‘Matrix’ regurgitations

Fourth entry ‘Resurrections’ tries to get away with repeating the past by being very meta

“The Matrix Resurrections” knows it shouldn’t exist. ¶ Better said, director and co-writer Lana Wachowski — one half of the sibling duo behind the highly influential, mind-bending 1999 science-fiction action piece “The Matrix,” as well as its mind-numbing two sequels — seems to know this fourth film shouldn’t be a thing. ¶ A Warner Bros. Pictures film debuting this week in theaters and on HBO Max, “The Matrix Resurrections” brings back two of the trilogy’s stars, Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, for a fourth adventure that offers little beyond what is now standard action-flick fare and some reasonably fun meta-awareness about the whole affair. ¶ Are you ready to have a few laughs about there being a fourth “Matrix”? You’d better be.

To be fair, the first third or so of “Resurrections” is fairly intriguing, beginning with a hacker named Bugs (Jessica Henwick, “Iron Fist”) and an associate, Sequoia (Toby Onwumere), witnessing a sequence

that is almost exactly like what happens at the beginning of “The Matrix.” They — and we — see a police officer tell a few well-dressed “agents” that a dangerous woman soon will be extracted from a building. And that he thinks, “We can handle one little girl.”

“Lieutenant,” the agent responds, “your men are already dead.”

Bugs and Sequoia are intrigued by this, as are we.

However, the slow-butsteady unraveling of the illusion that the movie will have something truly original to offer begins soon after as Bugs encounters a new digital version of “Matrix” trilogy mainstay Morpheus, the iconic character originally portrayed by Laurence Fishburne but now being inhabited by younger Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.

“Resurrections” must now turn to Thomas Anderson, aka Neo, aka “The One,” the character Reeves was born to play.

COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) again questions the nature of his reality in “The Matrix Resurrections.”