The announcement that The Matrix was potentially being rebooted has got a lot of people up in arms. However, it's possible that the truth is that while more Matrix films are being worked on, calling them a reboot might not be accurate. Zak Penn is the writer currently in talks to put together the treatment for the new Matrix movie and based on his comments on social media, his vision for the project isn't exactly a reboot.
All I can say at this point is no one could or should REBOOT the Matrix. People who know Animatrix and the comics understand. Can't comment yet except to say that the words "reboot" and "remake" were from an article. Let's stop responding to inaccurate news. If I were going to recast Keanu Reeves, I would cast Keanu Reeves.
Based on Zak Penn's recent series of tweets, it appears that his plan for the future of the Matrix franchise is to tell a new story within the universe created by the original trilogy, not necessarily to retell the story that the Wachowskis originally created. He says the words "reboot" and "remake" were inserted by the news. To be fair, the original story from The Hollywood Reporter uses the word 'reboot" in the headline, but not in the story and the word "remake" never appears.
Calling this a Matrix reboot may be accurate from the standpoint that the franchise itself, which had been dormant, is coming back, being rebooted, but the story itself will not be starting over from scratch. If future movies are going to be made at all, this certainly sounds like the proper approach. The end of The Matrix Revolutions shows us a rebooted Matrix that is continuing forward. Stories could easily be told within that Matrix, or any of the others that we know came before it, without having to retell the story we know. Hell, a new trilogy could be made that follows the next incarnation of The One, as it's implied that all of that is going to happen again. In that way, you could essentially tell an all-new version of the exact same story, still without remaking the Keanu Reeves version of events. The world allows for flexibility.
Zak Penn compares future Matrix movies to the Animatrix and the comics, which did exactly this, telling stories inside the Matrix that did not revolve around The One. He also compares it to what Fox is doing with the X-Men universe, making movies like Deadpool and TV series like Legion, which ostensibly take place in the same universe, but don't force themselves to be related to each other.
Should there be more Matrix films at all, and if so, is this the right way to go about making them? Let us know what you think about getting plugged back into The Matrix in the comments below.
