The Matrix Resurrections is the biggest, gayest, and campiest tentpole movie in years! It has action, it has gays, it has leather, it has latex, and it’s all done with its over-the-top tongue fully in cheek!
The movie is full-on blockbuster camp, and Lana Wachowski never took her foot off the gas. She saw the way right-wingers and men’s rights activists co-opted the first Matrix film, and wanted to make sure that would never happen with this one.
Not only is the movie full of both canon and implied queer characters (including Niobe, Bugs, Lexy, and Berg) and queer actors like Jonathan Groff and Neil Patrick Harris, who never once try to resemble straight people, but the movie also includes plenty of the trans metaphors and messages that the franchise originally brought us.
In case you didn’t catch all the trans analogies and easter eggs in this new Matrix movie, we’ve compiled them here!
Fair warning! This list includes spoilers for The Matrix Resurrections, out in theaters and streaming on HBO Max now through January 21.
The new protagonist (and immediate sapphic icon), played by Jessica Henwick, is the blue-haired Bugs, named for legendary gender-bending cartoon Bugs Bunny.
Trans actor and The L Word: Generation Q star Leo Sheng appeared in a few scenes as Bobbi, Neo’s secretary at his game company.
Throughout the film when they talk about Trinity’s name in this new Matrix, Tiffany, everyone talks about how it doesn’t fit her at all. This is just like how a trans person’s birth name sounds ridiculous when you hear people using it after years of using their real name.
In one scene where the game company decides to reboot the Matrix video game that exists in the world of The Matrix, they’re talking about what the original one was about and one person says, “trans politics.” It’s a cheeky reference to the message behind that first film that was ignored by so many when it first came out.
At one point, the new Agent Smith (played by the terrific Jonathan Groff) says that Neo’s sacrifice in Matrix 3 made it so he was “free to be me.” He talks about how much he loves his new younger and hotter look, being his full, true self.
While in the original Matrix, we're told that in the Matrix you look like how you imagine yourself, in this new Matrix, Neo and Trinity have had their coding changed so that they no longer look like Neo and Trinity. Everyone else in the Matrix sees them as different people who look completely different. When you're trans, that’s how it feels. Everyone sees you one way, but you know that’s not how you really look.
One of the most badass scenes in Resurrections comes when Trinity finally accepts her true self when her husband begs “Tiffany” to come back with him.
“I wish you’d stop calling me that,” Trinity tells him, before kicking his ass. “I hate that fucking name. My name is Trinity.”
If you’re trans, this is a conversation you’ve had a million times.
