Davis Aurini - The Matrix Resurrections: Pulse of the Zeitgheist

Dec. 31, 2021 - Davis Aurini

32:39

The Matrix Resurrections: Pulse of the Zeitgheist

My review of the new Matrix movie, Resurrections. This movie's getting a lot of hate - but I'll be honest with you folks, it's pretty darned good. It not only redeems the second and third - it's arguably far more intelligent and nuanced than the first. More importantly, it makes a profound statement about where our zeitgheist is at - and brothers, it's all good news.

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	So the other night, I sat down to watch Matrix Resurrections.
	I wasn't expecting very much, and you know what?
	It turns out it's pretty damned good.
	So like I said, I went into this movie with very low expectations.
	In fact, you might even say that I was hate watching it.
	Just maybe.
	And as somebody whose entire sense of fashion was derived from the original movie, I was a little bit niffed that they were making another one, an obvious, unnecessary reboot, which seems to be all that we make these days.
	I really wasn't expecting much from it.
	And yet I was blown away.
	I was completely primed to hate this movie.
	And I thought it was so good that it actually redeemed Matrix 2 and Matrix 3. Reloaded and whatever the other one is.
	It actually made those ones good.
	It was that good.
	And yeah, this is going to be unpopular opinion.
	Most people don't seem to like this movie.
	And so, without spoilers, because I do think that you should go and watch this movie yourself.
	So with a relatively spoiler-free review, I'm going to break down for you why I liked Matrix Resurrections.
	Now the very first point is that we all know this movie never should have been made.
	And the movie knows that as well.
	In fact, that is a major theme of the entire thing.
	Let me put it like this.
	If you were a fan of the original Star Wars growing up, and that drove you to study martial arts, to practice meditation, then you understood the movies.
	If you like the original Star Wars and you decide to dress up like a Jedi and scream like a 16-year-old girl while waving around a plastic lightsaber, then you didn't understand the movies.
	In fact, you completely missed the point of the movies.
	And if you're going to go see The Matrix Resurrections while fully jabbed with a face mask on, you don't understand what The Matrix is about.
	And Matrix Resurrections, it's heavily implied that if you are super excited for another stupid kung fu movie or for some half-boiled philosophy presented in movie format, then you do not get the movie.
	And those people are being heavily criticized in it.
	So the movie lampshades a lot of things.
	One of the things it lampshades is the fact that Lawrence Fishburne isn't in it.
	It lampshades this brilliantly.
	So you've got Abdul Martin II playing Morpheus.
	And one of it, his first line to Neo is word for word the exact same line that Morpheus said.
	Except instead of saying it with a dramatic, gothic, lightning-backed room, He says it's in a public watchman.
	And he outright comments that, yeah, it doesn't work too well without the lightning, does it?
	The movie's very self-aware in that sense.
	And so he's not trying to play Lawrence Fishburne.
	It would have been really hokey if he were trying to play Lawrence Fishburne.
	He's playing a new Morpheus.
	He's playing a Morpheus with a different backstory, a recreated Morpheus.
	It's sort of like the Doctor and Doctor Who.
	He's not playing the same doctor as last time, it's a new one.
	They lampshade that, they go with it, and it actually works.
	Then there's Neo, which, if you've seen the trailers, Neo is caught back in the Matrix all over again.
	In fact, he's not just caught in the Matrix.
	This new Matrix that he's in, he's a video game designer who designed the Matrix trilogy of video games.
	And he thinks that what happened to him is he psychologically fell into his own video game.
	Turns out that those video games were real life.
	And the idea that he's just a game designer, that is the illusion.
	And so everything is constantly being lampshaded throughout all of this.
	And one of the early comments about it, about how Neo is being forced to make a Matrix 4.
	Neo says, you promised me that we would move on from the Matrix.
	I did the trilogy.
	The story is complete.
	Nothing more needs to be said.
	You promised me.
	Yeah, but corporate wants a Matrix 4.
	And so you're going to make a Matrix 4.
	One of the characters says to him, They took your story, something that meant so much to people like me, and what is it?
	And they turned it into something trivial.
	That's what the Matrix does.
	It weaponizes every idea, every dream.
	That is what the Hollywood machine does.
	That is what modernity does.
	It takes meaningful stories.
	It takes human creation and mass markets it.
	It turns it into something cynical.
	It takes a beautiful story and then abuses it.
	Shoves diversity into it.
	Shoves messaging into it.
	Turns it into something they can sell on a lunchbox.
	And the Matrix 4 is completely aware of this.
	And it's hating the people that want to buy the lunchbox.
	It's like you shouldn't want to be the lunchbox.
	should want to self-actualize.
	Somebody asked Neo, what's it like being a great video game maker?
	You must be very proud of yourself.
	And he says, well, I guess we entertained a lot of kids.
	You know, here, stupid me, I thought I was doing something that mattered.
	I thought I was creating art.
	And I made the corporation a few million dollars and I entertained a lot of kids.
	You can see this, the whole movie starts with this reflection upon the past 20 years of like, what did we even accomplish?
	Right?
	This Gen X energy of just, geez, I worked so hard, I seemed like we were going somewhere, and then the whole thing got captured, got captured by the Matrix again, and I guess we entertained a lot of kids, we made some fun video games, but to what end?
	Even the people that are fans of the Matrix trilogy, half of them just think the fight scenes are really NETO, and the other half have the most absurd interpretations of the whole thing.
	They the original Matrix series was about crypto-fascism, it was about how capitalist exploitation and it's like, no, shut up, shut up, stop shoving your poli-sci degree, your sociology degree into this movie, okay?
	Like whatever contemporary thing that you're trying to do, it's like, stop.
	Just please stop.
	No death of the author.
	Try and understand what the author was actually trying to create.
	And take it on its own merits.
	But nope.
	Nope, we're all hopped up on our modern buzzwords and everything needs to be interpreted through that lens in some vain sense of self-aggrandization.
	The movie is well aware that it shouldn't exist and that the people who want it to exist the most are the people that won't get it.
	It was a movie made under duress and yet it's a fantastic movie.
	One of the most beautiful bits of cinematography I've ever seen is in this movie.
	The new people trying to wake up Neo, trying to get him out of the new Matrix, are explaining to him that, yeah, yeah, everything, like the Matrix trilogy actually happened.
	It wasn't video games, it was your life.
	And at one point, they walked through a torn open movie screen filming the original Matrix, which is just beautiful, beautiful storytelling.
	So yeah, if you don't think this movie should have been made, you're actually the person it was made for, not the people who were begging for it to be made.
	So one of the main themes of it is Gen X despondency.
	You know, what have we accomplished aside from entertaining a few kids?
	It's also comfort in slavery.
	The Matrix was made by, what was it, 1999?
	And there's this huge desire, you know, yet Fight Club, yet the Matrix, he had all these different movies.
	There's generational energy saying that we wanted to be free.
	And now, 20 years later, where are we?
	Neo gets out of the Matrix.
	And then he finds out that the crew that got him out of the Matrix, half are human, half are robots, half are machines.
	And he asks, wait, the machines are on our side right now?
	And they say, not all seek to control.
	Just as not all want to be free.
	He runs into one of his old companions from the good old days.
	And they say, and this is not just a reference to the story of the original Matrix movies, but it's a reference to when the original Matrix movies came out.
	They say, everything was simpler back then.
	People wanted to be free.
	Sometimes it feels like people gave up.
	Like the Matrix one.
	The 2000s saw this move towards greater liberty for people.
	Less social control.
	Less planning out our entire lives.
	The internet was exploding.
	We could explore all these new ideas, read any book that we wanted, network with people all over the planet.
	And what happened to that?
	Where did the old wild west of the internet go?
	Now it's all captured in social media.
	Zuckerberg is building the metaverse to entrap everybody's souls.
	What happened to that?
	It used to be so simple.
	It used to be so simple.
	We were just rebelling against the centralized planned society.
	And now it's just sheer chaos and people are begging, begging for more tyranny.
	And this, this leads us to the villains in the Matrix, in the new one.
	See, in the original, you had the architect.
	Right?
	1990s.
	Oh, we've figured out civilization.
	It's the end of history.
	Son, daughter, you will go and get this degree.
	You will buy the house with the white picket fence.
	You will get married and have 2.4 children.
	You will do all these things.
	Your life is planned out.
	There's nothing else to do.
	The architect.
	And the villains in the original were the agents.
	Anybody could be an agent.
	You never knew when you're going to run into one.
	But the agents were, well, absolute slaves to the system.
	Absolute believers in the status quo in the Matrix.
	They were highly talented individuals.
	But now we've gone from the world of Clinton and George Bush to, like I said, a world ruled by people like Zuckerberg.
	So instead of an architect, we have an analyst.
	The great villain of this series is a psychiatrist.
	You're not upset, are you, Comrade?
	Maybe you need to take more blue pills.
	Better not take those red pills.
	They could get you into trouble.
	Take a blue pill, calm down, just do what you're supposed to do every day.
	Don't question.
	Just be happy.
	You'll own nothing and be happy.
	Don't worry.
	I've got everything under control.
	You just follow all of my rules.
	I will diagnose you without input from you.
	I'm going to dictate what your mental illnesses are, and you will believe it.
	And the villains, you got the analysts at the top, instead of agents, you still have agents, but they're not the primary antagonist.
	Instead, you've got bots.
	Because the analysts figured out that, you know, these agents are really expensive.
	Training them up, you know, having a functional legal system.
	Now, that's really difficult.
	Instead, instead of having laws and cops and enforcement when you break the rules, instead of all of that nonsense, we're just going to replace 10% of the population with bots.
	And these bots will be used to modulate public opinion.
	Encourage obedience in everybody.
	Why spend all the money training an agent?
	Why spend all the money on a court system on right and wrong and discovery when we could just give you a seven-day ban from social media for saying hate speech and then let you back on and you will become your own police.
	So instead of the frightening agents, we've got the zombie horde.
	And by the way, folks, you're not catching the connection to COVID just yet.
	The only people wearing face masks in the movie are bots.
	Then another really interesting angle, this is just a small one, but I really liked it, was the generational dynamics.
	So you've got the most Gen X person that ever lived, Neo, Keanu Reeves, and he winds up leading a team of Zoomers.
	Now, as badly, like, Gen X got completely disenfranchised, and half of us were murdered in the womb.
	We are a small generation that has no control over anything whatsoever, and especially at this point, like we're getting older, and it's like, again, what have we accomplished?
	The millennials were thrown into debt, provided no culture, and the best they can do is be victims most of the time.
	They're a hero generation with nothing to be heroic about.
	And then you've got the Zoomers, who are, you know, like they're getting the end of the human centipede, the absolute leavings of the society the boomers created.
	They should be the most depressed.
	And yet, one of the really weird things that's happening, the old conservatism is dead.
	The GOP is an absolute joke.
	Like the whole bushism, all of that.
	That is absolutely dead on the vine.
	And somehow, conservatism became the new counterculture.
	Simultaneously, the left has become completely, the only ones being effective are neoliberals, and they don't believe in anything.
	They don't stand for anything.
	And the radical left, the neo-Marxists, these people are being exposed bit by bit, right?
	Everybody, just about everybody is opposed to critical race theory being taught in classrooms.
	And so the left, which is normally the forward-looking group, are the most despondent.
	While the conservatives have become the cheerful radicals.
	And so you've got these Zoomers coming up now.
	These Zoomers and young millennials that should be utterly hopeless.
	All you have to hope for is ADHD medication, unlimited pornography, and, you know, like you can be whatever gender you want.
	You're just not allowed to have sex with real people because you might get COVID.
	But you can look at all the porn that you want.
	And yet these kids have some energy to them.
	There's this conversation where they're going into battle for the first time with Neo leading them.
	And one of them says, it's like, oh man, this is a dream.
	The guy's a legend.
	And the other one says, didn't his whole crew die on his last mission?
	The other guy's like, yeah, I guess you're right, but I'm okay with that.
	At least it's exciting.
	Yes, the current situation in the world is completely hopeless.
	And yet there's a strange, strange sort of optimism that we might be able to fix it, isn't there, folks?
	So those generational dynamics, finally seeing Gen X getting to do what they're supposed to be doing.
	Right?
	The last nomad generation, they were the ones leading World War II.
	And this has Kiana Reeves in a similar role, actually connecting with the youth.
	And I like that energy.
	I like what that is saying about the zeitgeist.
	There's another angle I want to cover briefly.
	That in this movie, Neo is no longer the one.
	And I know people have complained about this.
	But was he ever actually the one?
	In the first movie, Morpheus believed in him, but he never believed in himself.
	In the second movie, the architect explains to him that, you see, the way the matrix works, the way any system of reasoning works, is there's always going to be that one bit that destroys the whole system, that doesn't fit in to the system.
	Whether you're talking about Virgil's incompleteness theorem of mathematics or any system of categorization that bureaucracy tries to implement, it doesn't matter.
	Reality is bigger than any finite logical system.
	And that was the problem with the Matrix.
	And so there would always be a one, the exception to the rule, that one misfit that just did not fit into the system, and that thing that broke the old system would be utilized to create the new system.
	So it wasn't that Neo was the one.
	It's that he happened to be the one, but anybody could have been.
	And so, yeah, in the new one, he is still the one.
	Other people can be the one as well.
	We're all called to the life of a saint.
	And then there's the ultimate goal of the new Matrix.
	The first matrix wanted to keep people inside of it so they could serve as batteries for the machine overlords.
	In this matrix, they've got a new goal.
	And that is to keep men and women separated.
	If man and woman, if yin and yang, are able to come together and dance, the creative potential is limitless.
	But to maintain the system of control, the analyst needs to keep them separated.
	Separate man and woman, and we can harvest energy off of you.
	Here's your social media attention.
	Here's your porn.
	Work at the corporation.
	Be a good battery for the system.
	Just don't you dare get married.
	Don't you dare have an intimate relationship that is stronger than your bond to the government, stronger than your bond to the matrix.
	And to ensure that the two of you never get together, we've got an army of bots.
	We've got them populating Twitter and Facebook.
	They're going to report on you if you say anything inappropriate.
	And they're going to influence you with their AI-generated opinions to keep men and women hating one another.
	Because as long as men and women hate one another, we can harvest energy off of you.
	The movie is absolutely brilliant.
	It is absolutely a really uplifting statement about the zeitgeist, about where we are in the present moment.
	The fact that the fact that this movie got made means that the people trying to maintain this system of control are on the way out.
	We are going to win, fellas.
	Which is why it's absolutely bizarre to me that this movie's getting so much hate.
	I've got three speculations as to why people don't like this movie.
	Number one, it's an unnecessary remake, and we're very burned out on unnecessary remakes.
	I get that.
	Especially after the, oh god, the Marvel franchise, just the same stupid movie again and again and again.
	It's awful.
	But that said, there have been some really good remakes coming out.
	Like, just as people realize, just as the shift is happening that, yeah, we need to stop remaking movies.
	Let's try making a new movie.
	We've had a whole bunch of really good remakes come out.
	Doom, haven't seen it yet, but I hear it's fantastic.
	The new Ghostbusters.
	Not feminist Ghostbusters, the new Ghostbusters.
	That one's fantastic.
	You've got Blade Runner was supposed to be pretty good.
	So it's almost like that creative spark is back.
	Right?
	That the past 20 years has just been this descent into, like, first we had Bush with his warmongering.
	Then we had Obama with no hope, no change.
	And then we had Trump the lame duck.
	Now we've got Biden.
	And yet there's creative energy reasserting itself.
	Like as the things get tighter, the control, the commodification of all culture, of all spirituality, there's something happening.
	There's creative energy returning.
	So that's my first suspicion.
	The movie was very meta.
	It's very aware that it's an unnecessary sequel, and people jump to conclusions about it.
	Number two, the second reason people don't like this movie is identity politics.
	On our side.
	I think people are rushing to judgment about Lena Wachowski's creation because of who and what Lena is.
	And I'm sure, like, listen, Lena is immersed in Hollywood, surrounded by Hollywood culture, and probably has pretty predictable opinions about Drump and Elon Musk.
	And has probably posed some dumb tweets about that stuff.
	Alright?
	Whatever, whatever.
	Doesn't mean, doesn't mean that Lena cannot tap into the zeitgeist.
	Does not mean that they're creatively bankrupt.
	There's really something to this movie.
	And judging the movie based upon the creator, I don't think that is fair in this case.
	We're the ones doing identity politics.
	In fact, The fact that everybody calls Jessica Henwick's character the social justice warrior.
	How is she a social justice warrior?
	There's no feminism in this movie.
	I mean, they literally make fun of it.
	The people that claim the Matrix was about crypto-fascism are being ridiculed.
	The radical leftists are, to a certain degree, they are the villains.
	They are the bots.
	They are the brainwashed.
	Oh, she's got blue hair.
	So what, dude?
	Do you remember how we used to dress?
	Which is another nice thing.
	Back in the original movies, you had Neo and Trinity dressing like complete edge lords.
	And in this one, he's wearing a wool coat.
	And she's wearing just a regular biker jacket.
	Right?
	Pretty down to earth.
	They leave the crazy Matrix clothing for the kids.
	Right?
	And so, yeah, some kids got blue hair these days.
	I know, it's the end of the world.
	They're all social justice warriors, right?
	No.
	Bugs is a great character.
	But the final reason I think that people jump to conclusions about this movie is because we've been inundated with all sorts of films that are, they go to extremely great lengths to create a believable environment.
	There's a series called Invincible, which, while extremely well written, is everything that we should hate about modern movies.
	It's nothing but America is evil, fathers are terrible, you should hate white people, listen to all women.
	It's absolutely awful.
	And yet there's so many people that are moderate, people that are generally opposed to critical theory that seem to like it for some reason.
	Whereas I watched, I'm like, this is the most critical theory movie or TV series I've ever seen.
	I think it's because Invincible spends so much time world building.
	Now, quite frankly, the world building doesn't actually make sense if you think about it for five minutes.
	But because there's so much time devoted to this is how he balances being a superhero and going to high school.
	This is how that works.
	Ad nauseum.
	Because there's all this world building.
	People overlook the implausibility of the world.
	While in Matrix Resurrection, there's almost no world building.
	The movie is actually about the metaphors.
	But the Matrix has always been about that.
	Let's be frank, using humans as batteries is really, really stupid.
	And what were the red pill and the blue pill anyway?
	They actually explain in this movie that when Morpheus said to Neo, you know, blue pill, you go back to your regular life, red pill, you find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.
	Yeah, they were sugar pills.
	The pills were not about activating the special effects to get him out of the Matrix.
	The pills were about his choice.
	You can't force somebody out of the Matrix.
	You can't force red pill somebody.
	They will reject it.
	They will react violently.
	You need to get their consent.
	You need to get them to agree that they want to know the truth.
	So even in universe, Red Pill and Blue Pill are purely metaphorical.
	And the movie itself, it's purely metaphorical.
	Right?
	Like, no, it doesn't really make sense that the robots are using humans for batteries.
	It doesn't really make sense that this, that, and the other thing.
	The world building is nonsense.
	It is about what all these metaphors represent.
	So if you go into this movie, understanding that this is a statement about where we are as a culture and how we might be able to fight back against this creeping commercialization, this creeping consensual analytical tyranny that's being built for us.
	And if you just enjoy the visuals, feel the energy of the movie.
	I think you'll enjoy it.
	So with that said, carpe futurum, teni traditum.

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