Warner Brothers drops enigmatic trailer for THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS

As promised a couple of days back, Warner Brothers have dropped the trailer for The Matrix Resurrections, the fourth film in the Matrix franchises and the first new film entry to the series since 2003's The Matrix Revolutions.

The trailer opens with Neil Patrick Harris, apparently playing a psychiatrist, seeing his patient Thomas Anderson, played once again by Keanu Reeves. Reeves apparently has no memory of his life as Neo aka "The One." The setting is no longer The City, the ambiguous mega-metropolis of the original film trilogy, but a more realistic San Francisco, coated in warm, distinctly un-Matrixy colours. Thomas reports strange dreams, seeing the city in lines of code, and flashes of images (some new, some from the original movies), including one of himself blinded, being operated on by machines. Thomas meets a stranger in a cafe (Carrie Ann Moss), is seen quaffing blue pills like they are candy, is intrigued by flocks of birds in the sky and by a copy of Alice in Wonderland. He also sees images of himself as an old man. Eventually he flushes the blue pills down a sink, and accepts a red pill offered by a man strangely familiar yet completely different (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).

Anderson is approached by a young woman (Jessica Henwick) who offers to show him the truth and calls him "Neo." She guides him through a door that acts as a shortcut to another part of the world, where he meets Trinity, this time her body apparently riven by lines of green code. The strange man spars with Anderson in a familiar dojo, angering him until he unleashes a blast of power.  We then see the world outside the Matrix, with the Machines still harvesting humans in immense vertical battery piles and a hovership hiding in the ruins of an old city. Trinity and Anderson meet on a rooftop in San Francisco, whilst the young woman fights Agents. She guides several other characters through a portal from what appears to be a cinema onto a speeding train, chased by rocket launcher-wielding enemies. We see Trinity apparently awakening from the Matrix, the strange man finding reality becoming liquid, a lot more fighting scenes and Anderson stopping hundreds of bullets in mid-air. Anderson is then told by another stranger (Jonathan Groff) that it's very exciting to go back to the start, "back to the Matrix."

The Matrix Resurrections hits cinemas and, in the United States, HBO Max on 22 December.