The Matrix Resurrections Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

4. It's Hilariously Meta

Truly, you are not ready for how outrageously meta this movie is.

Given the frustrating uptick in cynical, nostalgia-soaked sequels, soft-reboots, and "reimaginings" of classic IP in recent years, Resurrections' first act in particular consists largely of Lana Wachowski poking fun at this very idea.

Beyond the many spoken references to the events of the original trilogy, they also appear on-screen - both as flashbacks and in-universe video clips - perhaps more than in any other sequel ever.

Hell, Warner Bros. is even literally namedropped at one point, and while so many franchises are kept busy mining their pasts for lazy nostalgia, here it feels like Wachowski basically wants to throw such an idea in the faces of both the audience and especially the studio.

Indeed, Resurrections is absolutely a direct sequel to Revolutions rather than any sort of The Force Awakes-esque passing-the-torch "legacy sequel," and the film makes great pains to clarify that early on.

That's not to say the film isn't somewhat reliant on the audience's connection to the past - it'd be impossible for a Matrix sequel not to be - but it basically gets to have its cake and eat it too, nodding to what came before while sneering at Hollywood's commodification of it.

This navel-gazing approach certainly won't work for everyone, but it does result in what is surely the funniest of all the Matrix films to date.