‘It’s a film we could use right about now’: Keanu Reeves returns to the Matrix

Early into The Matrix Resurrections, the new fourth instalment of cinema’s wildest franchise, there’s a scene in which Keanu Reeves’ Thomas Anderson, now a blue-pilled game developer living in San Francisco, is asked by his boss Smith (Jonathan Groff) to create a new sequel to his hit gaming trilogy titled The Matrix.

Anderson is reluctant. But if he doesn’t, Smith warns him, the games’ parent company Warner Bros – coincidentally, also the real-life films’ real-life studio – will make it without him.

Two decades on from Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s original 1999 breakout and 18 years since their expansive 2003 follow-ups The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, it’s a jarringly meta moment by which to set up a return to the blockbuster series.

Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in The Matrix Resurrections.Credit: Warner Bros

Judging by the scene, it seems that no one – besides Warner Bros executives, eyeballs flashing with dollar signs regarding the valuable intellectual property they were sitting on – really wanted to make another Matrix movie.

“Uh…,” Reeves, ever-boyish at 57, giggles over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “I mean, not really.”

He had been approached by “other agents” in the past, he explains conspiratorially, and told that Warner Bros was pursuing a new Matrix film. “But, for me, I had a hesitancy in being involved in something that wasn’t signed off by the Wachowskis,” he says. “So I was grateful and thrilled when Lana gave me a call.”

Returning to the Matrix only became a serious thought after that phone call with Lana, says Reeves, where the director explained her personal entry point to the material – that following the death of her parents, nostalgia might be a soothing environment to work in.

“It was all about the love story,” Reeves recalls. “[Lana’s] desire to bring Neo and Trinity [Carrie-Anne Moss] together again, and the feeling that it could be good medicine for her, for the story, and, potentially, for the audience.”

Any consternation around revisiting the famed franchise – Lilly Wachowski opted out; the film was solely directed by Lana, who also co-wrote with novelists David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) and Aleksandar Hemon (The Lazarus Project) – is all in the open.

In another of the film’s bizarre early scenes, Anderson’s gaming co-workers brainstorm ideas for their own fictional Matrix sequel (“We’re going to need a new Bullet Time!” one character says, referencing the original film’s groundbreaking visual effect), seeming to replicate the creatives’ backroom discussions – the anxieties, the concerns, the justifications – while also holding a mirror to Hollywood’s obsession with reboots, remakes and sequels.

“I don’t think the film is nostalgic about its nostalgia. And it’s not romantic,” says Reeves. “It really asks us to investigate the past and how we feel about it and where we are in the present. I think that’s good for us to think about – for the pleasures and comforts of nostalgia, but also for the taking stock of, ‘OK, that happened. And now here we are’, or ‘Oh shit, we’re making the same mistakes again’.”

In the intervening 21 years since the original Matrix’s release, the film’s also had a life of its own. Its ideas – or, at least, its language – have been culturally scrambled, infamously co-opted online by fringe lunatics and conspiracy theorists: the alt-right, Trumpists and incels touting themselves as red-pilled truth-seekers and free-thinkers and the rest of us as blue-pilled sheeple. Reeves is aware that Resurrections is entering amid a fractured legacy.

“I mean, that’s part of the story, but it’s not the whole story,” he says. “Listen, from the very beginning this idea of duality and choice – here’s a blue pill that represents this way of being, and here’s a red pill that represents this other way of being – I can see how other agencies would take that like, ‘OK, eughh!’” he chortles, mimicking screwballs moulding the film’s most famous concept to their own nefarious aims.

“But that in itself is a Matrix question. So The Matrix has always given us, I’ve felt, a toolbox to look at the world, to look at ourselves. And I think Resurrections is a kind of update, refresh, that we could use.”

In the new film, various characters speak about the obsolescence of such binary thinking.

“Yeah, but there’s also like, ‘You have choice, but choice is an illusion. Why? Because you already know.’ I mean, Lana, as well as being a deep thinker, is also a jester and I think that’s what makes these films not pedantic and it allows for us to be, like, you know, ‘Guns don’t kill people…’,” Reeves laughs. “I don’t really know what I mean by that, but that’s what came out.”

By this point I don’t know what he’s talking about either, which echoes my wider experience with the fabled franchise. To me, The Matrix is just a bunch of kung fu films with some vague theories about living inside the internet (or whatever). But I’m speaking to Keanu Reeves, so I just nod and move on.

The Matrix, filmed almost entirely at Sydney’s Fox Studios between March and August 1998, was essentially the spawn point for Australia’s blockbuster aspirations, the one that showed Hollywood what the local industry could do. Reeves spent almost three years in Sydney while filming the original trilogy: does he remember much of his time here, and what he got up to?

“Um yeah, The Matrix movies were pretty intense, so I didn’t get out that much, but, you know, I had a motorcycle on the film, so I’d go on some scoots around Sydney, and I’d definitely go to the movies,” he recalls. “It was cool to be introduced to the… What was the short film festival?”

Tropfest?

“Yeah! I think they were just a couple of years outside the cafe where it started. So I remember that, that was really cool, short films, very funny, clever. I was living in The Rocks. And uh, rugby league, just watching rugby league. What’s that competition you guys do, the rugby league? When NSW would play…”

Oh, State of Origin.

“State of Origin!” Reeves tosses his head back in excitement. “State of Origin! That was intense.”

Reeves, who also spent time in Sydney when he was just one year old – his younger sister Kim was born here – says he still feels “connected” to the place.

Keanu Reeves in 2003’s Matrix Reloaded.Credit: AP

“No, for real,” he adds solemnly. “I’ve spent almost three years of my life in Sydney. I mean, the first Matrix was like seven months of filming, then we spent 22 months filming Reloaded and Revolutions there. I was always on movie diets, so I remember going to Bistro Moncur, they had amazing steak frites. And, of course, Australian wine. That was a great discovery because I didn’t know anything about wine. Hill of Grace, Mount Mary, Petaluma…”

I’m surprised we haven’t christened him Our Keanu yet.

Just before our interview, Reeves – ever the public darling, beloved for his humble, aloof, anti-star persona, and endless stories of his tender, gentle, respectful exploits (including, well, the “hover hands”) – had gone viral online thanks to an Esquire profile that featured a sweet story from his friend Sandra Bullock. As Bullock told it, one day she’d offhandedly mentioned how she’d never tried champagne and truffles together. A few days later Reeves, on his way to a date, dropped by her house unannounced to deliver her the delectable combination. “I just thought you might want to try champagne and truffles, to see what it’s like,” he told her.

The internet collectively swooned at the anecdote’s display of Reeves’ casual kindness. Reeves hadn’t even read the viral profile. He doesn’t read any of the stuff written about him.

Reeves as blue-pilled Thomas Anderson in The Matrix Resurrections.Credit: Warner Bros

“When I was younger I probably checked it out more than I do now,” he says. “I don’t really follow social media or anything like that. People might point some stuff out, but, um yeah, I tend not to read them. I’m a pretty private person, so…”

Even for a screen icon, the adoration must be bizarre. It must be wild to see the perception people have of you or even to witness the aura that’s fomented around you. What’s Reeves’ take on these profiles always trying to get to the deeper truth of what he represents in the world, in showbiz, in history? All those pieces with dramatic titles such as Keanu Reeves Knows the Secrets to the Universe or Keanu Reeves is Too Good for This World? Does he ever see them and go, “Come on, that’s a bit much”?

“That is too much!” he says, his middle-part flapping as he again shoots back in exasperation. “I don’t know, it is what is. I can’t take it seriously.”

Then again, surely he had acting heroes growing up that he’d obsess over and want to know more about?

“I don’t know if I wanted to know more about them,” Reeves counters. “Like, for me, I grew up obsessed with the films of the ’70s and ’80s, so, you know, Al Pacino. But when I watched Serpico I wasn’t like, ‘But what are Al Pacino’s parents like? Who’s his girlfriend? Is he ever getting married?’” he says, laughing.

Fair enough. But at least the articles are positive. Everyone loves Keanu. I don’t think I’ve ever read a negative thing about Keanu.

“I mean, nice is nice and nice is better than not nice, so I’ll take it,” he says. “For me, I just think of it as part of the job. It’s certainly part of the expectation of the show business side of it. You know, I just try to be there, man. Like, I know it’s probably gonna be reductive, I know I’ll probably be misquoted or things will be taken out of context, so I just kind of let it be.”

Despite Resurrections’ open-ended conclusion, Reeves says he doesn’t know of plans to make any more Matrix movies. He also admits he can’t imagine the new flick will have the cultural impact of the original trilogy.

“I mean, you can’t compete with the first time because after the first time is the second time,” he says, a classic Keanu-ism if I’ve ever heard one. “But I think Resurrections is a special film. I think it’s funny, I think the ideas are thought-provoking, inspiring, challenging. I think it can make you laugh, it can make you cry, the characters are great, and I think the spectacle of it is amazing. I just think it’s a film we could use right about now.”

The Matrix Resurrections opens in cinemas on Boxing Day.

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