It shouldn’t come as any surprise that The Matrix Resurrections, the fourth entry in The Matrix franchise, has received an R rating from the MPAA due to “violence and some language.’ The Matrix and its sequels, Reloaded and Revolutions, were all rated R. However, you could be fooled as none of these movies really contained excessive amounts of gore or language. The second film did also feature a brief sex scene.
The Matrix, released in 1999, became a worldwide phenomenon and is still considered an iconic action movie to this day. Keanu Reeves stars as Neo, an ordinary joe who discovers reality is not what it seems. Neo then goes on a journey to become the One, the hero who will take down the machines who have placed humanity in a false reality they believe to be real. These actions films are visual spectacles that contained some impressive sequences of action and violence. While the sequels aren’t as beloved, The Matrix Reloaded was at one time the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time, a record that now belongs to 2019’s Joker.
The Matrix Resurrections will see the return of Neo and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) which raises a lot of questions as both died at the end of The Matrix Revolutions. Director and The Matrix co-creator Lana Wachowski explained her decision to resurrect Neo and Trinity for another chapter at the International Literature Festival Berlin.
“My dad died, then this friend died, then my mom died. I didn’t really know how to process that kind of grief. I hadn’t experienced it that closely… You know their lives are going to end and yet it was still really hard,” Wachowski said. “My brain has always reached into my imagination and one night, I was crying and I couldn’t sleep, and my brain exploded this whole story. And I couldn’t have my mom and dad, yet suddenly I had Neo and Trinity, arguably the two most important characters in my life.”
The rest of the cast for R-rated The Matrix Resurrections includes Jada Pinkett Smith, Jessica Henwick, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, Christina Ricci, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who is taking on the role of a young Morpheus, previously played by Laurence Fishburne. The film will be released on Dec. 22 and will be the final film from Warner Bros. to debut in theaters and on HBO Max.