Warner Bros released a new trailer for the upcoming Matrix: Resurrections today, offering a few more tidbits to help us puzzle out how this film will continue the original trilogy's story despite its seemingly definitive ending. (We usually don't supply movie trailer breakdowns here at PC Gamer, but you may be surprised to find out that this little-known indie film series was actually the inspiration for Half-Life multiplayer mod smash hit The Specialists, so we feel pretty justified providing coverage.)
As with the initial trailer, there's a deliberate repetition of images and ideas from the original trilogy, especially the first movie. For example, the characters played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen, Jessica Henwick, Telma Hopkins, and Jonathan Groff superficially resemble Morpheus, Switch, the Oracle, and Agent Smith respectively, and it seems that Neo is reliving that arc of the first movie, of waking up from a previous life into a new reality.
Also of note to me was a ruined, baroque interior with scenes from the first Matrix playing on a projector in the background. It strongly resembles the room where Neo was first offered the red and blue pills by Morpheus, and in the first trailer you can see it playing host to a cataclysmic shootout.
In this trailer, Telma Hopkins' character, named "Bug" according to IMDB, warns that "maybe this isn't the story we think it is." Whoever it may be directed to in the actual film, it seems to be aimed at the viewer here.
I'm inclined to believe that Lana Wachowski is pulling a Metal Gear Solid 2 on us, this deliberate, almost playful repetition of old images in a new story setting up expectations in line with what came before, only to be subverted and taken in a different direction. I'm curious what the twist will be in the Matrix Resurrections, how the story of the chosen one taking on the machines on behalf of humanity will be subverted.
The Matrix 4 is looking like another worthy entry in Keanu Reeves' late career renaissance. You always wonder how a distant reboot/sequel of this nature could live up to a legendary original, but I've got a lot of hope that this one will wind up less a Jurassic World and more a Twin Peaks: The Return.
The movie is out on December 22, both in theaters and on HBO Max. We should at least get the answer to one important question If you die in The Matrix Online, do you die in the movies?
