The Matrix Resurrections: Is My Palace My Prison?

You probably realize this if you clicked it, but this piece is going to have spoilers for the new Matrix movie. If you haven’t seen the movie, I would strongly recommend you close this now.

Really, all the “I can’t tell you what happens” surrounding The Matrix Resurrections is about the first half-hour. Nothing that comes after really qualifies as “spoiler” stuff, because nothing after that is all that unexpected. The Matrix’s existential metaphor gets updated for our current state of despair. A new generation cover band plays all the self-referential hits, and Neo and Trinity find each other again.

It was fun, and I loved that the film shouted its points of view at the top of its lungs without actually turning to the camera and didactically reciting widely agreed-upon points at the viewer, as is the current fashion. I appreciated that its answer to all-consuming despair was radical, reckless love. I think that’s the only sane answer to our sick world.

But that first half hour is really juicy, right? That’s what really got me thinking.

The Matrix Resurrections treats us to an opening half-hour of meta-fiction about why the movie exists (contractual obligation), the weight of legacy (crushing), the projection and ownership complex of fans (unbearable), and the sinking feeling that nobody got it.

The new management of the Matrix has constructed a new hell for Neo: success. Rather than being an ordinary programmer living a regular middle-class American life (the audience of 2021 would kill for that, after all), Neo is now a revered designer in a world where “The Matrix” is a beloved series of video games that he created.

Resurrections’ portrayal of the gaming business, and of fans, is brutal and entirely earned. Neo’s surrounded by sycophants and super-fans who only identify with his creation on the shallowest level, and only in relation to themselves. As we watch the highlights of soul-sucking, buzzword-addled brainstorm meetings, it dawns upon us that everyone involved in the “new Matrix” product Neo is obligated to create (“or they’ll do it themselves”) is trapped by it.

The unbearable super-fan character is particularly trapped by his own fandom for The Matrix, which according to him is about guns and bullet time and *makes gun noises*. He isn’t necessarily wrong; he just loves The Matrix so much that he’s exactly the wrong person to ask about what to put in a new Matrix.

And as a fan who loves a lot of things more than a normal amount, it got me thinking about us nerds, and the way we’re driven by our fascination with this stuff. Resurrections has quite a bit in common with “kill your masters and go outside” franchise films like Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0, or Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that creators feel so trapped by these massive fictional universes that this exhausted sentiment is starting to leak out into the fiction itself. Speaking more soullessly, we could call them IP.

Works that were dismissed as “nerd crap” 20 years ago— science fiction, fantasy, superheroes, even anime/manga— won the mass media. It happened a while ago. They might not have attained the “legitimacy” or validation that the nerds of old so desperately sought, but that didn’t matter much, because they achieved total market domination instead. And now they’re in style, promising prospects in a world where all the stuff that ever existed is IP to be exploited for Content up to and beyond its expiration date; for as long as the market will sustain it.

Neo’s game development office exists in our world, 2021. Nobody wants to take any risks on anything new— Neo’s “new” game appears to be in development hell— and there’s this deep well of IP yet to be exploited or re-exploited. So the developer gets trapped working on a soulless, aimless, inevitable nothing that will nevertheless definitely sell at least X-million copies. (If you have a PS5 or Xbox Series X, I recommend the “The Matrix Awakens” tech demo for another angle on this part of the film.)

You could argue that Resurrections hypocritically prefaces itself with a satire of the exact thing it’s going to do in earnest for the next two hours. And I don’t think that’s terribly clever on its own, because I watch enough anime to have seen this card played about a million times. But what choice did anyone have here? Lana Wachowski had to make another Matrix, or They were gonna make it themselves. That’s right, Lana, we’re gonna Dragon Ball GT you. Trapped.

I couldn’t help but think about it as I watched Neo and Trinity fly away in triumph at the very end of the movie. Not only was this all contractually obligated, so was this moment; this visual that in the language of fandom explicitly promises a sequel. Neo and Trinity might have broken out of the prison and taken the keys with them, but we couldn’t.

I think about needless sequels and exhausted creators and I say, “But, Black Dynamite! I enjoy and consume some of this stuff!” And I think of Neo’s super-fan. Am I like this guy? Probably, at least a little. I do love a good explosion.

But I have always felt that the act of being a fan is a lot more fun when it is constructive. I’ve been writing about the stuff I love for a very long time; I like to think of it as sharing with friends. Kawaiikochans is a product of my love of anime and game culture; it is inherently fannish.

I met one of my best friends on an overnight line to meet Shigeru Miyamoto. His toddler loves to see me; he says “Dave! Dave!” I’ve gotten so much good out of being a fan— it’s brought so much genuine happiness to my life-- that it’s hard for me to see it as a prison. It’s always been my palace.

As Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino would say, “Real is hell.” For most of us, the real world is tough. It’s mercilessly crushing millions of us in its gears as we speak, especially as the pandemic reaches its “let ‘em die” stage. Even as I’ve been lucky enough to do nerd stuff for some of my living— and when your hobby becomes your work, it’s still work, trust me— spending time in those other worlds has always been a valuable respite.

It is natural for an exhausted creator to just ask obsessed fans to stop caring and please go outside. But the creator is exhausted by the realities of producing their fiction. (And also very financially well-off and able to enjoy so many of the pleasures of Outside as much as they like.) The fan is exhausted by just plain old regular reality, and they’re coming to The Matrix Resurrections for a little relief. Both kinds of fatigue are real, and both creator and consumer need some refuge and healing. It’s why we’re not entitled to demand new work forever from an exhausted creator… even if they never finish their story.

But as a fan, what made me obsessive about, say, Gundam-- or vintage Sega arcade games, or The Last Dragon-- was originality, a unique, irreplaceable point of view, an emotional resonance. We’ll never get that out of deflated creators producing obligatory cash-ins for IP. I’m always looking for that spark of humanity, whether I see it in Ranking of Kings or, y’know, even Neil Breen.

So even after thinking long and hard about it, I must conclude: I might have too many Gundam model kits in my room, but I don’t feel trapped by my nerdy obsessions. They still bring me genuine joy. The Matrix Resurrections gave me something to mull over, and a terrifying mirror of what I could personally be as a being of raw consumption, lacking any self-awareness or maturity or compassion. Just a guy full of Content, without a heart. Let’s never wind up there, any of us.