‘The Matrix Resurrections’ review roundup: What do critics think?

The Matrix Resurrections, the fourth installment in the Matrix series, is here, and critics are divided. Many find it better than the sequels to the original, but others argue that it was completely unnecessary.

The Matrix Resurrections opens with Neo (Keanu Reeves) back in the Matrix. Now a successful video game designer (his series of games is called The Matrix), he feels as though his reality isn’t what it seems. Carrie-Anne Moss returns as Trinity alongside Reeves, but The Matrix Resurrections introduces several new faces to the franchise, including Jonathan Groff, Jessica Henwick, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.

Here’s what critics are saying about The Matrix Resurrections.

An interesting, if flawed, reboot

Mashable, Alison Foreman

[The Matrix Resurrections] was a mix of mind-blowing highs and soul-crushing lows that left me extremely entertained, but also deeply dissatisfied. Its handwavy sci-fi logic and clunky plotting are sure to be as divisive as the first two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (both 2003). Yet this sequel is undeniably a better film, mirroring much of the structure and purpose that made the first work so well.

The Hollywood Reporter, John DeForge

It is…the kind of sequel Hollywood wants most — practically the same thing as the first, with just enough novelty to justify its existence — albeit one that thinks it can have it both ways, both bowing to and sneering at the industry’s need for constant regurgitation of familiar stories.

The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw

This is a heavy-footed reboot which doesn’t offer a compelling reason for its existence other than to gouge a fourth income stream from Matrix fans, submissively hooked up for new content, and it doesn’t have anything approaching the breathtaking “bullet time” action sequences that made the original film famous.

USA Today, Brian Truitt

The new Matrix tries to reprogram a beloved piece of cinema. However, it’s quite a few fixes short of a full upgrade.

Variety, Peter Debruge

Essentially a greatest hits concert and a cover version rolled into one (complete with flashback clips to high points from past installments), the new movie is slick but considerably less ambitious in scope than the two previous sequels.

The Matrix goes meta

I think I’ve seen this film before.
Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Mashable, Alison Foreman

Complex stories you have to piece together on the way home are Wachowski’s speciality; see Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending. But the fearless retconning of Resurrections goes further faster, and its meta-comedy, which touches heavily on authorship and the merit of superfluous sequels, makes those post hoc rationalizations more smug than smart.

Polygon, Joshua Rivera

Casting the previous films as in-world video games allows The Matrix Resurrections to function as a refreshingly heavy-handed rebuke of the IP-driven reboot culture that produced the film, where the future is increasingly viewed through the franchise lenses of the past, trapping fans in corporate-controlled dream worlds where their fandom is constantly rewarded with new product.

Surprisingly romantic

The Hollywood Reporter, John DeForge

Machine guns, flying robots and pods of goo notwithstanding, some of the picture’s most engaging scenes are those in which Neo/Thomas interacts with Trinity in that world, where she’s a married mother named Tiffany, and tries to coax her into remembering the life they once shared.

Entertainment Weekly, Joshua Rothkopf

Resurrections does eclipse its predecessors for full-on, kick-you-in-the-heart romance: Reeves and Moss, comfortable with silences, lean into an adult intimacy, so rare in blockbusters, that’s more thrilling than any roof jump (though those are pretty terrific too). Their motorbiking through an exploding city, one of them clutching the other, could be the most defiantly sexy scene of a young year.

The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw

The Matrix Resurrections has a degree of charm as a love story of middle age, and usually returning action franchises give their aging male lead a younger female co-star. Not here: it’s a pleasure to see Moss return, but a shame to see her given so little interesting to do.

The Matrix Resurrections hits theaters and HBO Max Dec. 22.