“They took my life and turned it into a video game,” says Keanu Reeves as Neo in The Matrix Resurrections. In the sequel to the sci-fi trilogy, Neo is again trapped in the simulated world he fought so hard to leave. But this time, he’s a game designer. His epic struggles are now little more than half-remembered dreams used as inspiration for a series of successful games. Decades after the success of these games, his studio is demanding a sequel.
As metacommentary it proves a little strained, but incorporating gaming into the plot is hardly arbitrary — since the first movie in 1999, The Matrix has built its success on a dialogue with video games. With a new film and game released last month, The Matrix is once more pushing ideas of what games and cinema might offer as the boundaries between the two blur.
When I first saw The Matrix as a kid, I understood the film’s conceit — humans trapped in a simulated universe controlled by machines — as an analogue to a video game, albeit one that the players don’t know they’re playing. The movie has loading sequences and training programmes, while its action scenes were influenced by a visit directors Lana and Lilly Wachowski took to the Japanese developers of 1998 game Tenchu: Stealth Assassins. The film popularised the slow-motion “bullet time” which was quickly imitated in video games ranging from Max Payne to Superhot and Fallout.