On the eve of the 2000 bug, Matrix went out into the dark rooms and would upset the codes of action cinema. All dressed in leather, these heroes at the crossroads of punk, gothic and emo broke the virilist codes well established by Hollywood cinema and his Hong Kong avatar, emissary of kung fu to the Western public. The 21stnd century would be made of leather and latex or would not be according to the vision of the Wachowski sisters. Twenty-two years after denouncing a world governed by machines, can we still follow the white rabbit, rent between the market meshes and find refuge away from the hydra of Capital?
Know yourself
Decline in « True is a moment of falsehood » by Guy Debord, the matrix showed us a smooth, clean and unspoilt world. One « world overturned » represented by a singular colorimetry, enveloping green tones against bluish in the real world. Technical Prejudice at the time, the now famous « Bullet-time » was a real fashion phenomenon until exhaustion. There would no longer be a mainstream movie without its slow motion sequence. Matrix would become the standard of the cinema show where everything is consumerized, up to the arsenal of the hero, who prefers to throw away his weapon rather than recharge it. Matrix left an indelible imprint on an entire generation that would slowly shift into the digital age.
Before Neo took off on the song « Wake Up » of the Rage Against the Machine, the Wachowski (formerly brothers before their change of gender identity in 2012 and 2016) did they not announce to us the revelation of « I » on a binary world? Work de facto anticapitalist, this last cult scene is probably the reflective starting point of Matrix 4. Do tabula rasa and respond to the need for change, to the revolution that is coming, to the choice that lies with us. The Revolution refers to returning to oneself in physics, or more precisely, the return of a star to the same point of its orbit in astronomy. The word is also scanned several times by a commercial who was caught up at the beginning of the film.
And it's all the object of Matrix 4 that brings us back to square one but without choosing the easy reboot. Only time has really passed since 1999.At dawn of the year 2000, Neo concluded the first episode in these crypto-prophetics terms: « I know you're here, I feel your presence, I know you're afraid. You're afraid of us. Change scares you. I don't know the future. I didn't come to tell you the end. I came to tell you the beginning. I'm gonna hang up that phone and I'm gonna show these people what you're preventing them from seeing. I'll show them a world free of you. »
« A world without laws and rules, without boundaries and boundaries. A world where anything can happen. What will result, you decide »
The coming resurrection
If all the previous strands were the result of collective work, only Lana this time wished to resume the torch for this new episode, soberly entitled Resurrections. A plural interrogator: is it Neo and Trinity, Wachowski or even their new transgender identities? The two sisters witnessed difficult passages following the mourning of their parents and their successive transitions to the female sex.
Lilly, arrested by the press following his absence on the credits of Matrix 4, expressed its « need [to stay] for some time far from industry », in order to find herself after her operation : « There was something in that idea that looked like a backlash, I had to go back to something that I had already done in the past, and it didn't. » Lilly specifies the reasons for taking a distance with regard to the project:
« I did not want to have made this transition, to have gone through such changes in my life, to be well aware of having lost my parents and returning to something of the past, to find this road that I had already explored. It was like putting on old shoes, I didn't want that. »
Family therapy with an open heart
The history of the duo Wachowski is reflected at every moment in this fourth part which plays the map of introspection, if not artistic therapy. Neo's depression and suicidal temptations directly echo the lived by Lana Wachowski. The « already seen » is the Arlesian of the film and new entry point into the matrix. Resurrection, finally, returns etymologically Act of « Get up »To the hero's recovery. Resurrection is not a meaningless title for Matrix, since it necessarily involves the question of the chosen one who never really reborn equals himself.
In Alien 4also entitled « Resurrection », who would claim that Ellen Ripley is still the same heroine of the first tier while she is now closer to the xenomorph than to the Human? By playing extensively on Trinity/Néo duality, Lana reappropriates her work and seems to fit into a new form of activism. What if Neo was never elected? « Is that really the point? » The director seems to blow us, but her trilogy includes many Bible references. No matter whether it is a man or a woman or not, the spectator is deduced. All the first third of the monkey movie about everything a Matrix fan could expect from a sequel: An AI Morpheus in satin bathrobe, occasion of a gag at each intervention and how many costumes worthy of The Mask ; Trinity housewife who dreams of emancipation and breaking her husband's jaw Chad (historical Keanu Reeves) ; a neo suicidal at work on the throne before a quote from the writer Don Delillo.
« It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams »
Lana plays with the codes and takes back what everyone was waiting for, with impatience to the idea of finding the Matrix saga. By putting back to back industry like its audience, Lana directly questions us about the author's imprint on a work, become a myth in its own right and object of how many ambiguated theories that govern the forums. She puts us in front of the « change [that scares us] » and to the obvious failure that now represents the hegemony of neoliberalism since the first episode. Twenty-two years after the end of Matrix 1 and the song « Wake up », wake up is closer to hangover than anything else. The matrix (and its ultra-liberal alter ego) only strengthened itself by crushing any ability to challenge with few exceptions, as in Chile, the experimental cradle of wild capitalism, tilted this winter to the left. This is what the character of the Analyst, who in his own way is a bit the invisible hand of a world that was thought naively to have deciphered all lines of code.
Agent Smith is looking for himself, while he has been freed from the system. Obsessed by his own person, Digital Narcisse, Agent Smith is the satisfecit Incarnate, the allegory of triumphant individualism. As for Neo and Trinity, they are certainly the two sides of artists in conflict with themselves. Everyone is looking to find the other. And their union is every time torn apart. Matrix 4 is neither a reboot, neither a rereading nor really a sequel. This fourth episode is almost a release for Lana Wachowski. Release from a work that has probably escaped from his hands in addition to having invested in it a part of intimacy, a part of his own person to give birth to a first trilogy more than equal.
Paradoxically, if the approach is interesting on paper, difficult to see finesse in form and realization that recall the same formulas « Marvelized » ad nauseam for an audience who likes to be told when to laugh or when to ingurgitate his dose of popcorn. Neo looking to fly without success, Morpheus' heavy-duty valves up to the post generic scene where « Creative » in brainstorming evoke videos of cats for the renaissance of Matrix (the catrix...) : was it really necessary? In many ways, Matrix 4 flirting with the troll or permanent suicide, not without questioning the real will of Lana Wachowski to resume the franchise or to undergo a carnivalesque specifications. Matrix 4 has the insolence of the avorton more than the rebellious spirit that once existed.
« Are we just algorithms that do what we have to do or can we escape our program? »
Matrix 4 sometimes gives the impression that everyone is tired, from actors with little inspired or overplayed choreography. Even the director sometimes seems to lose the engine of her work. At the beginning of the film, Thomas Anderson 2.0, in the grip of already seen, was no longer the missed computerist he was. From the top of its New York tower, it is now the archetype of success, the one who raised himself from the base to the top through his work, an example of meritocracy, a corollary indispensable to the belief of the sand merchants of neoliberalism. Thomas Anderson is the author of the film's success story. Matrix... but in video game this time!
At the first scene where one discovers (the new) Thomas Anderson, the latter is barbed by work, collapsed in front of his desktop computer, while lines of code scroll without God or Master. It is surrounded by trophies and figurines of Merchandising. A brief sequence plan shows a finger of honour on a dummy in the background. Drained by geeks « Marketers » and businessmen Calibrated according to the prices of the stock exchange, everyone talks about his work - except him - mutic and overwhelmed by events. The need to follow the white rabbit is felt as we are shown the beginnings of the new game Matrix Like echoing the film's production. A head of the department marketing makes his speech on the keywords of the franchise: « originality and freshness ». « These are beautiful things to keep in mind, as you start the development of Matrix 4... and who knows how many others? » She's outbid. What if everything was said from the start? Who still tells us Matrix Twenty-two years after the first film?
Clearing the boundaries of reality
The choice of video game, this young, hot and long-disputed media, is not trivial. Collective work by essence, it is not always easy to get the Author out of the mix. There is no more contemporary than removing the boundary between video game and cinema. The most seasoned directors try each in their own way by trying to couple cousin DNA, but not always compatible. The castings video game have nothing to envy anymore in cinema, like games Death Stranding or Star Citizen. Now narration marries gameplay without time dead in The Last of us 2 and some even try to marry series and video game like the Swedish studio Remedy with its titles Quantum Break or more recently the very Lynchean Control. Keanu Reeves himself wasn't the star of the Polish game Cyberpunk ? The star designer Hideo Kojima, which describes itself as a « body made at 70% movies » comes in November to open a new division of his studio « with professionals (...) in television, music and film, as well as in the video game industry ». He always recalled his desire to marry the two Arts:
« As the boundaries of entertainment soon disappear, I would like to make it a year when we will take a step forward to challenge different mediums and expressions. »
The choice of video game comes at a peak to raise the question of editorial pressures - real or fantasy - for a Hollywood hyperproduction calibrated according to standards that are guessed exclusively mercantile. How random is it! After the striking video Meta Human, from 2021, the company and leader Epic Games This winter a demo playable their next engine,Unreal Engine 5, on the theme of... Matrix Hey! A crusader who questions the pregnancy of interests contrary to the common calendar. This bluffing technical demonstration claims to demonstrate that it is no longer possible to distinguish real actors from their digitized avatars.
Conversely Matrix 4 shows us excerpts from the first part as if it were a video game. A clever mix that communities love but which through its artifice questions its opportunity and its impact on the genesis of the film. The boundaries between mediums and Art are constantly blurring, while new harmful markets should soon germinate as Increasing NFT incursion in entertainment lets him foreshadow or even the Project Metaverse coupled to the VR, last delirium as of Marck Zuckerberg to atomize the latest social relations against some more personal data.
I spent without counting
If the two previous Matrix had not achieved the expected financial results (and already Resurrections do not push the box office Compared to Disney products), saying that Wachowski filmography is steep is an understatement. The adaptation of the subversive comics of Alan Moore as screenwriters of V for Vendetta did not satisfy investors, as did the premature cessation of their series Sense8 Supported by the public but not Netflix. The rest is not very sparkling. The duo is customary for disappointments and the question is spread throughout the film. The new agent Smith, obsessed with his own self, borrows a double explicit speech:
« Things have changed. The market is down. I They informed me they »
« I thought they couldn't do that. » New « Oh, they can. » the commercial, recalling that they will destroy their contracts if they do not cooperate. No doubt the most interesting passage of the film before its fall, Agent Smith (Jonathan Groff) seems exalted and have another pragmatic vision. « Stories never stop, they tell the same with different names ». (The death of the account). « I talked to the marketing department. », he jubiles, before becoming inaudible as in his first interrogation muscled with Neo in Matrix First of the name. New asphyxiation of the author?
He followed a scene at Thomas Anderson's psychologist, who played a predictable but interesting figure on the author's return to his work. Camped by the excellent Neil Patrick Harris, the analyst and therapist wears glasses in the colors of eternal blue pills. It maintains illusion, unfortunately so little subtle (and immediately guessed), while Neo gradually throws away the precious medicines under the emblematic air of White Rabbits. The theme was revisited by Baltic House Orchetra for Matrix 4 with a much slower pace (and synthtick) as if Neo could no longer escape from the nightmare. An artistic choice cleavage but which works here rather well with the montage opposing Neo, blasé, and the delusional enthusiasm of the service marketing.
This blue dream
Apart from these few meta and self-critical impulses barely disguised, Matrix 4 very quickly, just like Keanu Reeves who seems tired by years of cascades in the role of John Wick. Mind punk seems to have disappeared. At the end of an hour, we wonder about the real motivations of our characters, which we clumsyly multiply like so many future avatars for the future suites (and figurines). No one manages to arouse any emotion. Ironically, isn't it the words of the Analyst who blasphemes on his Machiavellical plane while Neo is petrified in front of his opponent's omnipotence?
« It's all about fiction. The only world that matters is the one in here. And you people believe the craziest hit. Why? What validitys and make your fiction real? Feelings! »
Paradoxically, even the real world, yet very dark and mechanical in the early Matrix is without any relief here, the fault can be omnipresence of intrusive special effects. Even a single pigeon is now modeled into synthetic images. The time when Agent Smith's clons had been completely realized with dozens of Silicone mussels and masks worn by real actors Seems far away. Worse than the abuse of SFX, alliances with certain machines are particularly naïve and unlikely for a humanity that had yet been entirely condemned to exploitation by these same programs supposed to free man.
Openly, Matrix 4 seeks to instill a less binary and yet how much Manichaean in the approach. Robot bird Kujaku (paon in Japanese) that would not deny Pokemon or Mnemosynes who make checks with humans are almost as embarrassing as campaigns against covid on new ways of Saluting with feet in the scurpulent tradition of respect for barrier gestures. The same is true of the AIs of the new Garden of Eden where are cultivated - all smiles - fruit from the matrix, ersatzs better than natural productions. It's like attending a promotional campaign in Monsanto. All this stains and seems to come from the brain of a Boomer Who wants to catch up with the youth train and the cool car. It is not enough to multiply the angles to gain in depth.
The Smith / Anderson duality, clumsyly outlined here, was otherwise more relevant in the first strand than all these smiling AIs and robots kawai who now populate the world of franchise for free. If we readily understand that Lana did not wish to imprison in her universe, these additions struggle to convince and betray the Matrix spirit, in any case the one that had been presented to us twenty-two years earlier. The same applies to all the former trilogy protagonists, who make their appearance as series B. Merovingian, program of the matrix, which insults Neo in French, while a crowd of characters of several « periods » Arguably participating in the most ridiculous scene of the film. Everything is missed there from beginning to end and one is almost reduced to wondering whether the French de jureur was not introduced in post-production to self-sabotage the whole, as a Captain Haddock in the middle delirium tremens.
« Art, Books, movies are all better! Originality addressed! You gave us Face-Zucker-suck and Cock-me-climatey-Wiki-piss-and-shit! »
Slow motions indigestible, general baston sauce Kung Fu Panda, successions of plans without impact until an abrupt transition to a remake of the legendary battle of the metro. Firearms do not have any impact, and fuses are ultimately very rare. Here again, terrible observation when the original far exceeds this new version, which almost acts as a command for the advertising campaign, other than the feature film. Never a point of pressure is felt. The adrenaline has been traded against a majority of flat protagonists, who fill the gap of writing with chatter. The absence of stakes, the artificial complexity of the ensemble, the secondary characters bisounours, the speeches of naughty people who don't take up are so many elements that make us get away from the plot. The disappointment and boredom settle despite a basic proposal that could have been original. Even the photograph friezes the caricature by taking over the color codes of the two pills in the real world at times, for no apparent reason other than to direct the viewer on the tracks of a rough ride. The reactionary discourse of the merovingian, off-field, would almost make him right. Was Lana aware of the mediocrity of these passages that she might have made up under the shadow of the parody?
« Agents are bad, but whatever you do, stay the hell away from marketing! »
The cherry on the cake is probably « the power of love » which unites Trinity and Neo, exploited together by the analyst to generate an increased electricity production... This is a beautiful Romance figure of neoliberalism. So even love could generate profit? The final scene leaves Neo largely in retreat while Trinity corrects the analyst on the tone of the demiurge by breaking his jaw. Victory too obvious against patriarchy. Lelée ironizes by pretending to want to paint the sky with rainbows, which serves more as a cartoon of openness than real progressism for LGBT rights, all the more so when we know this industry, yet so prudes to frown the habits of its cramped communities in their comfort zone. The skid is always controlled on the road to the politically correct.
Behind the spectrum of the seven colors of the rainbow in the sky, there was probably a wider palette to defend for a discourse of tolerance, here catapulted to the forceps. It should also be noted that most of the feminist thrusts of the film are exclusively backed by a joke. Evidence of this is that we should not take this seriously, or rush the Warner. If in principle the work belongs to the author, Matrix 4 There is a risk of leaving many spectators on the tile and it would probably have been necessary to decide between radical criticism and a rather generic suite. The choice had yet to be given to the director, which is not guaranteed.
« The art is a mirror. Most people prefer to look at the surface, but there are people like me who like what is behind the mirror. I made this movie for them. »
Two thirty hours of sitting to return to square one, the pill has difficulty passing, so that we would be tempted to give reason to Lilly Wachowski who had renounced to participate in this suite. By moving away from the starting objective of destroying the matrix (even the analyst, with whom Neo bets to recover Trinity, is spared without any logical reason), the director maintains a form of new myth where one could switch from one to another, just like the other. Peter Pan, as if political commitment was now secondary, provided that emancipation of the subject was one possible among others. If the director warned her audience about her intention to cross the mirror of Alice (a mirror that can be found elsewhere during a film scene without any audacity), the image of the white rabbit probably deserved a more salutary refuge than the only freedom of choice of the subject during a self-entry flight.
It is the libertarian form that seems to take the step here. Postmodern from beginning to end, MatrixDo the Wachowskis or the Warner have anything yet to tell us? After twenty-two years of absence, three soulless suites, we would have preferred the blue pill this time. If Neo always ends up caught up in the matrix, it's to wonder if the author was also caught up in the big market that we know tentacular. In the image of the Klein bottleany criticism immediately seems to be ingested without any real distinction being made between the contents of the container.
We will naturally think of the GTA franchise, the fiendious of capitalism and system seller popular claiming from the subversive school, where it is possible blow up Apple's CEO's head from his couch and at the same time result from a studio known to happily exploit its employees. Fruit of the cultural industry, « simultaneously » Don't fool anyone anymore. Matrix 1 was probably a brilliant and unpredictable bug in the middle of a failed saga. After all, was Neo really the messiah who was supposed to free us from the Logre of Capital?
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