The Matrix Franchise Ranked
Spanning 22 years we have 4 movies inside of The Matrix franchise. And just last week the 4th movie in the franchise, The Matrix Resurrections hit theaters and HBO Max. So in today’s blog post I’m going to be ranking the 4 Matrix movies. As a quick point of reference, I’ve seen the original movie many times. But I watched 2 and 3 for the first time this year, so that is my perspective going into this movie. With all of that said, let’s get started!
4. The Matrix Revolutions: The third movie in the franchise is easily the bottom of the barrel when it comes to this franchise. And this is one that I have heard from so many people saying that The Matrix sequels are bad movies. This one is a bad movie, the other one isn’t a bad movie but a mediocre one. And of the sequels, this is the one that just didn’t come together for me. I like the whole idea of there being this big epic battle of Zion and Neo and Trinity trying to safe the day. But I think with attempting to give a satisfying end to this trilogy and these characters it gave answers in not good ways. And with what they do in the final 5-10 minutes of the movie really undermines this entire franchise and feels like a middle finger to the fans. This movie continues with one of the issues that The Matrix Reloaded is that there is so many sub-plots and characters in this movie that it can be over crowded and hard to follow at points in time. And it’s true here as well, where they have thai straight forward concept for a movie. But they have all of this extra junk that doesn’t need to be there. The cast here is still very good and some of the action in the movie is done very well. But everything else is a totally misfire and nothing really works about this movie.
3. The Matrix Reloaded: Now this is a movie that I’ve heard from people wasn’t very good, and it’s a bad movie. As for me, it’s not good but I also don’t think it’s bad either. It’s just very mediocre in the way that it’s done. The action in the movie is still very well done, the highway chase in this movie I thought was pretty great and exciting. And the basic plot of the movie with them trying to get The Key Maker to stop the robot invasion from happening is a pretty good idea for a sequel. But this movie has way to many sub-plots going on that the central idea gets a bit lost in the exacution of everything taking place. Also, some of the visuals here aren’t good. Some of them are pretty good and look very professional. But there are some scenes in this movie that look really fake. Like around an hour into the movie is this action sequence where Neo is fighting off hundreds of Agent Smith and the CGI in the scene is pretty terrible. Second big problem, Neo in this movie is way to over powered. He brings some back from the dead is now able to fly. And the movie even makes a joke about that where they say he’s doing his Superman thing. And it pulls you out of the movie when the central and lead character is way to over powered. And just in general, I didn’t really care for anything that took place in this movie. This movie isn’t terrible, but it isn’t good. It’s just right there in the middle as a mediocre Matrix sequel.
2. The Matrix Resurrections: After 18 years we got another movie in The Matrix franchise. And this is an interesting movie that has so many good things about it, that it’s frustrating with the mistakes it does make. On the positive, the cast for the movie is great everybody here is giving great performances. Jonathan Groff and Jessica Henwick would be the two stands out for me. But Reeves and Moss are giving great performances as well. And some of the action in the movie is great and shot so well with 2021 technology. The car chase in the finale being the stand out for me and loved what they were able to do with that scene. But I think where this one gets held back is with the storytelling. This is a movie that is trying to be three different movies and throws all of them into one movie so the movie is way to overstuffed with all of the characters, world building, themes, and plot lines in this movie. And I do find the marketing for the movie to have shown way to much and it ruined some of the moments for me. But the big issue with the movie is the whole meta plot lien about Neo being a video game designer who designed The Matrix into video games. So I’m not sure what my thoughts on this movie will be in a couple of days.
1. The Matrix: This is not only one of the greatest sci-fi action movies of all time, it’s one of the greatest action movies of all time, and it’s just one of the greatest movies of all time. Period. Right off the bat, this movie has such incredible world building inside of it. The first half of this movie is Morpheous explaining the rules of The Matrix to Neo. And we are learning about this world just as much as Neo is. And they created this world that you want to explore and see more of. It’s also a movie that might have the greatest “the one” story line in any movie ever. Early on in the movie we wonder, is Neo the one? Is Neo going to save The Matrix? And it takes Neo on this great arc through-out the movie, and becomes “the one” by the end of the movie. The cast of the movie is all around pretty fantastic. Keanu Reeves is great in these types of movies, and can do the action really well. You can buy him as Neo trying to figure out this world, and as the one. Laurence Fishburne is great as Morpheous, and Morpheous is one of the greatest mentors in cinematic history and Fishburne plays the character so well. You also have the legendary Hugo Weaving as the great Agent Smith, who is one of these characters that you don’t know a lot about but he’s still a great villain. And of course, you have to talk about the action in this movie which was so groundbreaking when this movie came out in 1999. And the gun battle in the lobby of the building, one of the great action scenes of all time. Put all of the pieces together, and you get one of the greatest movies of all time. And you could have guessed this, but this is easily my number 1 pick for this franchise.
There you have it, my ranking of The Matrix franchise. What is your favorite movie of the franchise? Thanks for reading!
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