There may be more Matrix on the way. Latino-Review has announced that the Wachowski siblings are hard at work on a second Matrix trilogy! The new films are set to begin being released in 2017, a crowded year that also promises the new Star Wars film and the latest Avatar sequel. Warner Brothers, which owns the rights to the Matrix, appears to be hoping they can compete with their own brand of popular older movie harvesting.
It appears that after several disappointing ventures into original stories, the Wachowski’s may be going back to what put them on the map in the first place. Both Cloud Atlas and Speed Racer struggled to find money at the box office, and V for Vendetta – a movie they wrote but did not direct – is remembered more for the masks of the protagonist than for the film itself.
The Wachowski’s latest film, Jupiter Ascending, will hit theaters in July, but until then we will have to content ourselves on the rampant speculation as to what the new Matrix trilogy will reveal.
Be aware: Matrix spoilers ahead!
The Wachowski’s have two options for the script – a red or blue pill if you will.
The blue one is the more likely given Hollywood’s risk-averse nature: simply make a prequel explaining how all the beloved characters and environments got to where they were when we first met them. It’s safe because it doesn’t require a story to be bold. You already have the Matrix story, explaining the origins just gives fans more of what they want and avoids alienating them.
The Matrix universe could easily go this route. Here is Latino-Reviews guess:
The derisive ending of the original Matrix trilogy include the bearded Architect suggesting that Neo wasn’t the first “One,” opening the story world for prequels.
So is it a prequel? That seems likely but not concrete.
So while we still can, let’s consider the red pill. The Wachowski’s could take a chance and boldly go where no Matrix story has gone before.
It is possible that we may get to see how the world both inside the Matrix and the “real” one outside have progressed since the third movie. At the end of the last film, Matrix Revolutions, Neo has destroyed every Agent Smith with his Neo-y powers of “doing whatever he wants when the plot calls for it.” The Matrix is forced to reboot and the Architect is shown meeting the Oracle in a park. Cryptically, he tells her that peace will last “as long as it can” and that all humans will be offered a chance to leave the Matrix. An offer that most sane people probably would decline. Forsaking everything you know so you can live on a polluted and robot-fested world with perpetual storms and subterranean tunnels filled with tubing? No thanks.
It ended there. Audiences were left to wonder whether the Architect would really make good on his promise. And what was the fate of Neo? Did he die in the Matrix reboot? And what did they mean by peace for “as long as it can”? That seems to suggest that there would be an inevitbale relapse into violence between the computers and the humans. There is an interesting story there, should the Wachowski’s go that way.
All questions that could be explored should the new films look forward rather than backwards. Now, it’s up to the Wachowski’s to choose: red or blue?
