What could ‘The Matrix 5’ possibly be about?
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Despair certainly ought to be the emotion of the day upon learning that Warner Bros are once again plugging in and returning to the world of The Matrix. However, this is the first Matrix movie that won’t be helmed by either of the Wachowkis, with directing duty being handed to The Martian screenwriter Drew Goddard, who is also writing the script. Lily Wachowski is completely absent from The Matrix 5, while Lana, who helmed 2021’s admittedly terrible The Matrix Resurrections, will serve as an executive producer.
As of yet, there are no details surrounding the cast of The Matrix 5. Will Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne Moss once again return to their iconic roles of Neo and Trinity? Will Resurrection newcomers Yahya Adbul-Mateen II, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris and Priyanka Chopra offer up their services once again? These questions will undoubtedly be resolved in the coming months and years as the film’s production gains traction.
The glaring question surrounding The Matrix 5, though, is what the damn thing will be about, especially following the bloated and ridiculous narrative of Resurrections. Let’s recap the last movie in the franchise (in the context of the original trilogy) before seeing where Goddard might be taking the action, with all the potential of spoiling an already-spoiled franchise.
In The Matrix Reloaded, we learned that the machines have rebooted the Matrix several times in order to perfect it. At the end of Revolutions, Neo secures a peace treaty between humans and machines, but as Resurrections wears on, we realise that the machines have again rebooted the Matrix in a new version. In it, Thomas Anderson/Neo is trapped as a video game designer, unaware once again of the real world, and kept in his place by a series of programs that dissuade him every time he thinks of his “other” life.
After finally breaking through into the real world, Neo discovers that there has been a period of peace between machines and humans, and they have built a new city together called IO. However, a consequence of this was that a civil war between the machines broke out, with one faction standing for peace and another wanting to enslave humans again as their power source dwindled with each freed human being from the Matrix.
It’s revealed that The Analyst, who appeared as Thomas Anderson’s therapist in The Matrix, is a new version of The Architect from the original trilogy with a few lines of code from The Oracle. He created the most recent version of the Matrix by using Neo and Trinity’s source code but learned that every time they came too close to one another, the Matrix was destroyed. The Analyst now knows that he must keep Neo and Trinity together but at a distance within the Matrix in order to keep it stable.
However, after a showdown with The Analyst, Neo is offered the chance to plug himself back into the Matrix, and if not, Trinity will be killed. He returns in order to free Trinity’s body in her pod, but as things transpire, Agent Smith returns and shoots the Analyst. Trinity and Neo escape from the Matrix’s “swarm mode” and find themselves on top of a roof. Leaping off the building, it’s Trinity who can fly and not Neo, showing that their love for one another has freed them from the Matrix’s control.
However, The Analyst remains, and it appears that Neo and Trinity are going to try and change the Matrix’s code according to their wishes, seeing as they are indeed its source. This is likely the moment at which we arrive at The Matrix 5. Within the Matrix in the new film, Neo and Trinity will likely be making changes to the code as the Analyst is doing precisely the same thing, meaning that the world of the Matrix is constantly competing with itself, causing anomalies left, right and centre. Could this cause humans in the Matrix to question their reality and, therefore, wake up in the real world?
This would also have significant consequences in the real world, of course, and the problems in that world were never really concluded at the end of Resurrections. As the machines’ civil war goes on, what would happen as more and more humans wake up from the Matrix? The machines’ power would surely be limited, likely leading to a new alliance between the previously separated factions of the machines with their newfound necessity of once again enslaving humankind.
Another facet that might be explored in The Matrix 5 is that with the potential of scores of humans waking up in the real world, many of them would likely be dissatisfied with its conditions and long to return to the Matrix, as Cypher had done in the original film. There would likely be, then, a splitting of humankind into those who want to live in ignorance in the Matrix and those who want to live in the difficulty of the real world just because it’s real.
Finally, back to Neo and Trinity. They will likely be treated as messianic figures both in the real world and within the Matrix, seeing as they have been able to overcome the influence of the Analyst just through the power of their love. Will The Matrix 5 see them lead a revolution in which humankind will finally overcome the machines and things return to even before The Animatrix? All these questions will only be answered when the movie is released. However…
Should they even be making The Matrix 5?
The short answer to this question is “no”. The truth is that Warner Bros shouldn’t really have made 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections in the first place, but Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav clearly has an unsatisfied fetish for IPs and franchises that continue to churn out movies regardless of quality, so long as they have potential to bring in a decent box office.
Interestingly, though, the fourth Matrix film actually suffered at the box office, only bringing back $159million worldwide off the back of a $190m – largely because the movie was made available on HBO Max at the same time as its initial theatrical release.
In that light, not only is The Matrix 5 a financial risk, but it also drags the franchise’s once-glimmering name (ignoring, for now, the fact that the original sequels somewhat deviated in quality from the first movie) through the muck, turning it into a mockery of a science fiction action series with what we can presume to be an ever-worsening pandering to those without desire for new narratives. So no, The Matrix 5 ought to be binned.
