Rumor Has It Warner Bros. Wants a Morpheus ‘Matrix’ Prequel
If nothing else, the announcement that Warner Bros. is working on expanding the universe of The Matrix really makes me want to revisit the original films. Like most people, I was enamored with the first and disappointed by the sequels. The now-outdated CGI character modeling and frequent technobabble written by the Wachowski Sisters caught me a bit by surprise, and I was unnecessarily tough on the movies as a result. Now, though, I wonder if I might see the sequels with different eyes. When was the last time a blockbuster movie franchises so clearly marched to the beat of its own drum? Maybe this time around I will fully embrace the weird.
Of course, now that I’ve finally come around, it sounds like Warner Bros. is going to play it pretty safe. On Friday, Scott Wampler of Birth.Movies.Death shared this little tidbit: according to multiple sources at the studio, Warner Bros. is currently leaning towards a Matrix prequel with Michael B. Jordan as a young Morpheus. According to Wampler, a standalone Morpheus movie has “long been a concept favored by the folks at Warner Bros.,” although this is only one of several ideas being kicked around in the writers’ room.
A young Morpheus movie? I’m a little split on the idea. On the one hand, Michael B. Jordan is both an incredible actor and a tremendous action star. Any genre fan worth his or her salt would welcome Jordan’s slow-motion Kung Fu with open arms. On the other hand, as a few people on social media have pointed out, the original trilogy is meant to only represent one iteration of The Matrix the machines created. Keanu Reeves’ Neo is not the first savior to sacrifice himself for humanity, nor — if the film’s talking heads are to be believed — will he be the last.
Why limit your story to this singular version of the Matrix? Why not revisit a later version of the Matrix and not be hamstrung by an ending that has to sync up with the original Matrix film’s beginning? The Wachowski Sisters have created a big, bold, beautiful sandbox for filmmakers to play in, and showing the backstory of one character from the original trilogy shows a disappointing lack of creativity. If Warner Bros. really wanted to be bold, they would plan a new trilogy with all new characters with an eye towards showing the previous incarnations of Neo who managed to grind The Matrix to a halt.