The first question about a potential reboot, remake, or reupholstering of The Matrix is this: who was asking for it? And why? Keanu Reeves wasn’t asking, though he said recently he’d be up for it if it were written and directed by its original creators, the Wachowskis. Thing is, they’re not involved yet either. Only original producer Joel Silver is anywhere to be seen in the vicinity of this rumoured rehash, and he and the Wachowskis have been described as having a “strained” relationship. Silver also no longer owns rights to The Matrix, so there’s that, too.
The idea for a new version thus seems to arise from Warner Bros itself. Warners is an old-school studio, stuck with a mile-deep classic catalogue of reusable properties that aren’t, it turns out, all that reusable (would anyone prefer a remake of Casablanca or White Heat over another viewing of the originals? I thought not). The dinosaur studios are facing heavy competition from upstarts such as DC Comics and Marvel, whose libraries are awash with tentpole blockbuster material. The old studios are thus left with the option of trying to monetise more modern and mould-breaking WB classics through the power of “retread” – just one more kind of cultural self-cannibalisation.
And with what some people might call indecent haste. It’s been only 18 years since the original, but the comic-book studios didn’t wait around that long to order a second Spider-Man trilogy, and these days Warners is forced to think in the same terms. A lot of recent non-franchise reboots have this same depressingly unnecessary feel to them: RoboCop, Total Recall, Point Break. Why were they ever remade? Because they were slumped on the studio shelf, earning no money. It was just their turn. No one wanted those movies except accountants.
As an organic, standalone picture The Matrix was almost a masterpiece, but the two incoherent and poorly paced sequels (which, like Godfather 3, have their deluded partisans) have already pre-disasterised any notion of a comeback. If the Wachowskis couldn’t handle two sequels on their own terms, why would we expect some other fool to do it as well, let alone better?
And the presence of Zak Penn as the rewrite guy just shows that Warners has caved to the Comic-Book Ascendency and its modus operandi. Penn is as ubiquitous in comic-book franchises as Bryan Singer or Zack Snyder. And if these same three bros turn a hand to all these franchises, how long before they all look the same? Or do they already all look the same? They certainly all think the same – and that was one thing The Matrix never did.
