How The Matrix 4. resurrects an legendary 20-12 months really like tale

Getting his photo taken does not rank superior on Reeves’ list of favorite issues. It in no way has. But he seems to be up and smiles when a pair of comforting hands relaxation on his shoulders: They belong to Carrie-Anne Moss, his longtime costar from the Matrix films, positioning herself behind him for the shot. There’s an simplicity between them that arrives from 20-in addition a long time of friendship — a friendship that commenced in the late ’90s when the pair met on the genre-redefining sci-fi movie that turned out to be so influential, it solitary-handedly released phrases like “glitch in the Matrix” and “purple-pilling” to the pop tradition lexicon.

Moss phone calls their connection effortless. “We’ve been as a result of this expertise together as partners,” suggests the actress, 54. “The only way I can explain it is like a soul friendship.” Their unique bond built 1999’s The Matrix what it is right now, and The Matrix, in convert, adjusted the program of moviemaking on the eve of a new millennium.

That 1st movie, encouraged by then-geekier genres like cyberpunk and anime, envisioned a grim long term in which our world, unbeknownst to us, had been taken around by equipment: Working with a simulated fact, synthetic intelligence retains people docile more than enough to harvest for electrical power. At the center of this brainy higher principle was Reeves’ Neo, a bored office employee moonlighting as a computer hacker who escapes the simulation, and Moss’ Trinity, a female from the authentic environment with the skill to jack into the Matrix — not to mention a talent for executing gravity-defying overcome moves even though clad in slick black leather-based.

After all these a long time, neither star would’ve guessed that they’d be back together speaking about but a different sequel, The Matrix Resurrections, which lands in theaters and on HBO Max Dec. 22. How could they? Sibling administrators Lana and Lilly Wachowski, the architects of the franchise, had been business in their solve that the to start with three installments would provide as a complete trilogy, definitively ending in 2003 with The Matrix Revolutions… and (two-10 years-previous spoiler alert!) with equally Neo and Trinity dying at the close.

When requested why he agreed to return to the sequence soon after a just about two-10 years hiatus, Reeves offers a very uncomplicated clarification: “We had filmmakers who you needed to say certainly to,” he says. Additionally, he provides, “[we had] substance that you preferred to commit to, to give all the things that you could to.”

The real journey to Resurrections, nonetheless, was a tiny a lot more complex than that. At a Berlin screenwriting panel back again in September, Lana stated that each and every calendar year, Warner Bros. would ask her and Lilly to make a different Matrix movie, but they constantly declined. In 2017, screenwriter Zak Penn (X-Guys: The Past Stand, The Avengers) revealed that he was operating on undisclosed Matrix assignments with out the involvement of the Wachowskis, who had stepped absent from aspect filmmaking soon after the disastrous reception to 2015’s Jupiter Ascending. Lilly advised The Hollywood Reporter in 2020 that corporate interference on her movies pushed her to a “breaking position.” As an alternative of continuing her collaboration with Lana, she explained that she needed to “reconnect” with herself as an artist by likely back to school and performing on other assignments.

“The Matrix was a revolutionary movie and providing that legacy to another person else I feel [would have been a] horrendous miscalculation,” suggests Jada Pinkett Smith, returning for Resurrections as her character Niobe from the first two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.

For Lana, it was a collection of tragic, life-altering activities that at some point changed her intellect: the death of her mother and father and a near close friend. “I didn’t definitely know how to method that variety of grief,” she said at the Berlin panel. “I hadn’t professional it that closely.” The Matrix‘s figures gave her comfort and ease: “I could not have my mom and father, nonetheless quickly I had Neo and Trinity, arguably the two most vital characters in my daily life.”

Profound private alter has always been central to the Matrix universe. The Wachowskis arrived out as trans and underwent gender reassignment surgical treatment in the many years since Reloaded and Revolutions both equally hit theaters in 2003. This awakening might have been an unspoken part of The Matrix due to the fact the beginning Reeves remembers an early draft of the first script that featured a character who entered the Matrix globe as a various sexual intercourse. “I consider the studio was not ready for that,” he states.

That lifestyle now contains Bugs (Star Wars: The Power Awakens‘ Jessica Henwick), a blue-haired gunslinger with a white rabbit tattoo. When she crosses Neo’s path, we get a lot more clues about just why Lana felt so compelled to return to The Matrix. (You will find also a rather meta cure of that extremely issue in the movie.) “Artwork is a mirror,” Wachowski writes. “Most will prefer to gaze at the floor but there will be people today like me who delight in what lies guiding the wanting glass. I manufactured this movie for them.”

Henwick, 29, guarantees “a new tone” and “a new search” that tends to make Resurrections a lot more lively and “joyous.” Reeves, too, was “struck by how a lot humor is in it” — but that isn’t going to mean Neo will be cracking quips like Tony Stark. “It really is throwing down the Matrix gauntlet once more it can be tremendous good, clever, entertaining, suspenseful, and humorous,” he states. Provides Watchmen and Candyman star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, 35, who plays Morpheus, a unique version of Neo’s mentor originated by Laurence Fishburne: “Out of all of the sci-fi matters that I’ve accomplished, Matrix is the a single that is the most grounded in actuality, ironically. There are all of the significant concepts surrounding The Matrix inside of our story, but truly there is certainly so a lot coronary heart and humanity which is driving this narrative.”

Emphasis on heart. “Not that it required it,” claims Reeves, “but absolutely the depth of why this movie bought built is the sense of it becoming a enjoy story amongst Trinity and Neo.” It was Lana’s deep relationship to the characters that resonated with her stars. Reeves remembers the conversation when Lana very first told him about her idea for a different sequel. “It was just one of those people mobile phone phone calls where by even nevertheless you are at residence, you stand up,” he claims.

For her part, Moss observed the new movie as a uncommon “chance to embody” Lana’s appreciate. “I have in no way felt that way in advance of, exactly where I could see that I am an extension of her heart in actively playing this job,” she says. Adds Jonathan Groff (Frozen, Hamilton), 36, who plays a match who might be additional than he appears to be: “When I study the script for this film I cried, because the notion of looking at these two legendary actors in these two iconic areas coming again and battling to have their like all over again just wrecked me.”

Filming began in February 2020, and the many cloak-and-dagger tries to keep 1 of the most predicted productions in years a top secret did not really get the job done out: Bystanders leaked on social media a scene that was shot in San Francisco in which Reeves and Moss stand at the edge of a building a lot more than 40 flooring higher, swarmed by missile-launching helicopters, with no preference but to leap. In accordance to stunt coordinator Scott Rogers, who also worked with Reeves on the third and fourth installments of John Wick, Lana observed this sequence as a metaphor for the complete motion picture. “For her, the studio, the actors, everyone,” he says, “you’re getting this leap of religion.” Counters Reeves: “We have an amazing filmmaker, a visionary, these incredible roles with the kind of storytelling and strategies and advertising of assumed. A leap of religion? We have a great deal of religion in that leap.”

Moss suggests she had “a good deal of hurdles to defeat” just before she was equipped to do the scene. She sat down at a table with her spouse before the shoot to discuss it. “He’s like, ‘You genuinely gonna do this?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, certainly. I you should not know how I’m likely to get there, but I know I’m heading to get there.'”

“If we are there, it is not a stunt,” jokes Reeves, that means the stunt pros are the kinds who in fact do the risky things. “But Scott established up a condition wherever we could do it. So, we did.” Moss acknowledges how her bodily abilities have altered from 20 yrs back when she was filming shut-quarter fight scenes with a lot more simplicity. It was about “respecting that time has passed, that my body’s experienced a few children,” she claims. “But I also loved that problem.”

Henwick had her own leap of faith to get. Finest regarded for enjoying Nymeria Sand on Game of Thrones and Colleen Wing on Iron Fist, she was up for a purpose in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings at the exact time she was up for the part of Bugs. The two Disney and Warner Bros. understood about the other supply and gave her an ultimatum: She could audition for their movie only if she forfeited the competing challenge. Neither function was certain. “It was a purple-tablet/blue-capsule minute for me,” she suggests.

Henwick sees Bugs as “the audience’s eyes” into Resurrections, which is how a single may appear at all of the actors new to The Matrix. Abdul-Mateen credits Reeves for “pushing us and environment the normal” for the function. Groff concurs. “[Keanu] taught me so a lot about the agreement of two people to strike just about every other, but not damage every other,” the Broadway-skilled actor claims. “When our fight was about, I felt deeply related to him in a physical way.” It is not misplaced on Groff, who arrived out publicly as gay in 2009, that he’s associated in this kind of an motion-significant film when queer persons have not largely been welcomed into that place. That’s a different testomony to Wachowski, who brought back several crew members from Sense8, a series that prominently showcased LGBTQ tales, whilst welcoming new faces into her innovative household.

To the two actors who know her finest, Lana felt like a unique director in some techniques. Reeves remembers that on the primary trilogy, she was “extra powering the observe” but “nevertheless fingers-on.” With Resurrections, “she was taking part more with the motion of the digital camera, and far more fascinated in carrying out than rehearsing.” It was less about prep and a lot more about everyone’s readiness to come across the unpredicted in the second. Reeves confesses they “scarcely rehearsed, if at all.”

In other strategies, performing on Resurrections was like reuniting with an aged close friend. Once Lana named “Motion!” Moss says she went proper again to the place she was with Reeves in the unique motion picture. “Most of my scenes are with Keanu, and it was just a satisfaction to sit throughout from him and do that again,” she claims, as she and Reeves sit aspect by aspect in matching director’s chairs. “He has a masterful comprehending of motion. I have watched him develop in the final 20 several years. I’m in awe of it.”

Reeves shakes his head again and forth as she speaks, silently protesting. “But you’ve got got a flavor,” he responds. “It really is Trinity! It is Carrie-Anne Moss, Trinity flavor. All the fierceness and brain, concentrate, motivation is there in the gestures. Untamed and wild and controlled.”

Soon after all these many years, it is still a taste we are unable to get more than enough of. In advance of Moss and Reeves improve into their next outfits for the image shoot, they slip absent, catching up on each individual other’s lives given that producing Resurrections. They thrust via the studio’s back exit, flooding the darkened room with afternoon sunshine. Lovers of the films may possibly straight away feel of the door of light, a portal Neo would use to slip into the electronic “backdoor” of the Matrix. But which is not rather it. “They’re using a cigarette split,” a crew member says. In this universe, even the most informal of exits looks interesting.

A version of this tale appears in Amusement Weekly‘s January situation, on newsstands Dec. 17 and out there to buy below. You should not ignore to subscribe for much more exclusive interviews and pictures, only in EW.