Highly acclaimed fantasy author Brandon Sanderson is tossing his opinion out on divisive sequels in the sci-fi genre.
Over on his YouTube channel, he joined the revisionist ranks and defended The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, saying that he didn’t get the backlash and that they are “just really cool.”
“I like a bunch of the concepts from it, I like the action scenes, and I like it going full-on science fiction, and having the big battle with the monsters," Sanderson explained. "I don’t understand—I think what happened is, people had not had a lot of experience with cyberpunk, which I had when I saw The Matrix, [and] the ideas were not revolutionary to me. It was cool to see a big budget, action, sort of pop culture version of cyberpunk.”
Sanderson clearly took to the Wachowskis' expanded approach to world-building and the ways in which the filmmaking duo sought to thematically and narratively evolve the established world of the first movie. Notably, Sanderson did not mention the fourth film, The Matrix Resurrections, which saw Lana Wachowski returning to deliver an even more subversive, bolder, and increasingly idiosyncratic take on the franchise in stellar fashion.
However, over 20 years later, it is nice to see the “year of The Matrix” finally getting a bit of the resurgence in respect it so deserved.
For many people, when the Wachowskis' The Matrix came out in 1999, it rewired their brains. By blending eastern and western influences together through their own unique lens, the filmmakers were able to create an original and wholly thrilling new science-fiction film that blended kick ass martial arts with the pondering of massive existential conundrums.
The film was widely praised by audiences and critics alike, and ended on an especially strong note, as Keanu Reeves’s Neo fully broke free from the confines of the titular matrix and soared up toward the camera, shortly after saying, “I’m going to show them a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries.”
This sent audiences out of the theater positively vibrating with excitement, as the ending not only brought the thematic threads of the movie to a transcendently poignant conclusion but also hit like a pure adrenaline rush.
The strength of the ending contributed greatly to the overwhelmingly positive word of mouth surrounding the film and to its eventual success. As a result, when it was announced that the Wachowskis were working on follow-ups to the film, it was met with applause from fans across the globe. However, when The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions finally hit theaters four years later, they were anything but what people were expecting.
Instead, the proclaimed “year of The Matrix,” which saw the release of both feature films and an animated anthology project, The Animatrix, over the course of six months, became a much more controversial topic than envisioned.
While The Matrix Reloaded was still a massive financial hit, audiences and critics were much more mixed on it than they were on the original. This contributed to the eventual lackluster returns of The Matrix Revolutions a few months later, which was met with even harsher criticism on all fronts. Fans accused the sequels of being needlessly convoluted, boring, and pretentious, and the franchise faded from the limelight.
However, in the decades since, many have come to appreciate these sequels for big, bold, and ludicrously ambitious creative swings that they are.