"The Matrix Resurrections": This is what the new trailer reveals

Luca Fontana

7.12.2021

Translation: machine translated

Warner Bros. has released a new "Matrix" trailer. Reading out what the trailer reveals is like playing the lottery: Lucky. I'll give it a shot anyway.

"It's like déja vu, and yet it all seems wrong," says Bugs, played by Jessica Henwick, in the new "The Matrix Resurrections" trailer. I could say the exact same thing. You see, the new trailer mirrors the old movies. Over and over again. And yet somehow it doesn't.

What the fuck is going on?

Familiar, but different. The trailer delivers on the promise director Lana Wachowski made to Collider: "I can't tell you what this movie is about, but I can tell you what it's not about: it's certainly not another sequel, but something on its own that wittily embraces the previous 'Matrix' films. We're turning the rules of blockbusters on their head."

The scant three minutes don't leave us entirely perplexed, then. They're enough to come up with two theories, after all. Let's speculate.

The controversial ending of "The Matrix Revolutions"...

We remember: at the end of "The Matrix Revolutions," Neo gives his life to defeat Agent Smith, a program that even the Matrix could no longer control. In return, the Architect, the builder of the Matrix, promises him peace between humanity and the machines - and the option that anyone and everyone who wants to leave the Matrix can.

"How long will the peace last?" the Architect asks the Oracle at the end of the film.

"As long as it lasts," the Oracle replies.

Thus ended the sixth Matrix cycle. You see, in the Architect's ultra-complicated explanations at the end of The Matrix Reloaded, we had learned that Neo, the Chosen One, is actually a product of the machines. His purpose: not to lead the human rebellion and bring victory over the machines, as initially thought. Instead, he was to end the Matrix cycle whenever the human population outside the Matrix cracked the 100,000 mark.

Neo's five predecessors each ended the cycle by selecting a handful of humans to repopulate Zion. This is the human capital outside of the Matrix. The rest were killed by the machines. This ensured the continuation of humanity without compromising the safety of the machines. A cruel win-win situation. And whenever the Zion population became too large again, the machines cloned a new Chosen One to end the cycle as usual. In each case, the Oracle's role was to feed the Chosen One just the right information that would lead him back to the Architect at just the right moment, where he would learn the truth about his role.

What the machines could never control, however: Neo's personality. In fact, his sixth reincarnation - movie Neo - is the only one who initially refused to cooperate with the machines. This ushered in the third Matrix movie. It took his final sacrifice to secure a crumbling peace between man and machine, which now leads us to "The Matrix Resurrections."

Theory 1: We are in the seventh version of the Matrix.

What we see in the trailer is the seventh Matrix cycle. In it, Neo is no longer the Neo we know from the old trilogy - he's dead, after all - but his seventh reincarnation. This is supported by the fact that actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who plays a young Morpheus, talks about constantly recurring "loops" at the beginning of the trailer.

What would be new, though, is that Neo remembers his previous life, at least fragmentarily. Why? Unclear. Perhaps the machines are attempting for the first time to clone not only his body, but his personality as well. Maybe it's the resistance fighters, led by a noticeably aged Niobe - again embodied by Jada Pinkett Smith - who are trying to "reactivate" Neo. She does talk about war in the trailer, after all.

Or maybe it's Neo's subconscious itself, which didn't die in the fight with Agent Smith after all and is looking for a way back into the Matrix.

Regardless, there's something the trailer hints at pretty clearly: it's no longer Neo who's the chosen one, but Trinity, who actually died in the third part as well. And while in the old trilogy it was Trinity who had to believe in Neo to fulfill the Chosen One prophecy, this time it's Neo who has to believe in Trinity.

Theory 2: We never left the Matrix - ever.

Again, we are in the seventh Matrix cycle. But: Neo is not simply the seventh reincarnation. In this new peace, the Chosen One wouldn't even be needed. The cycle has been broken. The seventh matrix was supposed to be the final matrix.

Still, something is happening. Perhaps the machines are at war with each other. That would threaten the very existence of humanity. Or perhaps the remaining humans outside the Matrix are still at war with the machines. Some party may be trying to reproduce Neo... But this time, not his body, which would then be connected to the Matrix, as it was in the previous six cycles.

This time, everything would be reversed. Familiar, but different.

His personality could be reproduced in the Matrix, with bits and pieces of the old code - the weird memories in the trailer. So that he remembers his old alliance with the machines and is cooperative. Or of his bond with the humans outside the Matrix. Depending on the party tampering with his mind. Only then is his mind to be connected to his body outside the Matrix recovered at the end of "The Matrix Revolutions".

To what end? That one body was special: it was the only Neo clone that could use the Chosen One powers outside of the Matrix. That's what could give it the edge in the fight against the machines. Or humanity. Or both. What remains less clear in this theory, however, is Trinity's role as the new Chosen One. And anyway, why did Neo and Trinity age, but Morpheus yo-yo?

The theory leaves room for another assumption: What if Neo was able to use his powers outside the Matrix because he never left it in the first place? Because the Matrix in the movie is actually a Matrix within the Matrix proper? A sort of matryoshka matrix?

Bam.

We can spin it any way we want. Based on the trailer, guessing the exact plot of the movie is like playing the lottery: The numbers are a given, but picking the six right ones is pure luck. No matter. Let's keep speculating. What are your theories?

"The Matrix Resurrections" opens in theaters on December 23, 2021.

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.» more

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