A sequel to The Matrix trilogy launched in late 2021 and it was divisive to say the least. Audiences and critics appeared unprepared for the next-level self-awareness of the movie and a plot that was so meta, with Neo again in The Matrix because the designer of a Matrix-like online game, it might nearly be on the verge of parody.
However I discovered myself within the minority. Sure, it was messy, ponderous, and overwrought. However I additionally discovered The Matrix Resurrections splendidly idiosyncratic, and in its message in regards to the magnetism and that means of affection, it was heartfelt and tender. I do know there are a lot of who like The Matrix for its motion, however I’ve all the time been enthused about its world-building too. It is a universe the place labels for people, computer systems, machines, and AI have developed, and it’s all the time fascinating to see how these concepts play out on display screen.
Directed and co-written by Lana Wachowski (the primary Matrix film authored with out her sister Lily), the film managed to pack lots into its 2.5-hour runtime, however I really feel a unique medium would go well with the numerous themes and ideas that this pioneering franchise has launched into the mainstream.
Whereas the likes of Fb and Microsoft work on the metaverse, 1999’s The Matrix was arguably the primary time most people discovered of a metaverse (though the time period was not then well-known). It was a dystopian imagining, the place humanity has been plugged right into a simulated actuality, a digital digital world during which everybody can work together with everybody else.
A world with out guidelines and controls, with out borders or boundaries
Video video games during which individuals can “plug in” and work together with others exist already. A few of them are in digital actuality. Video games akin to Fortnite and Second Life have been known as metaverses, whereas in VR games there are titles akin to VRChat and Horizon Worlds. It stays to be seen if the metaverse can ever transfer past a distinct segment, however a online game would’ve made a extra fertile space for the worlds and concepts that The Matrix Resurrections explored.
The Matrix franchise has type on this regard. For instance, do you know that Morpheus (the unique Morpheus as performed by Laurence Fishburne) canonically died in a online game? He’s fatally wounded by a gunshot within the on-line multiplayer sport The Matrix On-line (2005-2009) the place he’s killed by an murderer as he escapes from a remedy facility.
The Wachowskis are eager avid gamers too and even collaborated with builders on the video games Enter The Matrix and Path Of Neo, each of which supply extra context to the films. It is a cool for continuity, though it does imply that even should you watch all The Matrix movies in order, you continue to will not know why previous Morpheus is absent from this film.
In The Matrix Resurrections, we see the start of the primary film simulated in a “modal”. We additionally get callbacks to the trilogy as we uncover Neo is trapped within the physique of a video video games developer, a sport dev who explores the concepts of free will and future in a highly regarded sport that resembles the occasions of the films. Sure, it’s all extremely meta. However we might go one step additional and make an precise sport of the film. As a result of there’s one part of Resurrections that’s price increasing on.
By no means ship a human to do a machine’s job
One of the crucial intriguing features of the movie is the thought of freed machines, or “Sentients” as they like to be known as. These machines and AI (or “applications” within the movie’s terminology) broke freed from the machine world and The Matrix and serve no grasp whereas a few of them have determined to work and stay alongside people. As Resurrections shifts to its center part, after Neo is free of The Matrix, we’re taken to go to Io, a brand new human metropolis that has supplanted Zion, and right here lie marvels. We see a backyard the place applications assist to have a tendency vegetation and develop crops, utilizing their metallic our bodies, and within the distance are towers below a synthetic sky. However we don’t get to see a lot of Io within the movie earlier than we return into The Matrix. It’s a disgrace.
It’d be fascinating if Io turned the hub world of a online game, the place I might wander round speaking to the people and the applications, studying extra about this metropolis and its historical past. I think about an RPG that may take its cues from the worlds and cities discovered within the Ultimate Fantasy video games. In the meantime, there may very well be entry factors on Io the place you possibly can go to The Matrix and participate in numerous missions. It’d provide loads of scope for the online game designers too, as we might theoretically go to anywhere on Earth by way of The Matrix, and we might even have totally different genres for every stage that takes place inside it. However each time we might come again to this pretty creation that’s Io and progress additional.
Maybe we might assist too within the growth of Io. Possibly there may very well be a constructing sport for Io or a botanical aspect as we develop and domesticate town as we progress within the sport. There may be a lot potential right here. There may be alternative too to discover this symbiotic relationship between people and sentients, in addition to potential sources of battle and rigidity. Hell, you might even embrace a VR aspect – placing on one of many best VR headsets feels an terrible lot like jacking into The Matrix anyway, so it is a pure match.
All we’re providing is the reality. Nothing extra.
It’s a fertile setting for tales, character growth, and thematic exploration. For one, the Machine Civil Battle would certainly make a superb sport in itself, with gamers assuming the roles of rival applications, sided with both The Architect or The Analyst, or maybe you’d assume the function of a rogue agent or perhaps a program, who, like Neo, awakens and decides to assist humanity fairly than to maintain serving to to enslave it.
The Matrix Resurrections is a film that pays homage to video video games (there’s even a personality known as Shepard, who shares a passing resemblance to the Mass Impact protagonist, within the movie). Whereas it’s in no way excellent and is maybe too in thrall to its high-minded idea and the meta features of its screenplay, it does arrange nice alternatives to discover the concepts and worlds it has created and deepened. Video video games might take these concepts of destiny, determinism, AI rebel, sentience, company and free will and discover them to the following stage.
It’s time to develop your medium as soon as once more, Neo. There would possibly even be Kung Fu.
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