It took six movies for Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street to run out of ideas and become a numbing meta-textual experiment. Now The Matrix franchise has managed to run dry in half the screentime. Unfortunately The Matrix Resurrections is another reminder that this series has only ever had enough strong narrative ideas for a single entry. While Lana Wachowski provides some throwback moments for fans of the original 1999 release, what is incredible is how dated the execution feels.

Which is surprising, since The Matrix upon it’s original release represented modern blockbuster cinema at its best – indulgent, philosophical, grounded science fiction that wasn’t afraid to be a genuine kung-fu movie with guns. The film confused parents and enthralled teenagers, all because it spoke somewhat to where the world was going rather than where the world had been. Yet The Matrix Resurrections feels distant and out-of-touch with the modern world in 2021. It’s choices are uninspired; it’s action scenes are pedestrian; it’s cinematography is dull. And most disappointing, this story that once epitomized the future has now become a series addicted to its own suffocating nostalgia.

In essence, a franchise that stoops to meta-textual commentary is one completely out of ideas.

Neo (Keanu Reeves) is back, older but certainly not wiser. He is once again trapped in The Matrix, working as a video game designer, who is famous for creating a video game trilogy called, you guessed it, The Matrix. He has a business partner called Smith (Jonathan Groff) who enjoys speaking to him about the nature of making sequels: “I’m sure you can understand why our beloved parent company, Warner Bros., has decided to make a sequel to the trilogy...They informed me they’re gonna do it with or without us.” The only meta-textual meaning I can gleam from this is that director Lana Wachowski is breaking the forth wall to tell us that she is returning to this series under creative arrest. It’s the first of many red flags.

In another scene, there is a marketing meeting, where the staff who work for Neo’s company speak on how another Matrix sequel cannot “be another reboot, retread, regurgitated…” To which another character says, “Why not? Reboots sell.” All of which gives context to the central problem – The Matrix Resurrections doesn’t need to exist and it is so self-aware of this fact that is calls it out to the audience directly. One can’t help but feel that by forgoing sincere storytelling and replacing it with self-referential irony, Wachowski is admitting failure before the movie even reaches its second act. In essence, a franchise that stoops to meta-textual commentary is one bereft of ideas. Instead we are treated to a movie engaging in morbid self-protection against it’s detractors – how can you call out a movie for being a failure when the movie does the job for you? It’s not a great start.

In fairness Wachowski is clearly attempting to have fun with the post-modern shenanigans, but such playfulness rarely works for a franchise built on sincere, heroic foundations. The script is entrapped with winks to the audience, winks that call us back to scenes from the original movie, winks from returning characters that remind of us better scenes 20 years ago. Unfortunately little originality is left in the creative output on display. Which highlights the problem of writing a movie built on post-modern ideas – they rarely emotionally resonate.

Reeves is present but his torment as a confused, unhappy Neo is rendered wooden and phoned-in. Some of his reaction shots are awkward enough to indicate him being misdirected. It’s a shame, for in the right hands he can be charismatic. Yet once Neo and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) meet we are treated to some fleeting nostalgia that is shallow but welcoming. Moss in particular reminds us how terrific she can be, even with flat-lining material. She is both emotionally and physically convincing and so much more fun to spend time with than another sulking retread of Neo’s journey.

But there’s another issue. The film is visually ugly. The irony of the film name dropping ‘bullet time’ is that since that visual motif was invented for The Matrix (1999), the Wachowski’s have never visually topped it. Instead we are trapped with a lumbering sequence of action set pieces in the final act that feel under cooked and low budget (incredible for $190 million). In fact there is a televised feeling about these scenes that feel complicit in covering up a number of visual problems.

Instead the film makers remain too comfortable with providing the basics that they’ve forgotten it was them who once reinvented the wheel.

One of these problems is no longer having Yuen Woo-ping as an action choreographer, who lent a brutal preciseness to the original movie’s violence. His talents are desperately needed here, for The Matrix (1999) was as much a martial arts movie as it was a Hollywood blockbuster. Instead The Matrix Resurrections sorely forgets its genre roots and substitutes clumsy action cinematography that fails to render an exciting flip or land a single gut-wrenching punch. The result is an implausibly dull visual experience, one incapable of taking risks and pushing boundaries. Instead the film makers remain too comfortable with providing the basics that they’ve forgotten it was them who once reinvented the wheel.

More and more it seems the original The Matrix (1999) was indeed lightning in a bottle for the Wachowski’s, who for much of their latter filmography have failed to write a story as compelling. Lana Wachowski can be credited for returning some short lived nostalgia to some 30-something fans, but the endeavor failed the moment her own script admitted defeat.