Category Archives: Lilly Wachowski

The Matrix Resurrections review – Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss spark in utopian reboot

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A sunny new world beckons for Neo and Trinity in this self-aware but smart fourth instalment of the sci-fi classic

Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is the designer of The Matrix, a popular video game set in a virtual reality. His bosses have ordered a sequel; at an ideas meeting, his colleagues throw around a few ideas. PVC. Guns. Trans allegory. There is much winking and nudging in Lana Wachowski’s follow-up to the groundbreaking sci-fi films she co-created with her sister Lilly. Wachowski understands that in the 20 years since, their legacy has been boiled down to a catalogue of memes with lucrative franchise potential. Yet her newest chapter manages to be self-aware (at times overly so) without being entirely cynical.

Those foggy on the details of the trilogy’s plot will benefit from the exposition-heavy first act. Plagued by memories of his past, Anderson – also known as Neo – must once again choose whether to take the red pill offered by hacker Bugs (Jessica Henwick, whip-smart), and wake up, or continue to swallow his current reality. Carrie-Anne Moss’s Tiffany, a motorcycle mechanic and mother of two whom Neo remembers as Trinity, has a choice to make too. The romance between them has always been the molten core of the Matrix films; their power as a duo is what drives the story forward.

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Neo rhythms: why techno music and The Matrix are in perfect harmony

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The films’ heroes look like they’ve just stepped off the Berghain dancefloor – and the connection isn’t merely aesthetic. The series shares the genre’s philosophy of liberation

“We can’t see it,” says a character in The Matrix Resurrections, “but we’re all trapped inside these strange repeating loops.” Small surprise techno producer Marcel Dettmann was commissioned to write music for this latest film in the franchise. It’s a natural fit. Its director, Lana Wachowski, goes clubbing at Berghain, the Berlin techno club where Dettmann is resident and where, cut off from the everyday world, people have surreal, liberating experiences. Techno continues to inspire the franchise’s aesthetics.

When club techno arose in 1980s Detroit, African American producers were reimagining the deindustrialised city as a site of futurist fantasies. Cybotron’s dystopian 1984 track Techno City was inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and the Tokyo of Yellow Magic Orchestra’s track Technopolis. “I extrapolated the necessity of interfacing the spirituality of human beings into the cybernetic matrix,” said Cybotron’s Rik Davis (using the word “matrix” before the film existed), “between the brain, the soul and the mechanisms of cyberspace.”

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The Matrix director: I’m glad film recognised as trans metaphor

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Lilly Wachowski expresses pleasure that the film’s ‘original intention’ has become commonplace understanding among fans

Lilly Wachowski, who co-directed the Matrix films with her sister, Lana, has confirmed that they should be read as allegories for the transgender narrative. Subsequent to the films’ release, both sisters came out as trans – Lana in 2012 and Lilly in 2016 – and some fans have since identified apparent resonances for the experience in the movies.

“I’m glad that it has gotten out that that was the original intention,” Lilly told Netflix Film Club on 4 August. “The world wasn’t quite ready for it. The corporate world wasn’t ready for it.”

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