i should really rewatch the matrix resurrections but

but i didn't super love it when i left the theater and i'm afraid to see where the needle falls now that i know what it is and don't have all those expectations...

the biggest shame about resurrections for me is that there wasn't a multimedia element to it like with the sequels. no comics or animatrix 2 or path of neo remastered, no ambitious tie-ins like enter the matrix, no revival of the matrix online... all of the most interesting stuff in that movie was marginal. i DESPERATELY want some comics about life in IO! gimme a short story collection or a walking simulator or visual novel or anything besides a trashy Unreal Engine show demo... anything to flesh this world out some more

i know this isn't the 2000s anymore. i know multimedia projects like this are dead. but i miss that shit, man! so much of what i love about the matrix as a series comes from its marginalia, as supported by the films themselves. there is no marginalia for resurrections to support, besides what we invent in our own heads. it's a shame. if only we could just be rid of that pesky god-forsaken profit motive

i also just

really wish

that

lana wachowski

used storyboards instead of winging it on the day??? 😬

like i know this was her big professional development as a solo director coming out of sense8 but like

those action scenes were just, not, particularly good,

and i know that on some level that's the point? resurrections is a fuck you from lana wachowski to warner bros and part of that involves conceptual/audience hostility, which is great, i love it

but also

also we do

we do actually live in a post john wick world?

there were some good setpieces in there that i remember but even the good ones were visually all over the place and bizarrely edited, which feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to This Specific Franchise

and also

also?

also like

i'm genuinely annoyed that there wasn't an explicit on screen transgender character. i know to an extent that's an unfair thing to be annoyed about but between that and the generally very annoying montage of executives talking about what the matrix means to people including the gender stuff, i uhh, yeah i dunno

i felt a little betrayed tbh. which is partly the result of having put sooooooo much work into the script of the matrix sequels are good actually with sophie from mars. i haven't really talked about my feelings re: resurrections in part because i recognize that i got a little parasocial with it. and now for better or worse i'm at least Partially Known For Having Opinions About The Matrix, and i didn't want my half-assed first-viewing takes to become part of that

and i'm not sure how reasonable it is to demand of a trans woman director working against a historically meddling studio that she include an explicit trans character in this huge international blockbuster

but it did disappoint me and the sting of that hasn't really gone away? i liked a whole lot of the movie, it just, it was missing something, to me. it was missing something

it took me ten years to sort out my feelings on the original sequels. this series, this director, they've earned from me the time and space necessary to be reckoned with for what they are rather than what i want them to be. but the more time passes the more worried i am that i'm gonna rewatch resurrections and feel like, instead of this bright exciting discovery that actually Everyone Is Wrong This Movie Rules the way i did revisiting the original sequels in my late teens, all i'm gonna see is problems

and there aren't a lot of things that bum me out more than finding nothing but problems in a thing i really want to love