The Matrix Resurrections came out a few weeks ago, and now is a better time than ever to talk about how The Matrix series messes with both our minds and our trust in what is or isn’t reality. Let’s talk about simulation theory!

In terms of plot, we are introduced to new characters viewing the old Matrix movies through code and trying to find Neo. However, viewers are quickly shown where Neo has been stuck for the past 60 years. He’s in a reality where he is a creator who designed a game called The Matrix, which details quite literally every aspect of his life. In this storyline, he is led by his boss and therapist to believe that his lifelong work with this game has blurred the edges of fantasy and reality, as if he is getting lost in his own art and thus thinking the plot is somehow his own life. 

However, this goes beyond questioning reality within the movie itself, somehow reaching to our world as well. It is done in a way that blends fluidly and smoothly with the film, without it seeming obvious or forced. The original storyline of The Matrix has become trivialized into a video game, and Neo, named Thomas Anderson in this storyline, acts and behaves a lot like Keanu Reeves himself. He always appears to be confused, out of place, as if the world is moving too fast for him to keep up. Each day is repetitive without explanation, he doesn’t understand his employees’ millennial/Gen Z language, he keeps getting flashbacks to what he thinks are just dreams, and there is no context to ground him. And most Matrix fans are aware of how Keanu Reeves is in real life: isolated from social media and unaware of most modern contexts, further blurring the line between fiction and reality both in the film and in the audience.

At one point, Thomas Anderson’s The Matrix game is set to release a fourth series, and one manager quite literally said that Warner Bros. wanted a fourth movie contract for it. Managers discuss reboots and how to frame the next “game release,” all parallels to this movie itself. The cinematic setup of this, the music, the specified words, the setting, the colors—all of it has you questioning your own reality as Neo questions his. From blue constantly popping up everywhere to the therapist’s cat named Déjà Vu to breaking the fourth wall, little symbols notate the questionability of reality. We view The Matrix as a piece of media, as Neo is told it’s a piece of media, but it’s actually real… in the movie. They do an excellent job at psychologically gaslighting both Neo and us as an audience.

It’s also important to note the social context of the film’s audience. Having been in a global pandemic and consequential quarantine for nearly two years, still with no definitive end in sight, more people are likely to contemplate simulation theory. There’s always the thought that our world isn’t real, that everything is actually a simulation, that we don’t actually have any way of telling what is or is not real. Though the latter half of The Matrix Resurrections has Neo understanding what’s real, we are regardless far more susceptible to its derealization suggestions because we’ve been forcibly stuck in the digital world, alone with technology and natural, political, social, and health disasters that seem to be hitting us left and right.

Like Neo, it appears as if we can all relate to that feeling of being lost in reality, of not having a proper grasp on time passing, of being unable to recall background information or context, everything blurring together, unable to do anything other than follow directions as our brains fog over. Whether it be driven by escapism or genuine questioning of reality, it wouldn’t take much to push any of us over that edge of not knowing what actually is or isn’t real.