Leo D.M.J. Aurini - May 27, 2026


The Matrix Resurrections： Pulse of the Zeitgheist (2021 Reupload)


Episode Stats


Length

32 minutes

Words per minute

124.79769

Word count

4,061

Sentence count

181


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:01.000 So the other night, I sat down to watch Matrix Resurrections.
00:00:10.000 I wasn't expecting very much.
00:00:12.000 You know what?
00:00:14.000 It turns out it's pretty damn cool.
00:00:17.000 So like I said, I went into this movie with very low expectations.
00:00:33.880 In fact, you might even say that I was hate-watching it, just maybe.
00:00:39.520 And as somebody whose entire sense of fashion was derived from the original movie, I was
00:00:46.520 a little bit nipped that they were making another one, an obvious, unnecessary reboot,
00:00:52.520 which seems to be all that we make these days.
00:00:55.520 I really wasn't expecting much from it, and yet I was blown away.
00:01:00.520 I was completely primed to hate this movie, and I thought it was so good that it actually
00:01:07.520 That it actually redeemed Matrix 2 and Matrix 3.
00:01:11.420 Reloaded in whatever the other one is.
00:01:16.500 It actually made those ones good.
00:01:18.000 It was that good.
00:01:20.760 And yeah, this is going to be an unpopular opinion.
00:01:24.100 Most people don't seem to like this movie.
00:01:26.120 And so, without spoilers,
00:01:29.000 because I do think that you should go and watch this movie yourself.
00:01:33.500 So with a relatively spoiler-free review,
00:01:36.340 I'm going to break down for you why I liked Matrix Resurrections.
00:01:43.340 Now the very first point is that we all know this movie never should have been made.
00:01:51.340 And the movie knows that as well. In fact, that is a major theme of the entire thing.
00:01:59.340 Let me put it like this. If you were a fan of the original Star Wars promo,
00:02:04.340 And that drove you to study martial arts, to practice meditation, then you understood the movies.
00:02:15.060 If you like the original Star Wars, and you decide to dress up like a Jedi and scream like a 16-year-old girl while waving around a plastic lightsaber,
00:02:25.380 then you didn't understand the movies. In fact, you completely missed the point of the movies.
00:02:30.020 And if you're going to go see The Matrix Resurrections while fully jabbed with a face mask on, you don't understand what The Matrix is about.
00:02:42.020 And Matrix Resurrections, it's heavily implied that if you are super excited for another
00:02:53.780 stupid kung fu movie or some half-boiled philosophy presented in movie format, then you do not
00:03:00.580 get the movie.
00:03:04.540 And those people are being heavily criticized in it.
00:03:12.540 So the movie lampshades a lot of things.
00:03:16.540 One of the things of lampshades is the fact that Lawrence Fishburne has been it.
00:03:22.540 The lampshades was brilliantly.
00:03:24.540 So you've got Abdul Martin II playing Morpheus.
00:03:32.540 And his first line to Neo is word for word the exact same line that Morpheus said, except
00:03:40.180 instead of saying it with a dramatic, gothic, lightning-backed rune, he says it in a public
00:03:48.480 watchman.
00:03:50.220 And he outright comments that, yeah, it doesn't work too well without the lightning, does
00:03:54.820 it?
00:03:57.080 The movie's very self-aware in that sense.
00:03:59.120 And so he's not trying to play Laurence Fishburne, right?
00:04:02.720 It would have been really hokey if he were trying to play Laurence Fishburne.
00:04:08.020 He's playing a new Morpheus.
00:04:09.700 He's playing a Morpheus with a different backstory, a recreated Morpheus.
00:04:14.560 It's sort of like the Doctor in Doctor Who.
00:04:16.440 He's not playing the same Doctor as last time. It's a new one.
00:04:19.400 They lampshade that, lampshade that, they go with it, and it actually works.
00:04:29.120 Then there's Nioh, which, if you've seen the trailers, Nioh is caught back in the Matrix
00:04:36.920 all over again.
00:04:37.920 In fact, he's not just caught in the Matrix.
00:04:41.720 This new Matrix that he's in, he's a video game designer who designed the Matrix trilogy
00:04:48.900 of video games.
00:04:52.360 And he thinks that what happened to him is he psychologically fell into his own video
00:04:57.000 game.
00:04:58.000 Turns out that those video games were real life, and the idea that he's just a game designer, that is the illusion.
00:05:08.000 And so everything is constantly being lampshaded throughout all of this.
00:05:15.000 And one of the early comments about it, about how Neo is being forced to make a Matrix 4.
00:05:23.000 Neo says, you promised me that we would move on from the Matrix. I did the
00:05:27.800 trilogy. The story is complete. Nothing more needs to be said. You promised me.
00:05:33.000 Yeah, but corporate wants a Matrix 4. And so you're gonna make a Matrix 4.
00:05:41.900 One of the characters says to him, they took your story, something that meant so
00:05:49.480 much to people like me and what is it and they turned it into something trivial that's what the
00:06:03.200 matrix does it weaponizes every idea every drink that is what the Hollywood machine does that is
00:06:12.600 what modernity does it takes meaningful stories it takes it takes human creation that mass markets
00:06:19.240 it. It turns it into something cynical. It takes a beautiful story and then abuses it,
00:06:25.800 shoves diversity into it, shoves messaging into it, turns it into something they can sell on a
00:06:31.720 lunchbox. The Matrix 4 is completely aware of this and it's hating the people that want to buy the
00:06:42.280 lunchbox so he shouldn't want to be the lunchbox you should want to self actualize
00:06:53.880 somebody asked me no what's it like being a great video game maker you must be very proud of yourself
00:07:03.000 and he says well i guess we entertained a lot of kids you know here stupid me i thought i was
00:07:11.960 doing something that mattered i thought i was creating art and i made the corporation a few
00:07:17.720 million dollars and i entertained a lot of kids you can see this the whole movie starts with this
00:07:26.520 reflection upon the past uh 20 years of like what what did we even accomplish
00:07:32.760 right this this uh this gen x energy of just geez i i worked so hard i seemed like we were
00:07:40.120 were going somewhere, and then the whole thing got captured. Got captured by the
00:07:44.440 Matrix again, and I guess we entertained a lot of kids. We made some fun video
00:07:49.720 games, but to what end?
00:07:55.200 Even the people that are fans of the Matrix trilogy, half of them just think
00:08:02.120 the fight scenes are really neato, and the other half have the most absurd
00:08:08.200 interpretations of the whole thing uh they the original matrix series was about crypto fascism
00:08:17.320 it was about how capitalist exploitation and it's like no shut up shut up stop shoving your your
00:08:26.200 your poli-sci degree your your sociology degree into this movie okay like whatever contemporary
00:08:31.720 thing that you're trying to do it's like stop just please stop no death of the author try and
00:08:38.360 understand what the author was actually trying to create and take it on its own merits but nope
00:08:45.080 nope we're all hopped up on our modern buzzwords and everything needs to be interpreted through
00:08:49.880 that lens in some vain sense of self-aggrandization
00:08:54.520 the movie is well aware that it shouldn't exist and that the people who wanted to exist the most
00:09:07.060 are the people that won't get it there's a movie made under duress and yet
00:09:16.260 it's a fantastic movie one of the most beautiful bits of cinematography i've ever seen is in this
00:09:24.340 movie the the new the new people trying to wake up neo trying to get him out of the new matrix
00:09:32.340 are explaining to him that yeah yeah everything like the matrix trilogy actually happened it
00:09:37.060 wasn't video games it was your life and at one point they walked through a torn open movie screen
00:09:45.300 filming the original matrix which is just beautiful beautiful storytelling
00:09:50.820 So yeah, if you don't think this movie should have been made, you're actually the person
00:09:56.860 it was made for, not the people who were begging for it to be made.
00:10:04.560 So one of the main themes of it is Gen X despondency.
00:10:11.100 You know, what have we accomplished aside from entertaining a few kids?
00:10:16.080 There's also comfort in slavery.
00:10:20.820 The Matrix was made by, what was it, 1999?
00:10:27.820 And there's this huge desire, you know, you had Fight Club, you had The Matrix, you had
00:10:33.820 all these different movies.
00:10:35.820 There's generational energy saying that we wanted to be free.
00:10:38.820 And now, 20 years later, where are we?
00:10:43.820 Neo gets out of the Matrix and then he finds out that the crew that got him out of the Matrix
00:10:53.120 half are human half are robots half are machines and he asks wait machines are on our side right
00:11:00.140 now and they say not all seek to control just as not all want to be free
00:11:09.920 He runs into one of his old companions from the good old days.
00:11:17.640 They say, and this is not just a reference to the story of the original Matrix movies,
00:11:23.540 but it's a reference to when the original Matrix movies came out.
00:11:28.460 They say, everything was simpler back then.
00:11:32.480 People wanted to be free.
00:11:34.700 Sometimes it feels like people gave up.
00:11:39.920 Like the, like the Matrix one.
00:11:47.940 The 2000s saw this, this move towards greater liberty for people.
00:11:54.620 Less social control, less planning out our entire lives.
00:11:59.760 The internet was exploding.
00:12:01.320 We could explore all these new ideas, read any book that we wanted, network with people
00:12:06.140 all over the planet.
00:12:07.700 And what happened to that?
00:12:09.280 Where did the old wild west of the internet go?
00:12:12.640 Now it's all captured in social media.
00:12:16.780 Zuckerberg is building the metaverse to entrap everybody's souls.
00:12:21.180 What happened to that?
00:12:22.880 It used to be so simple.
00:12:24.720 It used to be so simple.
00:12:25.720 We were just rebelling against the centralized planned society.
00:12:32.420 And now it's just sheer chaos and people are begging for more tyranny.
00:12:39.280 and this this leads us to the villains in the matrix in the new one see in the original you
00:12:52.300 had the architect right 1990s oh we figured out civilization it's the end of history son daughter
00:13:00.700 you will go and get this degree you will buy the house with the white picket fence you will get
00:13:06.160 married and have 2.4 children. You will do all these things. Your life is planned out. There's
00:13:11.340 nothing else to do. The architect. And the villains in the original were the agents.
00:13:24.160 Anybody could be an agent. You never knew when you're going to run into one.
00:13:28.000 But the agents were, well, absolute slaves to the system. Absolute believers in the
00:13:36.160 the status quo in the Matrix.
00:13:39.160 They were highly talented individuals.
00:13:47.160 But now we've gone from the world of Clinton and George Bush
00:13:52.160 to, like I said, a world ruled by people like Zuckerberg.
00:14:00.160 So instead of an architect, we have an analyst.
00:14:04.160 The great villain of this series is a psychiatrist.
00:14:11.160 You're not upset, are you, comrade?
00:14:13.160 Maybe you need to take more blue pills.
00:14:15.160 Better not take those red pills, they could get you into trouble.
00:14:18.160 Take a blue pill, calm down, just do what you're supposed to do every day.
00:14:26.160 Don't question, just be happy.
00:14:29.160 You'll own nothing and be happy.
00:14:34.160 Don't worry. I've got everything under control. You just follow all of my rules.
00:14:40.160 I will diagnose you without input from you.
00:14:44.160 I'm going to dictate what your mental illnesses are, and you will believe it.
00:14:50.160 And the villains, you've got the analysts at the top instead of agents.
00:14:56.160 You still have agents, but they're not the primary antagonists.
00:15:00.160 Instead, you've got bots because the analyst figured out that, you know, these agents are really expensive.
00:15:07.160 Training them up, you know, having a functional legal system, now that's really difficult.
00:15:13.160 Instead, instead of having laws and cops and enforcement when you break the rules,
00:15:20.160 instead of all of that nonsense, we're just going to replace 10% of the population with bots.
00:15:26.160 And these bots will be used to modulate public opinion, encourage obedience in everybody.
00:15:36.440 Why spend all the money training in Egypt?
00:15:38.920 Why spend all the money on the court system, on right and wrong and discovery, when we
00:15:44.920 could, we could just give you a seven-day ban to social media for saying hate speech.
00:15:54.400 They let you back on, and you will become your own police.
00:16:00.920 So instead of the frightening agents, we've got the zombie horde.
00:16:05.000 And by the way, folks, you're not catching the connection to COVID just yet.
00:16:09.740 The only people wearing face masks in the movie are bots.
00:16:19.680 Then another really interesting angle.
00:16:21.760 this is just a small one but i really liked it was the generational dynamics so you've got
00:16:30.080 the most gen x person that ever lived neo um piano reeves and he winds up leading a team of zoomers
00:16:40.640 now as badly like gen x got completely disenfranchised and half of us were murdered
00:16:46.400 in the womb we are a small generation that has no control over anything whatsoever and especially
00:16:52.960 at this point like we're getting older and it's like what yeah what have we accomplished the
00:16:57.760 the millennials were thrown into debt provided no culture and the best they can do is be victims
00:17:04.400 most of the time they're a hero generation with nothing to be heroic about and then you've got
00:17:08.880 the zoomers who are you know like they're getting the the end of the human centipede
00:17:14.080 the absolute leavings of the society the boomers created they should be the most depressed
00:17:23.940 and yet one of the one of the really weird things that's happening
00:17:28.960 the the old the old conservatism is dead the gop is an absolute joke like the whole bushism
00:17:38.680 all of that that is absolutely dead on the vine and somehow conservatism became the new counterculture
00:17:45.480 simultaneously the the big left has become completely the only ones being effective
00:17:54.200 are neoliberals and they don't believe in anything they don't stand for anything
00:17:58.840 and the the radical left the neo-marxists these people are being exposed bit by bit
00:18:05.640 right everybody just about everybody is opposed to critical race theory being taught in classrooms
00:18:12.920 and so they're out the left which is normally the forward looking group
00:18:16.920 are the most despondent while the conservatives have become the cheerful radicals
00:18:24.920 and so you've got these zoomers coming up now these zoomers and young millennials that should
00:18:29.240 be utterly hopeless all you have to hope for is adhd medication uh unlimited pornography and you
00:18:38.760 know like you can be whatever gender you want you're just not allowed to have sex with real
00:18:42.120 people because you might get covered but you can look at all the porn that you want
00:18:47.640 and yet these kids have some energy to them there's this conversation where they're they're
00:18:52.840 going into battle for the first time with neo leading them and one of them says it's like oh
00:18:58.760 oh man, this is a dream, the guy's a legend.
00:19:01.400 And the other one says,
00:19:02.140 didn't his whole crew die on his last mission?
00:19:05.180 The other guy's like, yeah, I guess you're right,
00:19:08.240 but I'm okay with that, at least it's exciting.
00:19:10.640 Yes, the current situation in the world
00:19:12.740 is completely hopeless.
00:19:16.240 And yet there's a strange, strange sort of optimism
00:19:19.460 that we might be able to fix that isn't there, folks.
00:19:21.980 Those generational dynamics,
00:19:23.600 finally seeing Gen X getting to do
00:19:27.000 what they're supposed to be doing.
00:19:29.480 The last Nomad generation, they were the ones leading World War II.
00:19:35.440 And this has Keanu Reeves in a similar role, actually connecting with the youth.
00:19:41.020 And I like that energy.
00:19:43.020 I like what that is saying about the zeitgeist.
00:19:50.440 There's another angle I want to cover briefly.
00:19:53.980 that
00:19:56.420 in this movie, Neo is no longer the one.
00:20:04.260 And I know people have complained about this.
00:20:10.380 But was he ever actually the one?
00:20:14.840 In the first movie, Morpheus believed in him,
00:20:17.420 but he never believed in himself.
00:20:18.700 in the second movie the architect explains to him that you see the way the matrix works
00:20:27.360 the way any system of reasoning works is there's always going to be that one bit that destroys the
00:20:35.800 whole system that doesn't fit in the system whether you're talking about virgul's incompleteness
00:20:40.000 theorem of mathematics uh or or any any system of categorization that uh bureaucracy tries to
00:20:48.280 implement, it doesn't matter. Reality is bigger than any finite logical system, and that was the
00:20:58.820 problem with the matrix. And so there would always be a one, the exception to the rule,
00:21:06.240 that one misfit that just did not fit into the system, and that thing that broke the old system
00:21:12.640 would be utilized to create the new system so it wasn't that neo was the one it's that he happened
00:21:21.280 to be the one but anybody could have been and so yeah and the new one he is still the one
00:21:35.220 Other people can be the one as well.
00:21:41.200 We're all called to the life of a saint.
00:21:49.980 And then there's the ultimate goal of the new Matrix.
00:21:55.660 The first Matrix wanted to keep people inside of it so they could serve as batteries for the machine overlords.
00:22:04.280 In this matrix, they've got a new goal, and that is to keep man and woman separated.
00:22:14.280 If man and woman, if yin and yang are able to come together and dance, the creative potential
00:22:22.760 is limitless.
00:22:23.760 But to maintain the system of control, the analyst needs to keep them separated.
00:22:33.640 man and woman and we can harvest energy off you here's your social media attention here's your
00:22:39.600 porn work at the corporation be a good battery for the system just don't you dare get married
00:22:46.060 don't you dare have an intimate relationship that is stronger than your bond to the government
00:22:51.480 stronger than your bond to the matrix and to ensure that the two of you never get together
00:22:59.300 we've got an army of bots we've got them populating Twitter and Facebook they're
00:23:05.300 going to report on you if you say anything inappropriate and they're
00:23:09.560 going to influence you with their AI generated opinions to keep men and women
00:23:14.420 hating one another because as long as men and women hate one another we can
00:23:18.380 harvest energy off of you
00:23:21.820 The movie is absolutely brilliant, it is absolutely a really uplifting statement about the zeitgeist,
00:23:32.820 about where we are in the present moment.
00:23:34.820 The fact that this movie got made means that the people trying to maintain this system
00:23:42.820 of control are on the way out.
00:23:45.820 We are going to win, fellas.
00:23:51.820 Which is why it's absolutely bizarre to me that this movie's getting so much hate.
00:24:00.780 I've got three speculations as to why people don't like this movie.
00:24:08.520 Number one, it's an unnecessary remake, and we're very burned out on unnecessary remakes.
00:24:16.440 I get that.
00:24:17.520 especially after the oh god marvel franchise just the same stupid movie again and again and again
00:24:25.240 it's awful
00:24:26.880 but that said there have been some really good remakes coming out like just as people realize
00:24:37.960 just as the the shift is happening that yeah we need to stop remaking movies let's try making a
00:24:43.880 new movie we've had a whole bunch of really good remakes come out doom haven't seen it yet but I
00:24:53.760 hear it's fantastic the the new Ghostbusters not feminist Ghostbusters the new Ghostbusters that
00:25:01.560 one's fantastic you've got Blade Runner was supposed to be pretty good so it's almost like
00:25:11.640 creative spark is back right that the past 20 years have just been this descent into like first we had
00:25:19.400 bush with this war boundary then we had obama with no hope no change and then we had trump the lame
00:25:27.400 duck now we've got five and yet there's creative energy reasserting itself like as as the things
00:25:38.200 get tighter. The control, the commodification of all culture, of all
00:25:44.700 spirituality, there's something happening. There's creative energy
00:25:49.240 we're trying. So that's my first suspicion. The movie was very meta. It's
00:25:55.780 very aware that it's an unnecessary sequel and people jump to conclusions
00:26:01.060 about it. Number two, the second reason people don't like this movie is Identity
00:26:07.680 politics. On our side. I think people are rushing to judgment about Lena Wachowsky's
00:26:21.720 creation because of who and what Lena is. And I'm sure, like, listen, Lena is immersed
00:26:35.200 in Hollywood, surrounded by Hollywood culture, and probably has pretty predictable opinions
00:26:41.680 about drama and Elon Musk, and has probably posted some dumb tweets about that stuff,
00:26:48.540 right? Whatever, whatever. Doesn't mean that Lena cannot tap into the zeitgeist. Does not mean
00:27:00.900 that they're creatively bankrupt.
00:27:04.660 There's really something to this movie.
00:27:06.920 And judging the movie based on the creator,
00:27:09.740 I don't think that is fair in this case.
00:27:14.760 We're the ones doing identity politics.
00:27:17.920 In fact,
00:27:19.880 the fact that everybody calls Jessica Henwick's character
00:27:23.140 the social justice warrior,
00:27:28.680 how is she a social justice warrior?
00:27:31.860 There's no feminism in this movie.
00:27:34.220 I mean, they literally make fun of it.
00:27:36.640 The people that claim The Matrix was about crypto-fascism are being ridiculed.
00:27:42.220 The radical leftists are, to a certain degree, they are the villains.
00:27:47.820 They are the bots.
00:27:49.020 They are the brainwashed.
00:27:52.740 Oh, she's got blue hair.
00:27:56.060 So what, dude?
00:27:57.560 Do you remember how we used to dress?
00:27:59.080 which is another nice thing back in the original movies you had neo and trinity dressing like
00:28:06.560 complete edgelords and in this one he's wearing a wool coat and she's wearing just just a regular
00:28:16.180 biker jacket right pretty down to earth they leave the crazy matrix clothing for the kids
00:28:22.860 right and so yeah some kids got blue hair these days i know it's the end of the world they're all
00:28:28.520 social justice warriors, right? No. Bugs is a great character.
00:28:36.680 But the final reason I think that people jump to conclusions about this movie is because
00:28:42.620 we've been inundated with all sorts of films that are, they go to extremely great lengths
00:28:48.500 to create a believable environment. There's a series called Invincible, which
00:28:57.840 Which, while extremely well-written, is everything that we should hate about modern movies.
00:29:04.840 It's nothing but America is evil, fathers are terrible, you should hate white people,
00:29:11.840 listen to all women.
00:29:13.840 It's absolutely awful.
00:29:16.840 And yet there's so many people that are, you know, moderate, like the people that are
00:29:21.840 generally opposed to critical theory that seem to like it for some reason.
00:29:25.840 whereas i watched them like this is the most critical theory movie i've or tv series i've ever
00:29:30.960 seen i think it's because invincible spends so much time world building now quite frankly the
00:29:42.640 world building doesn't actually make sense to think about it for five minutes but because
00:29:47.760 there's so much time devoted to this is how he balances being a superhero and going to high
00:29:53.360 school this is how that works ad nauseam because there's all this world building
00:30:01.520 people overlook the implausibility of the world while in matrix resurrection there's
00:30:07.920 almost no world building the the movie is actually about the metaphors
00:30:14.800 but the matrix has always been about that
00:30:16.560 But, let's be frank, using humans as batteries is really, really stupid.
00:30:26.880 And what were the red pill and the blue pill anyway?
00:30:31.240 They actually explain in this movie that when Morpheus said to Neo,
00:30:37.520 you know, blue pill, you go back to your regular life, red pill, you find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.
00:30:43.100 yeah they were sugar pills the pills were not about
00:30:50.980 activating the special effects to get them out of the matrix
00:30:54.520 the pills were about his choice
00:30:59.420 you can't force somebody out of the matrix you can't force red pill somebody they will reject it
00:31:08.800 they will react violently. You need to get their consent. You need to get them to agree that they
00:31:14.940 want to know the truth. So even in universe, red pill and blue pill are purely metaphorical.
00:31:26.340 And the movie itself, it's purely metaphorical, right? No, it doesn't really make sense that the
00:31:32.420 robots are using humans for batteries. It doesn't really make sense that this, that, and the other
00:31:37.240 thing the world building is nonsense it is about what all these metaphors represent
00:31:47.160 so if you go into this movie understand that this is a statement about where we are as a culture
00:31:54.760 and how how we might be able to fight back against this creeping commercialization this this creeping
00:32:04.600 consensual analytical tyranny that's being built for us
00:32:11.960 and if you just enjoy the visuals feel the energy of the movie
00:32:19.400 i think you'll enjoy it
00:32:20.440 So with that said, carpet if you're around, can you try anything?
00:32:27.440 This is The Reef House.