“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” - Nic Cage is...inevitable.

If ever there was a person who could be described as a movie, it’s Nicholas Cage. It’s right there in a title that is as pompous and full of itself as it is long. What really made me want to see the film was the movie poster. Right at the top, it says “Nicholas Cage is Nic Cage.” Knowing that tagline, the only other actor besides Cage you might immediately think this movie was about is Tom Cruise. Except, Tom Cruise thinks he’s Ethan Hunt, so it never would have worked.

(SPOILER ALERT - Nic Cage be Nick Cage.)

The most surprising thing about this movie is that it wasn’t written by Nicholas Cage. That means that writers Tom Gormican (also directing) and Kevin Etten wrote this on their own. According to an interview with Cage by The Hollywood Reporter, Cage turned it down several times before ultimately caving after Gormican sent him a personal letter. Cage originally thought the movie was just a vehicle to make fun of him but came to believe it was more of a celebration of his career, so Cage agreed to do it. In reality, it’s both. It’s a celebration of his career that pokes fun at it and Cage. In other words, it’s a bit of a roast, but a lot more fun.

Cage really is playing himself in this film. A fictionalized version, but one that is nearly indistinguishable from what we think he is. In the film, his ex-wife (Sharon Horgan) and daughter (Lily Sheen) pretty much hate him, his career is in the toilet from picking far too many bad films, and his finances are looking grim due to his lifestyle choices. Go look at his IMDb page - Cage has been in thirty-eight movies since 2012 and I’m betting you can’t name more than one of them, if any at all. And that is very much because he pissed away $150 million dollars. We really can’t blame him for being suspicious of this film’s intent.

After failing to land another role (despite some embarrassing groveling to the director) and threatened with eviction, he accepts an offer from his agent (Neil Patrick Harris) to appear at the birthday party of Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) in Mallorca, Spain. We are also treated to Nic’s alter ego, Nicky, a younger version of himself from his Valley Girl/Raising Arizona/Peggy Sue Got Married days who keeps Nic from facing reality by constantly reminding Nic that he is “Nicholas fuuuuuuuuucccccckkkkkkiiiinnnnggggg CAAAAAAGGGGGEEEEE!!!!!!!” Are we sure this movie is fictional?

Upon landing in Mallorca, undercover CIA agent Vivian Etten (Tiffany Haddish) is in the tiny airport and is surprised to see Nic walk off the plane instead of the person they were going to contact to spy on Javi. The CIA believes Javi is a major illicit arms dealer who kidnapped the daughter of a Spanish presidential candidate. Vivian’s partner Martin (Ike Barinholtz) tries to abort their mission, but Vivian decides Nicholas fucking Cage will have to do. She pretends to be a fan of his, while slipping a phone in his pocket, then informs Martin that the mission is a go. Alright - now we know the movie really is fictional, but it sure does sound like Cage’s fantasy. Or at least the audience’s fantasy of what Cage fantasizes about.

As it turns out, Javi is a huge of Nic and his real reason for inviting Nic to his party is to convince him to star in a movie that Javi has written. At first, Nic is just wallowing in his own misery and generally being a terrible guest. He doesn’t know about the screenplay yet, but finds out after Javi’s assistant Gabriela (Alessandra Mastronardi) scares the shit out of him and makes him go on a drive with Javi. Cage resents it at first, but bonds with Javi over movies. This is where we get a second helping of Cage nostalgia (the beginning of the film is filled with it as well) that reminds us that this movie is fiction-not-fiction. This is also where the movie’s CIA plot really kicks in.

I need to repeat that this movie is the embodiment of Nicholas Cage the person and the actor, at least the public parts of his life. The entire spy plot plays out like all of his action movies and, while being completely bonkers, it’s glorious. There’s a car chase, there are drugs, there are one-liners, and there are hijinks. I pretty sure these are the parts of the screenplay that convinced Cage to be in the film. Everything about it screams HAVE FUN NIC!!! while also managing to be clever. The constant references to Cage’s filmography are so well woven into the dialogue and scenes, that despite there being tons of them it somehow feels like there aren’t enough. Which again, absolutely describes Cage’s filmography. Given his entire body of work and life, this movie was probably a foregone conclusion. I mean, he’s NICHOLAS FUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKIIIINNNNGGGGG CAAAAAAGGGGGEEEEE!!!!!!!

Rating: Ask for zero dollars back, maybe even throw a couple extra bucks out there. Apparently, Nic still needs it.

“The Matrix: Resurrections” - Control-Alt-Delete.

Way back in 1999, the idea of a Matrix sequel was a no-brainer. Neo had just destroyed Agent Smith, warned the artificial intelligence that he was going to set everyone’s minds free, and flew off into the sky like Superman. Four years later, the two-part sequel released and were a bit of a letdown, to say the least. We got what we asked for, but were disappointed in what we got. At that point, we realized that the original Matrix was a unique moment in film that probably should have been left to stand by itself. I’d like to think Hollywood learned its lesson and that’s why there aren’t sequels to Interstellar or Inception.

Of course, Hollywood’s lizard brain usually makes the decisions because MONEY!!! Now we have another Matrix sequel - Resurrections. And, not just any sequel, but a sequel that doubles as a remake. This makes sense when you consider that pretty much everyone disliked the sequels, so what better way to atone for them than to bring back as much of the original as possible? And, since it’s The Matrix we’re talking about, a reboot/sequel can easily be explained because <insert computer jargon here>.

(SPOILER ALERT - There is no spoon.)

In case you did not see how the trilogy ended, Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) die. Not in the Matrix, but in the real world. The film ends with the Oracle and the Architect discussing if the peace between humans and machines will last and agreeing to free any humans who wish to leave the Matrix. It’s a pretty definitive conclusion to the story, with the only untied string being a final question - if we will see Neo again - thrown in because Hollywood just can’t resist.

Decades later, the Matrix is stable and the human city of Zion has been renamed Io and filled with humans no longer worried about killer sentinels coming for them. The film opens with a replay of the original film’s opening scene. You know the one. Trinity (or a woman who looks very much like her) is in a deserted hotel room, cops bust in to arrest her, and she does the kick where bullet-time cinematography blows our minds away. Except, this time, different agents chase Sort-of-Trinity, and we’re watching it from behind a wall with Bugs (Jessica Henwick) and a hologram of Bugs’ handler, Sequoia (Toby Onwumere). This piques our interest, especially when Trinity is captured on a rooftop, rather than escaping. At the same time, Bugs ends up being discovered by an agent and another chase ensues, where she ends up trapped in a secret room with an agent. But, not just any agent, but one that is actually a program embodying Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Bugs helps him escape the Matrix and into a body consisting of nanobots in the real world. Confused yet? Welcome to the new Matrix.

It turns out that many of the machines decided to cooperate with the humans and help them with various tasks like growing strawberries. No, seriously. Blueberries too. This will freak out Neo, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Neo (who is back to his ignorant human self, Tom Anderson) is now a prominent game-developer in the Matrix. He is most famous for creating the Matrix game, which is the movie’s way of winking at the audience in a quasi-fourth-wall-break kind of way. Incidentally, the movie will also make multiple references to the original trilogy in the same way, including kind of taking a dump on bullet-time. Then, the movie will tell you how Warner Brothers is forcing another Matrix sequel and, geez, we get it already.

Anyway, Tom is seeing a therapist (Neil Patrick Harris) because he is struggling to keep reality and fantasy separate in his head. Tom is also having meetings with his business partner, Smith (Jonathan Groff), who Tom also discusses his struggles with, in addition to the new game Tom is working on. A montage of days go by where we see Tom continuing to struggle, ingesting blue pills prescribed by his therapist, and having daily brainstorming sessions with his developer group about the Matrix sequel. We all know this can’t last, but we also are wondering how Tom is even alive, since Neo died in the old trilogy. Then, Trinity shows up in a coffee shop when Tom is there and we’re like “finally!” Except, Trinity is just a mom named Tiffany, with two kids and a husband and we’re like “oh, come on!”

Eventually, we get to the part where Tom is freed and becomes Neo again, this time by Bugs and Morpheus. There is gobbledygook about Neo having created a modal for them to find (the original Trinity scene), but we have no idea what that means. I work with software developers all day and I have never heard that term. But the film is going to pretend that the audience isn’t completely confused and just move on with what it really wants to do - nostalgia.

And thus we come to the real issue with this film - what is the point besides nostalgia? The nostalgia is laid on so thick that we literally see clips of scenes from the original trilogy sprinkled throughout the film. In addition to the modal, Agent Smith reappears, but as Tom’s business partner (Groff), we get a tweaked reprise of the dojo training scene with Morpheus, Neo’s body being retrieved from the battery-pod, and even the Merovingian because why not? And still we’re wondering, how is Neo/Tom still alive? And, Trinity/Tiffany for that matter.

Well, I’ll leave that explanation for the movie to give you, and you should know that it is long. Really long. And done in a way that Lana Wachowski (Lilly was not involved for this film) thought was clever, but comes off as a bit of a slap in the face to the audience. To be fair, maybe that slap was just to wake us up because the scene is just so boring. The villain has the ability to move at Quicksilver speeds and monologues while everything around him, Neo included, barely moves. It’s not a fun scene to watch nor is the monologue particularly interesting. The entire scene reinforces the notion that the original film was a unicorn.

Throughout the film, I kept wondering what the actual story was and what was at stake. The first film very clearly establishes the stakes - saving the human race. The two sequels continue with the same concept - saving the human race, with the subplot being the love story between Neo and Trinity. Resurrections does not appear to care even a tiny bit about the fate of the human race, even going out of its way to point out that there is a peace between humans and machines to the point they are literally cooperating with each other. Instead, the film really leans into the love story that was over at least one movie ago.

(Side note: one element of the story is that the machines are at war with each other over an energy shortage. This makes no sense for so many different reasons. Why can’t the machines build something that goes into space to collect energy? Are the machines reproducing themselves like humans, with no regard to resource requirements or how much the planet can sustain? Does artificial intelligence really just mean acting like stupid, selfish, violent humans?)

Convoluted story aside, maybe the most disappointing aspect of the film is that nearly all of the aesthetics from the original trilogy are gone. The martial arts and fight choreography were practically non-existent, the bullet-time is gone and even derided by the movie, and the score was both unmemorable and often didn't fit the tone of the scenes. Plus, the sheer amount of footage spliced in from the original trilogy became tired. At first it was cool, then it just felt lazy and unnecessary. It was like watching a flashback episode of a sitcom, which is always the episode you could tell was done out of sheer convenience for an easy paycheck.

Don’t get me wrong. I did somewhat enjoy going back to the Matrix and there were some bright spots. The actors not named Reeves and Moss were clearly thrilled to be in a Matrix movie. While Reeves and Moss all but sleepwalked through a script that gave them little to do, the rest of the cast was relishing a chance to be as cool as the original cast looked (especially Groff, who really made Smith his own). To be fair to the film, I’m going to watch it again, and maybe there are things I missed that will make me enjoy it more. I just did this with James Bond: No Time to Die and it was definitely better the second time around. Granted, I enjoyed No Time to Die on the first viewing a lot more than I enjoyed Resurrections. Maybe I just need another reboot.

Rating: Ask for seven dollars back for what felt like discount Matrix.