#merry christmas ari is writing thinkpieces on an action franchise

[tenderflint]

the matrix resurrections is a difficult film to critique because it is almost an anti-film, a film that didn’t want to be made. a film that said fine, fine, we’ll take all your goddamn money and we’ll use it to give you a great big multi million dollar middle finger and build great big multi million dollar soapboxes from which we’re going to talk shit about you and everything you stand for. and i don’t necessarily grudge them this, it’s fun and it’s meta and it’s clever and it’s also incredibly heavy-handed, but again, need it not be? if it functionally exists as a subversion of what it was meant to be (ie a money grab, flaccid fan service, etc), if it uses those heavy-handed and self-indulgent instruments to instead say fuck you, we’re going to be loudly and explicitly gay and trans and anticapitalist and say so in stilted fourth-wall speeches about literal binaries and choice and franchises and the literal actual warner brothers, why shouldn’t it? does it make for good film? no, but can we expect that of it, in any iteration? what exactly should we expect from the fourth matrix movie, and why? on what grounds can we be disappointed? maybe i’m just grasping for a way to defend a movie that was simply mediocre, maybe this is just a flawed critical lens that doesn’t actually bear any fruit. but it begs the question: how can a movie that didn’t want to be made be judged on the quality of its existence?