Trivia / The Matrix Resurrections

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• Actor-Inspired Element: "Tiffany" has two sons and a daughter, just like Carrie-Anne Moss.
• B-Team Sequel:
  • A variant. While Lana Wachowski is heavily involved with the creation of this film, her sister Lilly isn't, in spite of working on the previous three Matrix movies alongside her sister in the early 2000s. The effects team, cinematographer and composer of the other movies were also replaced. Notably, Chad Stahelski, stunt coordinator on the sequels (and stuntman on the first film) did not return, having started his own Keanu Reeves action franchise in the interim (and working on the fourth film during production of Resurrections) — however, he did make a cameo appearance as Chad.
  • Unlike the previous films, Joel Silver didn't produce this one.
• Box Office Bomb: Grossed $150 million worldwide on a budget of $190 million. In North America, it grossed $37 million by the end of its run, less than the $42 million The Matrix Reloaded grossed on its first day.^note A stat that looks even worse when taking into account the average 2021 ticket price being around 72% higher than in 2003, meaning Reloaded's first day would be around $73 million adjusted for inflation. Factors cited for the lackluster returns include the film's HBO Max availability, the COVID-19 pandemic, mixed word-of-mouth, diminished interest in a franchise that had been dormant for 18 years, and its release falling less than a week after that of undisputed box office juggernaut Spider-Man: No Way Home. That being said, the film was one of the most successful same-day-releases on HBO Max, to the point where the studio optioned Lana Wachowski for a sequel regardless of the film's box office underperformance based on streaming numbers alone (whether or not Warner Bros. Discovery intends on following up on this remains to be seen).
• Creator Backlash: Like many directors of films of the 2021 theatrical slate of Warner Bros. that ended up released same-day on HBO Max, Lana Wachowski wasn't happy that the film got this treatment, although she has been financially compensated for by WB for this release format. It's been speculated that the "red pill, blue pill" imagery in the marketing is actually a subtle jab at this, given that the red pill is on the left with the "see it in theaters" option, and the blue pill is on the right with the "see it on HBO Max" option. After the movie flopped, producer Village Roadshow sued Warner Bros. over the simultaneous release, arguing the studio set the film up to fail.
• Creator Breakdown:
  • In a panel at the International Literature Festival Berlin, Lana Wachowski said the idea for a new film starring Neo and Trinity Back from the Dead came in response to grief from losing her parents and a friend.
    Lana Wachowski: My brain has always reached into my imagination and one night, I was crying and I couldn't sleep, and my brain exploded this whole story. And I couldn’t have my mom and dad, yet suddenly I had Neo and Trinity, arguably the two most important characters in my life. It was immediately comforting to have these two characters alive again, and it's super simple. You can look at it and say: "Okay, these two people die and okay, bring these two people back to life and oh, doesn't that feel good?" Yeah, it did! It's simple, and this is what art does and that's what stories do, they comfort us.
  • Lilly Wachowski in turn said those losses were why she didn't "want to go back to something that I had done before", hence the sibling split.
• Creator Couple: Carrie-Anne Moss's husband Steven Roy plays Neo’s reflection.
• The Danza: Chad Stahelski as Handsome Chad.
• Deleted Role: Daniel Bernhardt was announced to be reprising his role as Agent Johnson, but his scenes were cut from the final film.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Jessica Henwick cut her long black hair to a Boyish Short Hair and dyed it blue for the film. As noted below, she was originally set to shave her head, but they eventually settled on the hairstyle she has in the film.
  • As with the first film, Keanu Reeves shaved his beard and long hair off for his scenes when he's outside the Matrix. This time, Carrie-Anne Moss also shaved her head, and she and Reeves sat side-by-side as they did so.
• No Stunt Double: According to Keanu Reeves, Neo and Trinity's tandem leap from San Francisco's 44 Montgomery Street building was mostly accomplished without CGI effects. Even though the building is officially 43 stories high, they had to climb a further 2-3 floors to reach the rooftop. The pair made the jump as many as twenty times over a two-day period with body descender cables attached.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Hugo Weaving was supposed to return as Agent Smith, but negotiations fell apart due to scheduling conflicts where he was appearing in Tony Kushner's theatrical adaptation of The Visit. Jonathan Groff took over the role for this film.
    • Weaving's voice actor for the European French dub of the first three films, Vincent Grass, was also replaced by Marc Arnaud.
  • Sati was played by Tanveer K. Atwal in The Matrix Revolutions and Priyanka Chopra Jonas here.
  • The Brazilian dub replaced both Neo and Trinity - the former was a particularly contested change, as dubber Reynaldo Buzzoni had been in another job that made him basically only return for new Keanu Reeves movies, and Buzzoni would reveal that in spite of announcing himself available for the studio, he was never called.
• Production Posse:
  • Co-composer Tom Tykwer (who's primarily a director but usually composes his own soundtracks) and cinematographer John Toll have worked with Lana Wachowski on multiple previous projects, including Sense8.
  • Except for Jessica Henwick (Bugs), the actors who play the crew of the Mnemosyne (Toby Onwumere, Eréndira Ibarra, Brian J. Smith, Mumbi Maina, and L. Trey Wilson) had all previously worked with Lana Wachowski on Sense8. Other cast members from that series who turn up here are Max Riemelt and Max Mauff (in Io), Michael X. Sommers as the barista, and Purab Kohli and Freema Agyeman (as part of the Matrix focus group research team).
  • The movie is co-written by David Mitchell, the author of Cloud Atlas.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: Keanu Reeves kept his John Wick look (beard and long hair) for this film due to the overlapping productions of both this and the fourth Wick film, though the latter's production was delayed due to COVID-19, which resulted in him shaving his beard and long hair off in the latter half of filming, in the scenes in which Neo is outside the Matrix. Fortunately, he grew both back in time to begin filming the latter, which had its release date postponed to spring 2023 shortly after the release of this film.
• Recursive Canon: The slow-motion effects from the Matrix films are referred to as "Bullet Time" by Anderson's team of video game developers. The term was coined by the filmmakers during production of The Matrix (and used extensively in press coverage at the time), but it was never referred to in-world during the original trilogy.
• Refitted for Sequel: The Tokyo train sequence is a loose reincarnation of a discarded action scene from the original film's rough drafts, where Neo would have gotten in a fight on the subway.
• Release Date Change: Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the film was pushed back from May 21, 2021 (where it would have ironically faced the fourth John Wick film, which got moved as well) to April 1, 2022, then later pushed up to December 22, 2021.
• Role Reprise: Returning actors include Keanu Reeves (Neo), Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity), Jada Pinkett (Niobe), Lambert Wilson (the Merovingian), Daniel Bernhardt (Agent Johnson).
• Sequel Gap: The film came out 18 years after The Matrix Revolutions. In fact, it's the first official Matrix media of any kind since The Matrix Online and The Matrix: Path of Neo in 2005 (with the former shutting down in 2009, 12 years before Resurrections).
• Torch the Franchise and Run: One thing that both the film's defenders and critics generally agree on is that the Wachowskis did not want to make this movie. Lana and Lilly had been asked for years to make a fourth Matrix film, and refused every time. Only when it became clear that Warner Bros. was ready to reboot the series with or without them did Lana (but not Lilly) decide to bite the bullet and take the director's chair herself, chiefly to make a film that would destroy any chance of that ever happening.
• Uncredited Role: Tom Hardy filmed an uncredited background cameo appearance, due to the movie filming in San Francisco simultaneously with Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Numerous rumors about the future of the franchise circulated in the nearly two decades between Revolutions and Resurrections, with or without the Wachowskis' involvement (generally without, since Lilly Wachowski referred to the idea of returning to the series as "repellent" in 2015). At one point, Zak Penn (The Incredible Hulk, Free Guy) worked independently from the Wachowskis on a revival of the series that would have led to an Expanded Universe for the franchise; the fate of this project is unknown following the development of Resurrections.
  • Lilly Wachowski would have worked on the movie with her sister, but opted out due to personal issues in her life.
  • John Toll was originally going to be the sole cinematographer but he departed due to COVID issues with his family, leaving Camera Operator Daniele Massaccesi (who had worked with the Wachowskis before on Sense8) to finish the shoot.
  • Lana originally wanted Bugs to be bald both in and out of the Matrix and Jessica Henwick agreed. Before she could shave her head, they had further discussions and agreed to Bugs' blue-haired look.
  • Hugo Weaving actually did want to return and reprise his role as Smith, but schedule conflicts prevented it and Lana decided to just recast the role.
• Working Title: The film was made under the code name Project Ice Cream.
• Writer Revolt: The Meta Fiction moments can be interpreted as Lana Wachowski venting off years of hearing both requests to continue the series and interpretations of it.

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