Laurence Fishburne finally files his review of The Matrix Resurrections

Much to the dismay of fans and the actor, Laurence Fishburne did not reprise the role of Morpheus in The Matrix Resurrections. This makes sense because, you see, the Morpheus in Resurrections is actually a computer game character escaping a matrix created by the character Neo (Keanu Reeves), and as such, is not the same Morpheus we know from the original Matrix trilogy. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s interpretation of the character is a bit more flamboyant, having recently escaped the confines of being an Agent in Neo’s video game, Binary. Freedom has that effect on computer programs.

But we digress. Fishburne’s stoic Morpheus, the one who throws caution to the wind and removes the arms from all his sunglasses, was sorely missed. He is, after all, an irreplaceable icon of cinema history, along with Hugo Weaving’s Agent Smith. Still, Fishburne wasn’t too bothered by his absence, mostly because he didn’t think the movie was particularly good.

Speaking to Variety (via EW) on the red carpet for Paul Feig’s The School For Good And Evil, Fishburne revealed that he did, in fact, see Resurrections and that he didn’t really miss being in the movie. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” Fishburne said. “And it wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be. But I thought Carrie-Anne [Moss] and Keanu [Reeves] really did their thing.”

Both Reeves and Moss reprised their roles as Neo and Trinity for the fourth movie, doing their thing by having a nice little coffee date in the middle of the movie. Morpheus wasn’t the only recasting; Jonathan Groff took over Agent Smith for Hugo Weaving, and Priyanka Chopra played the computer program in charge of the weather: Sati. In August 2020, Fishburne said that he was not “invited” to return for Resurrections. “I wish them well. I hope it’s great.”

For his part, the new Morpheus Abdul-Mateen said he enjoyed playing this new Morpheus. “I was fortunate enough to play a character who was aware of the history of the Matrix but also growing into his own, he had a growth and a rebirth to go through for his own self,” he told EW in 2021. “I looked at that as an opportunity to create a character with some freedom and expression and to really find out what it was that I, as Morpheus, liked about myself and what I had to contribute to the world and what I had to say in this universe. That was something that I really enjoyed.”

“[Resurrections] was an opportunity to learn more about the world and also to pay homage to the performance that Laurence Fishburne presented to us and then to really add onto that in my own way.”

Yeah, well, Fishburne didn’t think it was all that hot.