New ‘Matrix Resurrections’ Images Confirm Jonathan Groff’s Character
Warner Bros. release the electronic press kit for The Matrix Resurrections this week. It includes dozens of stills from the movie, along with interviews with many members of the cast and crew. Each of the images is captioned; they say who’s in the picture and they also tell you the names of the characters those people are playing. Some of the names of these characters haven’t really been revealed to date; IMDb doesn’t have character names listed for Max Riemelt or Brian J. Smith or Toby Onwumere, for example. According to the EPK, they’re playing Sheperd, Berg, and Sequoia, respectively.
The EPK also confirms what was strongly alluded to in the most recent trailer: Jonathan Groff is playing a new incarnation of Agent Smith, Neo’s perpetual adversary who was played by Hugo Weaving in the first Matrix trilogy. The photos refer to him simply as “Smith” — and in his interview in the EPK, Groff talks about finding the character, and also how his fighting style for the character contrasts with Keanu’s style as Neo. He said:
It’s brutalistic and it’s strong — it’s strong, heavy punches as opposed to Keanu’s style, which is more smooth and fluid. That was the difference that they wanted to see ... so we worked a lot on posture and hitting hard when you hit, flowing through and then hitting hard when you’re hitting. If I’m hitting hard, it can make me kind of robotic.
There are some other interesting details in these interviews; Jada Pinkett Smith reveals, for example that old Niobe we see in the new trailer is 90 years old — and now the leader of a new human city named “IO.” Here are all the new images of The Matrix Resurrections:
The Matrix Resurrections: New Images
Here’s that most recent trailer for the film as well.
The Matrix Resurrections premieres on HBO Max and in theaters on December 22.