The Matrix Resurrections

Welcome to the May issue of Hacker Chronicles!

Sorry it's out late. I was sick last weekend which derailed my plan.

But hey, it's finally here, the hacker review of The Matrix Resurrections! I love trying to decipher what the plor really is about in these movies.

In the June issue I plan to review the short story Dead Space for the Unexpected from 1994. You might recall Katherine R. Dollar recommending it.

BTW, if this letter has a weird serif font, it's my mailing list provider that has regressed how to create nice looking letters in Markdown. Sorry about that.

Enjoy!
/John

Writing Update

I've reviewed the full audio recording of Identified and sent the voice actor my notes. She got back to me yesterday with new recordings of some things we agreed needed polish.

For my next novel, currently titled Submerged, I got the second development editor's notes and now have all the pieces to create a rewrite plan. It's going to be an extraction and abstraction exercise. You're combining the feedback from a handful of people, trying not just to synthesize it to a single change plan, but also thinking about it from the author's perspective – what am I trying to say here and how can I make that better given how it was experienced by the readers?

We'll see how much time it takes to form the plan and execute on it. Once I have the completion in sight, I'll request beta readers.

May Feature: Review of The Matrix Resurrections

Spoiler Alert: Yup, plenty.

Trailer: YouTube

Hacker Rating

Hacker Realism: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Hacker Importance for the Plot: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Hacks: ⭐️ ⭐️

I was first excited when I heard that a fourth installment of The Matrix franchise was in the works. But then I read that only one of the sisters Wachowski, Lana, would write and direct it. And from there I learned that they had never wanted to make more Matrix movies. It was Warner Bros. relentlessly pushing them.

Production of The Matrix Resurrections was interrupted by Covid-19 and Lana Wachowski tried to make a final exit. But the movie was completed and premiered December 2021.

A Recap of Some Key Things

Here are a few important hacker interpretations from my reviews of the original three movies.

The Red "Truth" Pill

Morpheus explains to Neo that "the pill you took is part of a trace program. It's designed to disrupt your input/output carrier signal so we can pinpoint your location." The location he refers to is the physical location of Neo's body in the grid of cocoons.

To me, the truth aspect of the red pill represents understanding how computers and the internet works.

The One

Morpheus explains that there was an insider in the Matrix. "There was a man born inside who was able to change whatever he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit. It was he who freed the first of us." This insider turned out to be Neo. In the world of actual hacking, the insider could be a backdoor or a logic bomb planted in the system.

The Agents

Agents, like Smith, are given superpowers in the Matrix but they still have to abide by the rules. My interpretation of this is that agents are programs with special privileges, including the power to re-purpose an existing program when they take over someone's body.

Neo eventually learns how to hack the Matrix and bend the rules. That's why he can win over the agents.

Agent Smith's Relationship to Neo

The first movie shows Neo destroy Agent Smith by jumping into his body and bursting out.

In the second movie, Smith explains that before Neo destroyed him, he was intent to follow the rules. But afterwards something compelled him to disobey. He became a “free” program in the Matrix.

We later learn that Smith has become the negative mirror image of Neo and Smith's increased powers mirror Neo's increased powers.

Start of the Movie – The Modal

OK, that's the recap we need. Let's get into the fourth movie.

True to its hacker origins, The Matrix Resurrections starts with direct computer things.

We hear a phone line ringing, and see a caret blinking on a screen. Two lines appear:

Modal 101 Breach/USER Violation
Host Alarm KIWW/12:15

Two people named Bugs (Jessica Henwick) and Seq (pronounced seek, Toby Onwumere) are discussing what they see. They say it's a "Modal," it looks like "old code," and it's familiar.

We indeed see a familiar scene from the beginning of first Matrix movie with an overconfident police officer outside a tall building telling agents that his team has got it covered. A Black agent (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) tells the officer that on the contrary, his men are already dead. It's not a perfect replay of Trinity busting out, but close.

Bugs: We know this story. This is how it all began. This is where he began.

Seq: You're thinking this Modal is a loop? Or a treadmill? Some sort of sequencer evolving a program to do what?

Bugs: So deja vu yet obviously all wrong.

Seq: Why use old code to mirror something new?

The scene doesn't unfold as we remember it with Trinity. Instead the woman is captured by agents up on the rooftop under a night sky.

It turns out Bugs has walked right into a trap and she is captured too. She escapes parkour-style, and finds a hiding spot in a key shop at street level. The agents find the store and start searching.

The Black agent shows up, grabs Bugs, and pulls her into a hidden backroom. He and Bugs face each other, each pointing a gun at the other.

Bugs: Why did you save me?

Agent: You first. Who are you? Where did you come from?

Bugs: OK. My name is Bugs. As in Bunny. And tech that listens. Do you know this is a Modal?

Agent: What's a Modal?

Bugs: It's a simulation used to evolve programs. Do you understand that you are … digital sentience?

Agent: I know what I am. Just like I know that my job is to hunt down and destroy synthients. Like you. And yet … [He lowers his gun.]

The agent has been stuck in this program loop for a long time and explored it bit by bit. He found the key shop and eventually the hidden room. Bugs looks around and realizes they're in Thomas Anderson's 1999 apartment. His old PC and work badge is there. They start talking about Neo and realize they've both seen him and what we know as the Matrix.

Agent: Okay. Something like that happened to me. I saw this pattern and it was everywhere. We can't see it, but we're all trapped inside these strange, repeating loops. Somehow I saw it in the mirror. Just a flicker, but it was like you said. And suddenly I understood.

Bugs: This is not the real world.

Agent: For the first time I felt real purpose. I knew who I was and what I had to do.

Bugs: Who are you? What do you have to do?

Morpheus: I am … Morpheus. And I have to find Neo.

Thoughts
The initial screen content mentions a breach. In many cases, hacker intrusions go unnoticed until the consequences of them are discovered. The fact that a breach is detected mid-flight means there's an intrusion detection system running. Attackers and defenders have been in a decades long cat and mouse struggle of hiding vs detecting.

A Modal feels like a fictional take on a "mod" which is short for modification or modify. It's popular in the gaming world to install mods or mod a game.

The fact that this Modal has been looping has allowed Morpheus to explore it over and over, like in Groundhog Day. The hidden room may have been a thing that was supposed to only be found through meticulous search. And since the Matrix is a computer system, a hidden room means hidden code.

Hidden code is talked about quite a lot nowadays. The latest big story was the XZ Utils backdoor revealed late March this year. I'd say it's the scariest backdoor hack I've ever heard of and the conspiracy theories on who/what is behind it are abundant.

The idea that Thomas has hidden an escape plan in his own code is clever.

Game Development, Breaking the Fourth Wall

We see an older Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) in a spacious high rise office. He's bored, sitting in front of large screens.

A buzz on his PC catches his attention and he sees an alert.

ALERT-PERIMETER BREACH
Modal Error IR-AA-WSM: On device 0 an illegal memory access.
Error: Missing file 'Morph.Bld.exe'/'Heart 0' the city'
Code: 009952010
Context:

Thomas is clearly bothered by this and enters a virtual world on his PC. He goes to the street where Bugs entered the key shop.

Two coworkers show up in Thomas's office. A jovial guy called Jude (Andrew Caldwell) looks at what Thomas is doing.

Jude: Is this old Matrix code?

Thomas: A little Modal experiment.

They go to a local coffee shop. Jude keeps talking about how he played and was consumed by the original Matrix trilogy.

The woman we know as Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) enters the coffee place with two young boys, probably her sons. Thomas can't help but look at her.

Jude walks up to her and introduces himself, then introduces Thomas. Her name is Tiff and she offers to shake Thomas's hand. After some hesitation, he agrees.

She asks if she knows Thomas from somewhere, clearly recognizing him. He says they both frequent this coffee place. Her kids interrupt, then her husband Chad who enters in a rush. Chad gives a wink of the eye to Jude before Tiff and her family leave.

Back at his PC, Thomas gets another prompt.

ASSETS: MODAL 101 UNDETECTED

He checks his Modal.

MODAL 101: FILE PURGED

Again Thomas is interrupted, this time because his business partner (Jonathan Groff) wants to see him. When Thomas enters the exquisite office, his business partner is standing by the panorama window citing Agent Smith from The Matrix – "Billions of people just living out their lives … oblivious." He praises Thomas for having written that line in the game, then goes on to talk about the matter at hand.

Business partner: Things have changed, the market's tough. I'm sure you can understand why our beloved parent company Warner Bros. have decided to make a sequel to the trilogy.

Thomas: What?

Business partner: They informed me that they're gonna do it with or without us.

Thoughts
The initial alert says "illegal memory access" which is a reference to a prevalent technique to hack computer systems. Attackers exploit a memory corruption bug to gain control of a piece of software. I wrote about it in my newsletter issue on "The Von Neumann Mistake."

The story line with game development is hard to follow when the movie breaks the fourth wall by referencing Warner Bros. and saying they are forced to make a sequel to the original trilogy.

But the case that's slowly being built is that The Matrix is a game and Thomas Anderson is the developer of it. He has added a 'Modal 101' which contains a programmatic version of Morpheus and made the Modal replay the Trinity scene over and over.

The Trinity scene works as catnip for freed people and Bugs decides to hack it. Maybe Thomas even made it easy to hack. Once inside, Bugs finds Morpheus and extracts him, which is why the 'Morph.Bld.exe' file goes missing. Subsequently the whole Modal is purged.

Blue or Red Pill?

Thomas goes to see his therapist (Neil Patrick Harris), who we eventually get to know as The Analyst.

Thomas tells The Analyst about being forced to build a sequel to the Matrix game and it feels like he's either having a mental breakdown, again, or is trapped in a computer simulation, again. The Analyst replies that that's not much of a choice and asks if he needs a refill on his prescription? Thomas is apparently prescribed blue pills.

After seeing Tiff again at the coffee shop, Thomas sits at his desk when there's a fire alarm. People start evacuating.

Thomas gets a text – "Hello Neo" – and instructions to go to the restroom. There Morpheus awaits him.

Thomas: This can't be happening. You can't be a character I coded.

Morpheus: 100% natural.

[Thomas feels Morpheus's arm.]

Thomas: How?

Morpheus: All the explanation you need.

[Morpheus holds up a red pill.]

Thomas: No, no, no.

Morpheus: Whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean, "no?" You wanted this. You did this. This was your idea.

Thomas: It was a test, an experiment.

Morpheus: An experiment? You put me in a tiny ass Modal, left me to bang my head till I nearly lost my shit searching for you as an experiment?

Thomas refuses to take the red pill. A SWAT team barges in and starts shooting. Morpheus shoots back while Thomas tries to flee.

In the midst of bullets flying, Thomas's business partner shows up and turns out to be a younger version of Agent Smith. He tries to shoot Neo and says "I've missed you."

Thoughts
We see some real conflict and confusion within Thomas Anderson here. He created Morpheus and the Modal but refuses to go along with it when the hack actually works.

It could be something subconscious going on but my read is that the blue pills and his therapy keep him in the Matrix. But when he hasn't taken the pills, he starts to remember and doubt. He puts the Modal and Morpheus in place to help himself even though he's heavily drugged.

Deciding to Believe

Thomas again goes to a therapy session and is pressured to say the encounter with Morpheus was all in his head. But he ends by asking if that's what he is expected to say?

The therapist says it feels real to Thomas because he built a game with the ambition to make it feel real. Thomas incorporated things from his own life into the game's narrative. His dislike for his business partner created Agent Smith, and his love for a married woman named Tiffany created Trinity.

Thomas goes back to the office with a a bottle of vodka. He sits and drinks on the rooftop. Drunk, he steps off the building to "free his mind" like when Neo could fly in the Matrix. Bugs shows up and saves him.

They talk.

Thomas: Are you the one who hacked my Modal?

Bugs: Yeah.

[Thomas's phone buzzes]

Bugs: That'd be Jude. He's not your friend. He's a handle, a program used to control you. I know why you left your Modal open. You needed someone else to free Morpheus. It's because of him we were able to get to you. I know these things the same way that I knew that one day I would find you.

She has a rabbit tattooed on her shoulder and asks Thomas to follow her.

Thomas and Bugs go through a door on the rooftop and find themselves on a moving train outside Tokyo. Bugs says it's a moving portal which makes it harder for the machines to track them.

They go from the train through another portal and get to a familiar setting with two armchairs. Morpheus is there and again offers Thomas the red pill.

Thomas says that if this is reality, then he and Trinity are already dead.

Bugs: Obviously not. Why the Machines kept you alive and why they went to such lengths to hide you, are questions we don't have answers to.

Morpheus and Bugs tell Thomas it's been over 60 years since he and Trinity flew to the Machine city and Neo sacrificed himself for peace.

Thomas decides to take the red pill.

Thoughts
We're starting to understand that the way the machines dealt with Neo's vivid memories of what happened was to incorporate them in his new life in the Matrix. They made all those memories part of the game Thomas Anderson developed.

The sad thing is that the parts with Warner Bros. and a sequel game are never needed for the plot. I assume it was only put there by Lana Wachowski to stick it to the people forcing her to write and direct this fourth movie. My hope is we get a future cut of Resurrections without those parts.

Exiting the Matrix

Back to the train, the regular train riders get overtaken by the Matrix – their eyes go green and black like the classic Japanese character rain – and they start attacking Bugs and the team. It's "a swarm."

After a long shootout, they exit the Matrix through a tiny bathroom mirror and Neo wakes up in his cocoon.

This time over, his cocoon is in a special place and not part of the vast farm. On the opposite side there is a second special cocoon. Neo is disconnected from all the cables and picked up by a giant robotic fly. He sees that it's Trinity in the other cocoon and whispers her name as he is carried over it. She opens her eyes ever so slightly and lifts her hand before going back to her slumber.

Neo is rescued onto a rebel ship, wakes up, and eventually finds himself in the white void we recognize from the first movie. Morpheus is there.

Morpheus: As to my role in all of this, my best guess is that you wrote me as an algorithmic reflection of two forces that helped you become you. Morpheus and Agent Smith.

Morpheus thinks Neo needs to start fighting. We get a new dojo scene.

Morpheus: You gotta fight for your goddamn life if you want to see Trinity again.

It takes a long time for Neo to eventually fight back hard enough to beat Morpheus. When he does, he shatters the whole dojo.

Thoughts
Making Neo fight again is about making him start bending the rules again. That's the only way they can win. The rest of the Matrix plays by the operating system rules, but Neo hacks it, and after some of his code got copied to Agent Smith, Smith too is able to bend the rules.

Finding Tiff

Neo is taken to the city of Io, the replacement for Zion. There he meets with Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) who is the General and leader of the human settlement. She is very upset with what Captain Bugs and her crew has done and strips them of their ranks. Neo says he wants to free Trinity but Niobe says that could risk war again. Therefore Neo is imprisoned.

Morpheus shows up as a full-sized particle manifestation. He's just a computer program so he doesn't exist in the real world. They get on the rebel ship. Bugs and the crew have gone rogue and they're going to help Neo get Trinity out.

The whole team enters the Matrix through an old warehouse close to Tiff's bike workshop.

Agent Smith shows up and starts talking about how The Analyst set them up as business partners.

Neo: What do you want, Smith?

Smith: I have such dreams, Tom. Big dreams. Well, mostly just extremely violent revenge fantasies, but in order for me to pursue mine, I have to dissuade you from pursuing yours.

There's a long fight. Neo eventually invokes his rule bending superpowers and beats Smith.

Neo insists on visiting Tiff in her workshop. He enters alone, they talk, and she says she's had dreams about the two of them. Dreams that end badly.

The Analyst shows up and pauses time. The whole scene with Tiff, her coworker, and Neo turns into a freeze frame. Then The Analyst rewinds it and starts walking around at normal speed while everything else moves forward in slow-mo.

The Analyst: Resurrecting you both was crazy expensive. Like renovating a house. Took twice as long, cost twice as much. I thought you'd be happy being alive again. So wrong. Do you know hope and despair are nearly identical in code? We worked for years, trying to activate your source code. I was about to give up when I realized … it was never just you. Alone, neither of you is of any particular value. Like acids and bases, you're dangerous when mixed together. Every sim where you two bonded … Let's just say bad things happened. However, as long as I managed to keep you close, but not too close, I discovered something incredible.

He makes Tiff's coworker go into swarm mode and shoot a bullet against her. The bullet moves at incredibly slow speed. Neo reacts but is in molasses himself.

The Analyst: You ever wonder why you have nightmares? Why your own brain tortures you? It's actually us maximizing your output. It works just like this. "Oh, no! Can you stop the bullet? If only you could move faster." Here's the thing about feelings. They're so much easier to control than facts. Turns out, in my Matrix, the worse we treat you, the more we manipulate you, the more energy you produce. It's nuts. The key to it all? You. And her. Quietly yearning for what you don't have, while dreading losing what you do.

Thoughts Now we've gotten to where the movie gets really good. The boost in output energy from humans who experience despair and longing makes sense, and is viscerally painful to consider. A life in misery.

If we now think of this as a computer system, it sounds like a powerful yet fragile setup. The balance needs to be kept just right or it will collapse. High stakes, but also high rewards for the machines.

Resurrecting Neo and Trinity for this purpose is where the movie title comes from.

The Showdown

Neo's escape out of his cocoon has destabilized the Matrix. It's drawing power from Trinity alone now. A fail-safe has been triggered to reset the Matrix to its previous version. But The Analyst has halted the reset. He is convinced that Neo will soon return voluntarily. Because if Neo doesn't go back, he will kill Trinity.

Bugs and her team make a plan to break Trinity out of the Matrix. However, she has to choose to leave, otherwise the confusion will likely kill her. They will go to her cocoon and get ready to extract her, while Neo faces The Analyst in the Matrix.

Neo goes to where he knows Tiff will show up at some point – the coffee shop. The Analyst and a SWAT team await him.

Neo: All I want is to talk to her.

The Analyst: You mean Tiff? Come back and you can talk to her as often as you like.

Neo: If she tells me this is what she wants, you win. But if she wants me, then you'll let us go free.

The Analyst: And why would I do something as stupid as that?

Neo: Right now, I'm on a ship full of people who will unplug me before they'll let you take me back. If you want this Matrix, this is your only chance.

Tiff shows up and she and Neo talk.

She has faint memories of her life as Trinity. Her sons and husband show up calling for her. She ultimately decides to stay in the Matrix and walks toward her family. Her husband urges her on – "Tiffany, we gotta go!"

Neo is seized by the SWAT team. Suddenly Tiff gets really annoyed and tells her husband her name is Trinity, not Tiffany.

Her husband immediately goes into swarm mode and attacks her. Neo uses his force to push away the SWAT team.

The Analyst pauses time. He admits he pushed it with the sons and husband showing up to sway Tiff. But he's not going to accept the terms of the deal. Instead he points a gun at Trinity's head.

Agent Smith shows up, able to move freely even though The Analyst has frozen time.

Smith: What has the world come to when you can't even trust a program?

The Analyst: How?

Smith: Tom and I have more in common than you know. Once he got out, let's just say, I was free to be me.

Smith beats up The Analyst who loses his hold on time. Neo and Trinity fight their way to reach each other. Once united, they have the force to control things in the Matrix again.

Thoughts
A married person with two kids deciding that it's all a lie is a tough one to swallow. Who would do that? Just based on dreams and recognizing a man? At the very end of the movie, beyond the scene described above, Trinity makes The Analyst pay for using children against her. I think that's the movie creators admitting that it's a line that shouldn't be crossed in fiction. From the machines' perspective it makes perfect sense. They wanted Tiff trapped and there are parents who at least occasionally feel that way about their kids.

Agent Smith showing up in the end and helping Neo save Trinity is a little hard to reconcile with "in order for me to pursue mine, I have to dissuade you from pursuing yours." Maybe I'm missing why it makes sense.

Final Remarks

I think this movie would have been a lot better without the bitter fight over whether it should exist or not. The whole bit about Warner Bros. in the movie was hard to shake for me. The audience is pulled into a fight they have no interest in.

The part with the city of Io also felt disconnected from the plot. We never get to know what happened to Io. But I never really liked Zion in the original trilogy either.

As part of a hacker fiction franchise, I think The Matrix Resurrections delivers. Hiding your own escape route in a mod to a game is cool. I am a little sad that we never really get to see the hacking, only the alerts on Thomas's screen.

In terms of acting, I think Bugs, The Analyst, and Tiff/Trinity are the best. In the latter case, I am mostly impressed by her acting as a mom with all those dreams and doubts. Some really good dialog on Carrie-Anne Moss's part.

Currently Reading

I've really ended up with several books in parallel this spring. I can neither find enough time to read nor commit to any one book. I'm reading Open Source by Anna L. Davis. But I still have Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and have recently picked up Neural Networks From Scratch In Python.