It is the manner in which the first Matrix went about telling the story and the visual innovations created for this trilogy that propelled the studio, the producers and the Wachowskis into filmmaking legend with audiences worldwide showing their appreciation for this take on Humankind versus Machine chronology.

The Matrix (1999), Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions (both movies released in 2003) created a body of work in the realm of Science Fiction and the more hardcore world of Futurism that keeps growing each decade.

It is worth noting that while the entire movie is steeped into cyberspace, cyberpunk and weaves into what were at the time cutting-edge ideas in the world of computer simulations and A.I., the emergent worldwide web and its potential for end-to-end automation on a global scale, The Matrix remains more a horror “Frankenstein” genre movie series coated with elaborate layers of science fiction and not the other way around, as many ardent fans attempted to paint the genre as science fiction with heavy doses of cyberpunk or gothic style. 

The extra heft of The Matrix lies in the fact that the technology was not the galactic scale far-fetched Star Trek or Star Wars warp engines or Faster Than Light propulsion drives of The Galactica battleship, concepts of technology already heavily used in sci-fi from as long ago as the 1950s. 

The boogeyman of The Matrix is that the technology was unfolding within the same decade the movie arrived and represented a new level of computer sophistication, components and network architectures, that was undergoing evolutionary and revolutionary developments in the public eye and in the hands of consumers at retail outlets  – in the Here and Now. 

This synchronicity of real-life technology and the filmmakers trilogy gave The Matrix’ horror science/sci-fi movie platform more leverage, a high degree of prescience and extremely haunting, persistent, psychological hooks in the social psyche of worldwide audiences.  Cut to 2021 and The Wachowskis (albeit Lana Wachowski and new team) unveil what has been decades in limbo and, as Hollywood likes to call it, “development Hell”.

The trailers released this year unleashed a storm of fans comments on the return of characters who died in the previous trilogy, including the core protagonist Neo aka Thomas Anderson played by A-list actor Keanu Reeves.  How can the moviemakers bring Neo back to life?  Are they going to change the trilogy canon, will the story plausibility suffer or will it fit neatly in the overall world building that has emerged ever since 1999?

How are the new trailers showing a new Neo who does not seem to remember who he was or is?  The answers to all of these questions are in the previous trilogy, since the Architect informed Neo he has been killed over and over in the machine world’s effort to refine and redefine The Matrix.

Neo and Zion are a mop up scheme of human beings and other simulations that cannot live with the equation of pre-determined fate and because of the human character flaw (according to the Machine World) that anticipates free will and choice, the system has to find a balance to allow all humans to exist in a Walley World (winks) that seems to offer them choice when in fact it is pre-programmed to run along specific parameters.  Neo and Zion are preset as leaders of the residual individuals who inevitably pierce the veil and piece together the cloak of The Matrix and are eventually led to their demise under the guise of a savior and a liberation movement.