'The Matrix 4' Hypes Fans up With Interactive First Look

By Michael Hein

The Matrix 4 trailer premieres online on Thursday, and until then the filmmakers have a unique hook to hold fans over. Warner Bros. released a 15-second animated clip on social media on Tuesday, prompting fans to visit the new website for The Matrix Resurrections. There, they can choose between "taking the red pill or the blue pill," and either way they can see a few snippets from the trailer.

The interactive website shows two big glossy capsules just like the ones Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) offered Neo (Keanu Reeves) in the first Matrix movie, along with the words: "The choice is yours." Clicking on one of the pills will show you a few frames from the trailer. Although the pills represent the choice between enlightenment and ignorance in the movies, here it doesn't make much of a difference - according to a report by Entertainment Weekly, there are about 180,000 variants of the video.

Whichever of the variants you see, it is eerily interactive. Most include one of the movie's stars speaking in narration, reciting the exact time you are watching the clip. Reeves is returning as Neo in the new installment, and Carrie-Anne Moss is returning as Trinity. The movie is directed by Lana Wachowski — one of the two Wachowski siblings who wrote and directed the original trilogy.

The other major returning cast member we know of in this movie is Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe. So far, other stars have not confirmed their participation or even denied it, though in the case of a production like this many fans expect some misdirection. Fishburne, for example, said that he is not in the movie as recently as June of 2021, according to a report by Digital Spy.

"I am not in the next Matrix movie and you'd have to ask Lana Wachowski why, 'cause I don't have an answer for that," he said at the time.

Notable new cast members include Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Christina Ricci and Jessica Yu Li Henwick. We have some details about these characters from the trailer, which premiered at CinemaCon last month. However, if you want to wait and see it for yourself be warned that there are spoilers ahead.

 The trailer shown last month made it look like Neo and Trinity had both forgotten the events of the original Matrix trilogy, and Neo was even going by his original name of Thomas Anderson. Harris seemed to play Neo's therapist, to whom he complained about having "dreams that weren't just dreams."

Many con attendees took Mateen's character as a young Morpheus, who offered Neo a red pill while saying: "time to fly." The trailer includes some obvious references to the first movie, showing them fighting in a dojo and bending reality just like before.

The Matrix Resurrections premieres on Wednesday, Dec. 22 both in theaters and on HBO Max. The original trilogy of movies is streaming now on HBO Max.

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