I.
Amid the many resurrections that take place in the latest installment of The Matrix franchise, perhaps the most important element that’s been left for dead is the now-iconic visual style that defined the original trilogy. The Matrix Resurrections cinematographer Daniele Massaccesi attributes this to director Lana Wachowski’s newfound love of natural light, an ironic twist for a film series set in an era where light from the sun has been blocked out by chemical warfare.
What this new, warm and naturalistic look seems to say is that the simulated world of the matrix and its programming are essentially a mirror for us in our current time. Natural light is an algorithm in the matrix, and if these images crafted by Wachowski and Massaccesi are deemed “natural,” then any distance between the audience’s reality and the world of the matrix has disappeared, dissolving into one continuous, computer concocted simulation. Yet, as connected to our current time as Resurrections appears, it is precisely a lack of connection that haunts the film, which is premised on a story of human love and intimacy. As much as the themes of fate and undying love are called upon to bring the audience in, the lack of distance brought on by this new visual style seems to do more to push them away.
II.
Consider the use of film noir genre tropes in the original Matrix. We find our protagonist, Neo, being led into a cat and mouse game of chase by paranoia-inducing calls and cryptic messages on his computer. A seemingly endless supply of men in black suits penetrate and fill any and all public and private places, connected through earpieces and a hidden conspiracy. Meanwhile, the pale green haze that hangs over the world of the matrix adds to the contrast between the washed-out mid-tones and the dark, sharp blacks, desaturating the sense of moral right and wrong and placing the audience’s perception of time in retrograde. We believe that the film is occurring somewhere in the past, though it is actually in the future.
Film noir provides the visual cues for us to make this connection, and thus, we gain distance from the subject matter being discussed, even if, or maybe precisely because it is an illusion. Temporal distance is crucial in its ability to help the audience suspend disbelief. Much like the choice between red and blue pill, our ability to enjoy the film requires the noir-esque tropes of Bill Pope’s original Matrix cinematography to make us feel in control over what we’re being told.
III.
Why is it difficult for audiences to believe in the world of Matrix Resurrections? The matrix is a system that requires the belief of the human mind to function properly. Film is a medium that creates belief through artifice. So long as audiences are seduced by the artifice of the film, the concept behind the film produces a closed loop, manufacturing the type of belief that the machines in the film required to keep the matrix running smoothly.
What Lana Wachowski may have failed to consider is the way that Resurrections plays fast and loose with calling attention to its own artifice, using parody in a way that feels disingenuous. The film is not a documentary but wishes to be more “real” than its three predecessors by using their original imagery as mechanisms for meta-commentary. What the change in visual style signals is a renunciation of the belief that made the stakes so high in the original Matrix.
In the original trilogy, we were told that the matrix was a lie, a dangerous form of control that needed to be destroyed in order to free the minds of humankind. Employing tropes from film noir helped signal a shift in time which gave us distance from the matrix’s narrative world. With this distance, we gained a semblance of control over what we saw, and this allowed us to believe in the importance of the protagonist’s mission. In Resurrections, we lose this distance, and thus, our ability to believe, and without belief, we also lose the moral implications against the machine-made world of the matrix.
An important example of how this affects the new storyline is through an accusation leveled by Resurrections character Bugs at the original trilogy character Naobi. Naobi, who is now the General in charge of the human colony, IO, is mocked by Bugs for spending time and resources on cultivating agriculture outside of the matrix. “You care more about growing fruit than freeing minds,” Bugs says. Here we have a recognizable social construction-versus-materialist conflict that was less pervasive in the original films. Although the original Morpheus and then-Commander Captain Lock once quarreled over whether to entrust Neo with a ship, arguing over the viability of believing in the Oracle’s prophecy, both were primarily interested in the survival of humanity, whereas now, in a time of peace, Bugs voices a distaste for the type of menial labor that human survival requires.
What the peacetime inhabitants of the new human colony seem to realize, save General Naobi, is that the joys of power come more easily and gratuitously inside of the matrix, not outside of it. This has immense implications for the franchise’s original protagonist, Neo, a character whose sole existence was once based on a prophetic mandate to save humanity by deconstructing the matrix. In Resurrections, he finds that the matrix is no longer a source of imprisonment, but freedom.
IV.
At the end of the film, Neo and Trinity confront the newly appointed matrix designer, The Analyst, from a position of power, Trinity knocking him across the room and dismantling his computer-coded jaw. Instead of giving the audience cause to believe that the hours of choreographed action sequences held some sway in ending the decades-long saga of computer-simulated slavery for hundreds of thousands of people, they smirkingly suggest that they’ll simply be making some changes to his world. One of the final moments of dialogue in the film presents the possibility of painting the sky with rainbows. Those of us who have witnessed the corporate embrace of Pride Week will have felt this to be an eerily similar conclusion, the outward appearance of a problem solved.
Unlike the film noir genre tropes and green-tinted aesthetics that produced an icy, believable antagonist worth fighting against, the warm color palette of Resurrections thaws the concept of mental slavery into a lukewarm puddle from which the audience can only see their own reflection. Though the original franchise was always a form of entertainment, the likes of which the computer-programmed matrix might have created itself if only for a two-hour time span, there was a distinct feeling that the film believed in the world it was depicting. With the parodic dismantling of the silver screen that shrouded the Matrix trilogy in mystery, perhaps now we might answer the question of whether a matrix can function properly if everyone is in on the joke? Or does it achieve an even stronger form of control by showing us the leather-clad, carefully coiffed reflections of ourselves that we’ve come to value so highly in our everyday screens and filters?