Trailers
The Matrix Resurrections
The Matrix Awoken? If nothing else, the arrival of The Matrix Resurrections trailer has yielded much retrospective back and forth on the extent to which the original trilogy shat the bed. That probably isn’t its most significant legacy, of course, in terms of a series that has informed, subconsciously or otherwise, intentionally or otherwise, much of the way in which twenty-first century conspiracy theory has been framed and discussed. It is however, uncontested that a first movie that was officially the “best thing ever”, that aesthetically and stylistically reinvigorated mainstream blockbuster cinema in a manner unseen again until Fury Road, squandered all that good will with astonishing speed by the time 2003 was over.
I was, and still am, an advocate for The Matrix Reloaded. Despite the Burly Brawl and its D-grade CG. Despite the Zion rave. And despite the cliffhanger ending that totally failed to resolve itself in any way remotely interesting. The Matrix Revolutions, though, stinks. Long, tedious repetitive, set mostly in the “real” world and ending on an unearned downer (because you just don’t care anymore by that point), that it put the kybosh on any further Matrix machinations for almost two decades was entirely understandable.
Accordingly, it’s entirely reasonable to be trepidatious about the prospect of the Wachowskis – well, one of them – returning to the franchise well, since nothing they did after that – Cloud Atlas honourably excepted – suggested they were other than diminishing returns as moviemakers. Speed Racer was bubble-gum rainbow pop and empty at its core. Sense8, a pansexual wonder emporium, ostensibly revolved around the oft (over) used next stage in humanity’s development but really indulged – wallowed in, even – an inclination towards facile euphoric highs at the expense of engaging storytelling (full confession: I checked out after Season One) and decent acting (prime offender Jamie Clayton, with Tuppence Middleton really the only cast member to emerge untarnished). The Biologic Preservation Society (BPS), cast as villains, seems to suggest one could swap out natural evolution for transhumanist augmentation, though, with anyone actually holding such a position theirs being an inherently a despicable human being.
Because this is, after all, the (un)popular conspiratorial take on the rise in transgenderism – something the Wachowskis are poster girls for, of course, and I mean that very literally – that the ultimate goal of the agenda is the non-gendered transhuman, one bound to materiality and interchangeable form, trapped in a developmental cul-de-sac, spiritually speaking, but one presented, along the path to that state, as promising a boundless frontier.
The archetype for this next generation is the Grey. While this iconised form comes with many concomitant varying interpretations – from Zeta Reticulans, to a future version of “us” time travelling here from a variant timeline, to a personification of either or both the preceding via Astral entities attempting to convince us of the same and thus engineer an inevitable outcome as a form of particularly twisted predictive programming – there is a common theme of asexual, hive-mind beings. So much less messy, individualistic, and soulfully unfettered. To question the genuine intent of the transgender movement, however, is to ally oneself with anti-liberal biases, since this is essentially a humanist-materialist conversation and so a political rather than metaphysical one (even to invoke the latter is to invite telling disdain).
We see further pushes towards this in Jupiter Ascending – featuring its own brand of Greys – a movie that somehow manages to be both abysmally cast and dramatically inept while “disclosing” one of the alternative scene’s favoured hot takes on prison planet Earth. Unconvinced we’re in a simulation (itself a gnostic-demiurgic perspective)? Okay, how about we’re already an engineered species, then? Engineered by aliens, aliens that are, rather like the Matrix’s machines, feeding off us. In this loosh system, discarnate beings (aliens in Jupiter Ascending) harvest humanity, a humanity freely augmented (transhumanly modified) with animal parts (suggestive of Cayce’s Atlantis); after all, if our heritage is that of an engineered species, what harm can there be in furthering the process? Such un-naturality can only be natural.
The machines of The Matrix may also feed off humanity (an Ahrimanic refinement of the loosh system, to use Steiner speak), but they are not expressly intent on humanity’s destruction. Humanity is necessary sustenance (albeit, the occasional mass cull, less for the loosh in this instance than to repsoition their cattle into a more manageable, directed form may be necessary; breaking down the need for humans to batteries may be the essence, but the machines clearly need them for additional stimulation, or they would use actual cattle. Or plants).
In The Matrix, the fact of transhumanism is a given; the only doubt is who controls its development, regardless of the machine-dependent inhabitants of Zion’s naysaying worship of free flesh. That we’ve visibly closed significant ground on the series in our own paradigm over the past twenty years, however, does not mean red pill-ing as a metaphor for transgenderism is other than a flagrant retcon, though perhaps an inevitable one; since The Matrix and red pill-ing has been appropriated so pervasively by the truther community, in its many and varied aspects and avenues, it was only natural that a rug pull would be necessary (or planned for, since this all comes as part of the overriding package of predictive programming). How can one continue to support a text when its architects claim it represents something one has, at best, profound misgivings over? It couldn’t have been a more diametric challenge than if the metaphor were revealed as passing to a place of profound awareness through the application of allopathic medicine. You know, like getting jabbed. Perhaps the warning sign should have been the pill as metaphor in the first place; the pill is, after all, intrinsically linked with scientism.
Retcon or no, you can bet the entwining of transhumanism and transgenderism will be a part of The Matrix Resurrections’ subtext. If Neo has dysphoria, how will that play out in a movie where the trailer’s first line delivers a triggering reference to triggering? The essential reboot nature of Matrix 4, with Mr Anderson back in the Matrix and needing red pilling once again, bears the hallmarks of The Force Awakens (a gender-swapped remake of A New Hope); repeat the original’s plot, while priming it with wokeness. In Star Wars’ case, the amazing wonder Rey’s agenda only became fully clear as the trilogy progressed, on account of any given choice in The Force Awakens being equally legitimately ascribed to bad writing and inept characterisation. Here, though, it’s a safe bet that whatever is offered up will be unequivocally intended.
The trailer throws in all the obvious imagery and reference points upfront, its pills and black cats and Alice Through the Looking Glass, along with Monarch butterflies, freemasonic pinecones, blackened pupils (black goo/the jabbed), Doogie Howser’s rainbow socks, mirror selves – and rubber ducks – even scoring the trailer to Jefferson Airplane.
On the face of it, it looks as if Resurrections will be a further celebration of the trials and tribulations of Neo on his path to becoming fully self-aware/woke/transitioned. It has been suggested however, that Trinity will be revealed as the One all along (you know, because men=toxic, and any viable franchise is now required to invert gender identification). Which is possible, but how would that vibe if Lana has Neo pegged as dysmorphic? Surely he needs to realise his ambitions?
(POSSIBLE SPOILERS) It’s also been suggested that the multiple Trinitys of the trailer are suggestive of her as a machine programme (what, and her splintered selves a depiction of MKUltra conditioning come unsprung? Such conditioning being a key to the Wachowskis themselves). Another, which would at least be thematically congruent, is that the One is now the combination of Neo and Trinity, as a merged unit (one that might also bring in sexual rejection, via transhuman asexuality, to an essentially sexual union; think Star Trek: The Motion Picture). Certainly, the shot of Neo and Trinity holding hands and glowing would appear to be related to the later one of a SWAT team being repelled by their energetic connection. The question arising being, is this a force of attraction or repulsion?
This trailer definitely resembles the Matrix old, but now with an added splash of colour. Something that’s sure to be significant in itself. And a rebooted Morpheus (and Oracle) suggests a desire to freshen certain aspects (I wasn’t one demanding the return of Larry Fishburne and his Boba belly). As for Neo’s face fungus, an inverse of bald John McClane in Live Free and Die Hard, he undoubtedly needs it, after his rather rictus, eyes-like-pissholes-in the-snow clean-shaven visage in Bill & Ted Face the Music. Some have suggested it’s down to surgery. Whatever it is, preternaturally youthful Keanu needs the beard.
It also makes sense that Neo is still in the Matrix, that the cycle should have continued to whatever next stage it is at now. This is, after all, the reset. This is what we have taking place right now, with the Wachowskis as the cheerleaders, gatekeepers, harbingers of the gender apocalypse and the apocalypse itself. While we’re all so distracted by the giving or receiving lashings of intolerance and hate in respect of any manufactured socio-political push-button marker, the machine mind is enacting its scorched earth policy unchecked. The Matrix’s resurrection at this moment was mandated. Red pill for all. Followed swiftly by clotting and Cloud Atlas-ian rebirth into an unspeakable new kingdom.
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