a new thing that I'm finishing up. The draft writing, that is. It's all in notebooks (because that's how I write when I'm off at softball practices or accordion lessons or whatever), so it still has to be typed up and all of that. Why am I telling you this? Well, as I have been doing, I'd like to add a bonus story by some other author to go with it, so I am officially taking submissions. Or requests. Or something. Look, if you have something that's, oh, say, around 5000 words and you'd like me to put it in with my new thing (which I'll tell you more about later), let me know. Or if you want to WIP something up. You still have time. Just leave me a message or email me or whatever to let me know you're interested.

The Last 10 Days

Where I've Been

And on either side of where I've been,
Here's what I've been doing

It's been a very busy 10 days, and the 5 softball games each weekend are pretty rough. But there has also been some writing happening, so all is not lost!