Now that The Matrix Revolutions’ first trailer has been uploaded to the real-world web that retains our world buzzing, it’s time to interrupt down Lana Wachowski’s imaginative and prescient for the following chapter of the Matrix franchise.

The movie’s trailer opens on Jefferson Airplane’s “Go Ask Alice” enjoying beneath a shot of an impossibly picturesque hilltop looming earlier than a cityscape as Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) sits down for a session together with his therapist (Neil Patrick Harris). The conspicuous means the sunshine within the scene catches the blue of the therapist’s glasses, and his use of the phrase “triggered” in response to Thomas’ description of his latest desires land as each an unsubtle nod to The Matrix’s blue and purple capsules, and the cultural meaning that’s become attached to the latter.

Thomas’ “dreams that aren’t just dreams”—visions of a world the place he can understand the underlying digital code that shapes actuality—make him query whether or not he’s dropping his thoughts, or if the world he is aware of may be an phantasm.

In a really fast collection of cuts, the trailer exhibits glimpses of Thomas/Neo reaching to catch a bullet, and likewise his being woke up within the apocalyptic “real” world seen within the authentic Matrix trilogy the place people linked to the simulation unknowingly reside their lives in tanks of goo as a part of the machine energy grid. A swarm of recent, spider-like sentinels greets the newly-awakened Thomas/Neo within the trailer, closely implying that Resurrections will decide up Neo’s story from the final movie regardless that the Thomas we’re launched to doesn’t at first appear to have any recollection of the Matrix.

The Matrix Revolutions ended with Neo brokering an unsteady truce between the Architect and the Oracle that meant an finish to the battle between people and machines. While the remainder of humanity was promised a chance to depart the Matrix in the event that they selected, Neo’s lifeless physique was taken away by the machines after his ultimate battle in opposition to Agent Smith. Whether Neo ended up being plugged again into the Matrix is likely one of the extra attention-grabbing questions looming over Resurrections, and the trailer makes and level of not definitively answering both means.

Tenuous as his grip on actuality is, Thomas returns to his lifetime of medicated mundanity that’s punctuated by an opportunity encounter with a girl (the returning Carrie-Ann Moss) who he can’t assist however surprise if he knew in one other life. Whether she herself is conscious of her Trinity identification from the earlier movies can also be unclear, although she feels the identical sense of déjà vu after assembly Thomas.

Even although he continues to take the blue capsules he’s prescribed, Thomas can’t assist however take discover of strange phenomena round him, like a flock of birds arranging itself into the form of the letter “o” or the quantity zero. Witnessing a bunch of youths staring into their telephones on an elevator seems to be the factor that pushes him over the sting and makes him resolve to cease taking his remedy, pointing to The Matrix Resurrections trying to include themes of psychological well being circumstances into its story. Whether or not this flip will land properly with audiences stays to be seen, however it appears to play an important position in how Thomas units himself on the trail to discovering the reality about his desires.

The trailer’s use of “Go Ask Alice” is timed excellent to hammer house how rabbits (along with the black cat from the start of the trailer) sign to Thomas that his unconscious is making an attempt to inform him one thing. Others, just like the bookseller sporting purple glasses (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) who provides Thomas a replica of Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, a mysterious Morpheus cosplayer (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who presents Thomas a purple capsule, and a blue-haired girl with a rabbit tattoo (Jessica Henwick) additionally appear to need to assist Thomas see the sunshine, actually and metaphorically.

After Thomas steps via a door of sunshine and emerges on the opposite aspect from a semi-liquid mirror, the trailer shifts gears and divulges some key particulars about what’s happening.

Unlike the remainder of the brand new faces round Thomas who can all transfer freely on this new chunk of the Matrix, Trinity’s proven to have inexperienced circuitry working via her physique (notably, throughout the simulation it appears), establishing that she’s much more trapped throughout the simulation than she was earlier than.

As nu-Morpheus challenges Thomas to a battle in a digital dojo, he causes that Trinity’s being caught is the explanation Thomas received’t surrender on the Matrix, which can very properly be the case, however Thomas doesn’t take the statement notably properly. The return to the dojo is more likely to be one of many many callbacks to the unique trilogy that Resurrections makes because it continues the franchise’s story and exhibits off what a contemporary VFX finances can do.

After Thomas destroys the dojo is a really Dragon Ball Z-like burst of vitality that’s most likely tied to his nonetheless being The One, there are temporary glimpses of the true world the place fields of pod-bound people are nonetheless harvested for his or her vitality. At some level within the movie, Thomas and Trinity will discover themselves standing atop a skyscraper and confronted with the selection of leaping over the sting, and so they received’t be the one individuals utilizing buildings to play hopscotch.

Regardless of whether or not that is all in Thomas Anderson’s head, the deeper he will get into this newest chapter of The Matrix’s bigger story, the extra fiercely the system’s Agents led by Agent Johnson (Daniel Bernhardt) battle to cease him and his allies.

A lot of that battle goes to contain projectile explosives, apparently, and there’ll be yet one more sequence the place a Morpheus determine has to battle his means out of a constructing being flooded with water. There’s additionally what seems to be footage of Reeves’ Neo from the primary movie interjected within the background right here.

Once Trinity has an awakening in her personal Matrix pod-o-goo she’ll have to be able to take care of all method of gunfights and having rockets launched at her, however at this late stage within the sport, that ought to all be outdated hat by now.

Though there are many explosions set to swelling music, the trailer’s notably gentle on hand-to-hand fight sequences in relation to the movie’s villains, and it’s going to be very attention-grabbing to see what kind of methods the Agents will whip out if they really need to destroy the people as soon as and for all.

Amnesiac or not, Thomas can nonetheless cease bullets, and deflect the missles the Agents have gotten snug taking pictures at individuals. The gentle seen emanating from him all through the trailer is featured one final time as he makes bodily contact with Trinity, suggesting that their connection would be the key to their escaping the Matrix as soon as once more.

Thomas, understandably, desires out of the digital hell he’s been making an attempt to flee for good, and the trailer strongly implies that so as to try this, he and Trinity must take one other leap of religion from the highest of a skyscraper. From the appears to be like of issues, the largest factor standing in the way in which of them undertaking that objective may be Mindhunter star Jonathan Groff. The all-black wardrobe Groff’s character sports activities within the trailer’s ultimate scene—a tense dialog between him and Thomas—might level to him being Resurrections’ reply to the unique Architect.

Alternatively, he might simply be an affiliate of Thomas’ who’s merely bored with listening to his rants about purple capsules unlocking his thoughts and the key world beneath the world that everyone must get up and acknowledge. There are an infinite variety of instructions Resurrections might find yourself going when it hits theaters and HBO Max on December 22, and in the interim, all there’s to do is surprise which path the movie will take.

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