Leo D.M.J. Aurini - The Matrix Resurrections： Pulse of the Zeitgheist (2021 Reupload)

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 0.94

00:02:53.780 stupid kung fu movie or some half-boiled philosophy presented in movie format, then you do not 0.96

00:03:00.580 get the movie. 1.00

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 0.95

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 0.68

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 0.83

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. 0.65

00:10:04.560 So one of the main themes of it is Gen X despondency. 0.85

00:10:11.100 You know, what have we accomplished aside from entertaining a few kids? 0.89

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. 0.97

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. 0.90

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 0.86

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 1.00

00:17:08.880 the zoomers who are you know like they're getting the the end of the human centipede 1.00

00:17:14.080 the absolute leavings of the society the boomers created they should be the most depressed 1.00

00:17:23.940 and yet one of the one of the really weird things that's happening 0.99

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 0.83

00:18:24.920 and so you've got these zoomers coming up now these zoomers and young millennials that should 1.00

00:18:29.240 be utterly hopeless all you have to hope for is adhd medication uh unlimited pornography and you 0.94

00:18:38.760 know like you can be whatever gender you want you're just not allowed to have sex with real 0.89

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, 0.83

00:19:23.600 finally seeing Gen X getting to do

00:19:27.000 what they're supposed to be doing. 0.94

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. 1.00

00:22:33.640 man and woman and we can harvest energy off you here's your social media attention here's your 1.00

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 0.56

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. 0.98

00:24:17.520 especially after the oh god marvel franchise just the same stupid movie again and again and again 1.00

00:24:25.240 it's awful 0.93

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 0.82

00:26:41.680 about drama and Elon Musk, and has probably posted some dumb tweets about that stuff, 0.97

00:26:48.540 right? Whatever, whatever. Doesn't mean that Lena cannot tap into the zeitgeist. Does not mean 0.95

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? 1.00

00:27:31.860 There's no feminism in this movie. 1.00

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. 0.99

00:27:49.020 They are the brainwashed. 0.79

00:27:52.740 Oh, she's got blue hair. 0.99

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. 0.99

00:29:04.840 It's nothing but America is evil, fathers are terrible, you should hate white people, 1.00

00:29:11.840 listen to all women. 1.00

00:29:13.840 It's absolutely awful. 1.00

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 1.00

00:30:16.560 But, let's be frank, using humans as batteries is really, really stupid. 0.99

00:30:26.880 And what were the red pill and the blue pill anyway? 0.98

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.

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

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

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