The Matrix Resurrections

Yesterday afternoon I went with Kristine, Trent, Tashena, and Sean to see The Matrix Resurrections and it was so much fun to see it with my family.  I am a big fan of this franchise (I recently watched all three movies again) so I was really looking forward to this installment and I absolutely loved it!  Within the present-day iteration of the Matrix, Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is a successful video game programmer who has difficulty separating his dreams from reality.  He is inexplicably drawn to a woman named Tiffany (Carrie-Anne Moss), a married mother of three who has an affinity for motorcycles, and has an antagonistic relationship with his business partner Smith (Jonathan Groff).  His Analyst (Neil Patrick Harris) prescribes blue pills to keep him sane but he eventually stops taking them and inadvertently creates a modal with a program embodying Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).  Bugs (Jessica Henwick), a human outside the Matrix and the captain of the Mnemosyne, discovers this modal and realizes that Neo is still alive.  With the help of Morpheus, she extracts him from the Matrix and takes him to Io, the new human headquarters, where he meets Niobe (Jada Pinckett-Smith) and the sentient program Sati (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) who tell him what has happened since the Machine War ended sixty years ago.  As he struggles to assimilate within his new environment, he requests permission to extract Trinity but this request is denied.  Bugs and her crew go rogue in order to assist him but first he must confront several exile programs, including the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), Agent Smith, and the Analyst (in some epic action sequences that are exciting even though they don't quite live up to those in the original).  I loved the winking self-awareness about this specific franchise (and of sequels in general) and I loved all of the nostalgia.  I was giggling out loud with every reference, call-back, and revelation.  I also loved the relationship between Neo and Trinity (Reeves and Moss give fantastic performances and they still have so much chemistry) and the meaning it gives to the notion of being the "One."  Finally, I loved the concept of free will and how it is used in Trinity's character arc as well as the implication of it when the swarm is used during the final battle within the Matrix.  It should be noted that Sean, who is as big a fan of the franchise as I am, also loved it (we spent quite a bit of time discussing it afterwards and have plans to see it again); Kristine and Trent, who are casual fans, liked it and thought it was very clever; and Tashena, who hasn't seen any of the movies in the franchise, was totally confused and fell asleep.  You should probably use these reactions as a guide in deciding if you want to see it but I highly recommend it!