Can Drew Goddard Unlock The Matrix’s Mindfuck Potential?

Liz Shannon Miller
·5 min read
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The post Can Drew Goddard Unlock The Matrix’s Mindfuck Potential? appeared first on Consequence.

When director Lana Wachowski returned to the world of The Matrix for 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections, she did so with a cheeky, post-modern awareness of the cultural forces that led her to that point. The film begins with Neo (Keanu Reeves) now fully re-embedded into the Matrix as a video game designer named Thomas Anderson, whose trilogy of video games entitled The Matrix is being revived once again for a new installment. As Thomas’s “business partner” (Jonathan Groff) says:

“I know you said the story was over for you, but that’s the thing about stories. They never really end, do they? We’re still telling the same stories we’ve always told, just with different names, different faces and I have to say I’m kind of excited.”

Groff’s character turns out to be a reincarnation of Agent Smith, but that doesn’t make his point any less valid — or the film any less fun: At the end of Resurrections, Neo has escaped his digital prison, reunited with his true love Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), and the two of them are off to “remind people what a free mind can do.”

It’s the happy ending denied both characters by the end of Revolutions, and a totally reasonable place to let the franchise lie. That is not, of course, the way things work in a 21st century where IP is God. Thus, enter Drew Goddard, who Warner Bros. just announced will be writing and directing a new Matrix film, based on “a new idea that we all believe would be an incredible way to continue the Matrix world,” Warner Bros. Motion Pictures president of production Jesse Ehrman said in a statement. Lana and Lilly Wachowski will not be involved.

The instinctive, knee-jerk reaction to this news might understandably be a hearty nope… except that Goddard may truly be the right guy for this job. I write this as a decades-long Matrix fan (as discussed last week, when Jonah Krueger and I reflected on the original film’s 25th anniversary), and even with any/all plot details under wraps, Goddard’s past body of work speaks pretty loudly about the potential here.

Really, his resume is a fascinating one, beginning with his arrival on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer writing staff in 2002, delivering several of the final season’s best scripts before moving onto write for Angel and Lost. (Buffy was a show that trained its fans to pay attention to the credited writer of the episode, which meant that when he made his debut with “Conversations With Dead People,” co-written by Jane Espenson, he was an instant star in certain circles.)

Since then, he’s written some great films, including the genre-defining Cloverfield and Oscar-nominated adaptation of The Martian. He also directed the pitch-perfect The Cabin in the Woods (from a script he co-wrote with Joss Whedon) and was an instrumental director on The Good Place, proving a talent for both managing tone as well as creating a strong visual dynamic that helped define that stellar series.

It’s harder to get a sense of his involvement in the Marvel Comics-related projects that he’s worked on over the last 10 or so years: He’s the credited creator of the originally-for-Netflix Daredevil series, but stepped down as showrunner before its premiere, reportedly for a Sinister Six movie for Sony that never panned out. Yet those projects mean he’s at least familiar with what it means to work with massive brands and beloved characters (experience which will undoubtedly be useful here).

“Continuing” The Matrix, for the record, doesn’t necessarily mean refitting Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss for black leather pants. Frankly, it’d be far more exciting to see Goddard really commit to expanding this universe with new characters and a fresh new story — one with the kind of deeply human themes that led to the first film’s success.

Much has been written over the years about how The Matrix was created by two filmmakers who later came out as trans, and how the film’s themes of identity and self-discovery might be connected to that on some level. That’s how the best stories work, after all; they’re rooted in empathic experience.

Which is tied to the reason only Lana Wachowski worked on Resurrections — Lilly Wachowski stepped away from genre storytelling years ago. In 2019 at the Television Critics Association press tour, she told journalists that “It’s good stuff, science fiction. You get to talk a lot about a lot of subjects. There’s always, like, fabulous subtext.” Then, she added, “Since my transition, I’m not really interested in subtext.” At that time, she was promoting Work in Progress, a sweet Showtime dramedy about real Chicago people dealing with sex, love, and gender identity — she didn’t need the sci-fi veil to explore topics that interested her.

Lilly’s moved on, and Lana will be an executive producer on the new film, but otherwise has expressed no interest in continuing the franchise herself. Yet there’s still a lot of potential in this framework, a lot of big ideas that The Matrix already encompasses that could easily fuel a new tale. These are not peaceful times. Sci-fi offers us a way to talk about them.

Many things can be true at the same time. Do we need another Matrix movie? Absolutely not. Do people feel any less trapped in oppressive systems today than they did in 1999? Absolutely not. Does Drew Goddard’s past work indicate that he has the skillset necessary to blow our minds once more, using this franchise to speak to where we are today?

Well, I’m ready to plug in and find out.

Editor’s Note: Read our recent Consequence Chat about The Matrix in celebration of its 25th anniversary, along with the rest of our ’99 Rewind retrospective. Plus, try your hand at our Matrix-themed crossword puzzle.

Can Drew Goddard Unlock The Matrix’s Mindfuck Potential?
Liz Shannon Miller

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