The Matrix Resurrections

Skip it unless the argument interests you more than the story, and be clear about which of those you want before starting. This is not a continuation so much as a film about being asked to continue.

The circumstances are the text. Lana Wachowski made it alone, Lilly declined, and the studio had made it plain that a fourth film would happen with or without them. So the first act is set in a video game studio where a designer called Thomas Anderson is told that the parent company will make a sequel to his game, The Matrix, with him or without him. Characters sit in a meeting room and workshop what a new Matrix film should be. It is as close to open refusal as a studio has ever financed, and for about forty minutes it is genuinely bracing.

Then it has to be a film. The action is the weakest in the series by a wide margin, shot and cut without the clarity the first three had, and the new supporting cast are given very little. Returning actors are recast with the recasting written into the plot, which is clever on paper and distancing in practice. The love story at its centre is sincere and is the part Wachowski clearly cared about, and it lands or it does not depending entirely on whether the rest has lost you by then.

Nothing in it is required for anything, and the trilogy's ending is not improved by it. Watch it if you want to see a sequel argue with its own existence for two and a half hours. That is a real thing to want, and this is the only blockbuster that offers it.