10 Movies Everyone Wanted To Love (But Nobody Did)
2. The Matrix Resurrections
The Matrix's impact on action cinema over the last 25 years is undeniable, and though the two immediate sequels proved relatively divisive, the prospect of a fourth Matrix was a tough one for fans to resist.
Between Lana Wachowski being back in the director's chair and both Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss returning to star, there was much hope that The Matrix Resurrections would put the dormant franchise back on firm footing.
And there are certainly those who respect Wachowski for taking such a bold, meta swing on this movie - it's undeniably ballsy to literally criticise the studio funding the movie, Warner Bros., within the movie itself, while having such a blatant contempt for the never-ending mining of IP for Content.
Yet even the film's more amusingly cutesy flourishes can't compensate for the generally unsatisfying, muddled narrative, the absence of both Hugo Weaving and Lawrence Fishburne as Agent Smith and Morpheus, and the thunderously mediocre action sequences.
In terms of technical execution, this felt like an imitation Matrix movie directed by a hack-for-hire filmmaker - not the original director returning to their glorious creation with a colossal budget.
It's a curious film, for sure, but ultimately one that again saw the series fall far short of the peerless original.