Unlike Laurence Fishburne, who didn’t get the invite to come back for The Matrix 4, it sounds as though Hugo Weaving just couldn’t make the dates work as he’d already been ready to commit to another project. This is the downfall of being someone that various people want to use for their movies and plays though, sometimes the scheduling just doesn’t fit and a person has to make a choice as to which project they’ll stick with and which they’ll miss out on. Unfortunately, this means that Hugo will be missing out on The Matrix 4, but somehow this feels like it’s not that big of a deal since unless the fourth installment is going back in time, Agent Smith has already been dealt with and eradicated, hopefully for good. During the last movie, he was a serious problem for the humans and for the Matrix, which created the necessity of Neo and Trinity making their way to the machine city in an attempt to cancel Smith and possibly end the war. When the enemy of your enemy is your friend it makes for strange allies sometimes, but even the Matrix had to admit that Neo was its best chance at eradicating the rogue program known as Smith. But bringing him back would have been a little difficult, and it’s bound to be a little difficult to understand just why Keanu and Carrie will be coming back as well since every actor has aged a bit since the original movie and it’s bound to be difficult for a lot of fans when it comes to the explanation of how this can be.
Creating a prequel of sorts to The Matrix might be an idea, but otherwise, it would mean reincarnation, possibly resurrection, and a story that otherwise has to deal with the idea that somewhere in the Matrix’s code there are stored memories of every individual that was ever birthed in the machine. That doesn’t sound too far out there for a story such as this, as time travel sounds a little more unlikely given that we never did get to see how the machines would achieve this capability. Of course, if they did then it becomes a different version of The Terminator and one can only imagine how people might react to such an idea. Not having Agent Smith in the movie might actually be a good thing since it can show what might have happened before the program was created or after it was gone. In any case, it would appear that the humans and machines are going to be at war again, so it’s hard to say just what’s going to happen and how the characters that are being included are going to react to one another.
Since we’ve already seen the answer to that question in the last three movies, ending with an uneasy peace that a lot of people might believe, and rightly so, wouldn’t last. What happens from here is kind of hard to say since it feels like an accurate statement when saying that the fourth installment could possibly flop even with Keanu back. The second movie was a great deal of confusion, and the third didn’t pack the same punch as the first movie, so thinking that a fourth movie is going to come waltzing in to deliver what might be seen as the breath of fresh air that people want is kind of presumptuous. Whether Lana Wachowski really wanted to do this in the past or we’re getting a glimpse of something that was a faint idea that she now believes could be something great is hard to say, and being cynical isn’t easy since The Matrix is such a great story. But as movies progress, sequels find it harder and harder to really produce the same quality that the original movie is known for. Usually, if the initial movie isn’t that great it’s not too hard to come up with a way to top it and create something that people will enjoy. But The Matrix was a revolutionary movie that a lot of people were on board with from the start, and watching it kind of descend into the miasma of existentialism and long-winded exposition that came after the initial movie was a bit difficult.
Some might want to say that some people want action and flash and can’t handle the intellectual nature that the Matrix took on, but the truth is that while the action and the flashy moves are great, burying all of this beneath a story that can easily be implied without needing to force the audience to slog along was a bit of a mistake. I hate to say this since I too enjoy The Matrix, but the fourth movie is already feeling like it might be something that will be hyped up beyond belief only to trip over its own shortcomings the moment it’s released. I really hope I’m wrong.
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