Director Lana Wachowski doesn’t appear to be in any mood to tone down her sensibilities; The Matrix Resurrections is officially rated R for “violence and some language,” according to a new bulletin issued by the Motion Picture Association.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering that each of the three previous films in the franchise — The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolutions — is also rated R. In fact, Reloaded was the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time for several years, until it was knocked down from the top spot by Deadpool. The record was subsequently beaten by Deadpool 2, and then by Todd PhillipsJoker.

Philosophically dense and visually ambitious, The Matrix movies don’t really have any overt nudity or gratuitous bloodshed. And this is reflected in the Motion Picture Association’s categorization — these films are restricted mainly for “sci-fi violence” and “brief sexuality.”

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Image via Warner Bros.

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The fourth Matrix film comes at a crucial time for Lana and her sister, Lilly Wachowski, both of whom came out as trans women in the years after the original trilogy’s release. Lilly, who isn’t involved in The Matrix Resurrections, acknowledged the recent re-examination of their films through a new lens, and said at the GLAAD awards some years ago, “This is a cool thing because it’s an excellent reminder that art is never static. And while the ideas of identity and transformation are critical components in our work, the bedrock that all ideas rest upon is love.”

As for why Lilly didn’t return to co-direct the new film like the previous ones, she said during a virtual panel for her Showtime series Work in Progress that she found the idea of going “backward” in her career “expressly unappealing,” especially after the upheaval that she had experienced in her personal life.

She said:

“[Lana] had come up with this idea for another Matrix movie, and we had this talk, and it was actually — we started talking about it in between [our] dad dying and [our] mom dying, which was like five weeks apart. And there was something about the idea of going backward and being a part of something that I had done before that was expressly unappealing. And, like, I didn't want to have gone through my transition and gone through this massive upheaval in my life, the sense of loss from my mom and dad, to want to go back to something that I had done before, and sort of [walk] over old paths that I had walked in, felt emotionally unfulfilling, and really the opposite — like I was going to go back and live in these old shoes, in a way. And I didn't want to do that.”

The Matrix Resurrections stars returning players Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Lambert Wilson. Franchise newcomers include Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. The film is slated to release on December 22 in theaters, and will be the final Warner Bros. title to get a simultaneous HBO Max streaming debut as a part of the studio’s controversial 2021 release strategy. You can check out the official plot synopsis here:

In a world of two realities—everyday life and what lies behind it—Thomas Anderson will have to choose to follow the white rabbit once more. Choice, while an illusion, is still the only way in or out of the Matrix, which is stronger, more secure and more dangerous than ever before.

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