Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss pumped for The Matrix 4 story

Imagine it’s 1999, and you’re watching Neo, the One, Keanu Reeves, working through the moral and metaphysical conundrum of choosing between the red or blue pill in The Matrix…and then he dodges a bunch of bullets in slow motion. It was a game-changing time in action movies, and it’s coming back around. Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity) and director Lana Wachowski are coming back for The Matrix 4.

And that could be good or bad. The Matrix remains an action classic, even if some of the trends it started make it seem old-fashioned now, but its sequels — The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions — were just alright. But given that 17 years have passed since the last movie, I’ll give the team the benefit of the doubt that something amazing convinced them to come back.

That’s definitely the idea you get from Moss, who talked about the new movie with Empire Magazine. “I never thought that it would happen,” she said. “It was never on my radar at all. […] When it was brought to me in the way that it was brought to me, with incredible depth and all of the integrity and artistry that you could imagine, I was like, ‘This is a gift.’ It was just very exciting.”

Keanu Reeves sounded similarly excited, perhaps even moreso than Moss:

"Lana Wachowski wrote a beautiful script and a wonderful story that resonated with me. That’s the only reason to do it. To work with her again is just amazing. It’s been really special, and the story has, I think, some meaningful things to say, and that we can take some nourishment from."

The special effects and action scenes may have stolen the show in the earlier Matrix movies, but the hook was always its story, a twisty sci-fi mind-bender that boiled down to a battle between the weak and those that sought to rule over them. I’d love to see how Wachowski has developed those ideas in the intervening years.

And I’m even more excited to see Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne-Moss return as Neo and Trinity. They were always the best part of the franchise, weren’t they?

Plus, this fourth movie is set to bring a lot of new characters into the mix, played by the likes of Priyanka Chopra, Neil Patrick Harris and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. I am so here for this, especially if: 1) Yahya is playing a younger version of Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus, and; 2) If NPH has a musical number.

The movie is set to release in 2021, but it’s unclear if that will hold given how the coronavirus has disrupted film production around the world. Filming had already begun prior to that, so hopefully they can quickly make up for lost time when things start back up.

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