Warner Bros.
As all good trailers do, the first look at The Matrix: Resurrections gave fans an idea of what to expect in terms of spectacle while also largely keeping its plot under wrap: outside of the conceit that Neo has forgotten who he is, the events of the fourth film in The Matrix franchise remain largely a mystery.
One key question the trailer — and the title of the film itself, for the matter — raises is how its two titular characters, Keanu Reeves’ Neo and Carrie-Anne Moss’ Trinity, are even alive following the events of The Matrix Revolutions.
In case you need a little refresher, Neo and Trinity travel to Machine City to make a peace offering with the Machines as the Smith program threatens to destroy both the Matrix and the real world: Neo will stop Smith in exchange for the Machines leaving Zion alone. Neo succeeds and Smith is destroyed, freeing both humanity and the Machines from the program. Following his triumphant victory inside the Matrix, Neo — apparently succumbing to his injuries from the earlier crash that killed Trinity — is carried away by the Machines.
That said, The Matrix Revolutions did leave the door open for a return, as the final scene features the Oracle — now living in a rebooted Matrix — revealing that she thinks they will see Neo again. So are far as The One goes, the options for his return were at least laid bare at the conclusion of the original trilogy. My early working theory is that the Machines plugged Neo into a separate Matrix in order to keep him siloed from humanity, therefore rendering him incapable of being their savior, with the plot revolving around mankind breaking into this new Matrix in order to get Neo out of it.
Neo's body in the possession of the machines
After all, the Machines are clearly intent on keeping Neo’s true self suppressed by giving him “doctor prescribed” blue pills every day. If there’s *one* thing the trailer makes clear, it’s that the Machine do not want Neo to become Neo again. Realizing they cannot stop him, they’ve instead opted to contain him.
When it comes to Trinity, though, her return is simultaneously clearer yet also more complex, as the character — more so than Neo — was *very much* dead the last time we saw here, having been impaled by metal pipes as she and Neo attempted to reach Machine City.
Based on the trailer, Neo’s love for Trinity appears to be the MacGuffin that puts him back on the path to awakening, but the Trinity we see not only has classic Matrix code running down her face but seems to be frozen in time. This is but one of many pieces of odd imagery that surrounds Trinity throughout the trailer.
Not long after the moment of embrace, a Young Morpheus tells Neo, “The only thing that matters to you is still here, that’s why you’re still fighting, and why you will never give up.” That “thing” is, obviously, Trinity, while the “here” could very well be the Matrix.
Most interesting of all, though, is a real-world shot that comes during the many action sequences towards the tail end of the trailer, which I believe shows a newly created Trinity being born. This shot is then immediately followed by Trinity kicking ass the same way she used to, which is in stark contrast to the suburban mom version we see at the beginning of the trailer.
And that, my simulation friends, is perhaps what explains the title of the film, The Matrix: Resurrections: the prospect of being able to resurrect Trinity is what Morpheus and humanity will use to get Neo to rejoin their fight against the machines. Perhaps Neo isn’t the only one that the Machines hooked up to their siloed Matrix and plugged Trinity in as well, saving her consciousness despite the death of her physical form, leading the pair to try and escape in order to be reborn in their newly created bodies, in order to be resurrected.
Neo's old body (as evidenced by the eyes) vs. Neo's new body
This would also explain why Neo and Trinity have aged while Morpheus is now younger: while the pair remains the same versions of themselves — the same consciousnesses — that they were in the original trilogy, Morpheus exists in the newly rebooted Matrix, the one that they’re trying to bring Neo and Trinity into, which could then serve as a bridge to their new bodies. When Jessica Henwick’s purple-haired character walks Keanu through the mirror door, neither of those worlds look like the post-apocalyptic hellscape that became so familiar in the original trilogy. Instead, they simply look like two different versions of the Matrix.
Warner Bros.
Again, while this is all amounts to an extremely rough draft of a Hits Bong Theory given the lack of plot details in the trailer, the evidence — particularly the ones related to Trinity — suggests that the film will be about getting the minds of Neo and Trinity out of a prison Matrix and into the main Matrix so they can then be uploaded into new bodies as humanity’s war against the machines rages on.
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