The Matrix

The Matrix
IMDB 8.6/10 (187,144 votes) top 250: #34
Directed by	Wachowski Brothers
Written by	Wachowski Brothers
Produced by	Joel Silver
Starring	Keanu Reeves Laurence Fishburne Carrie-Anne Moss Hugo Weaving Joe Pantoliano Gloria Foster
Cinematography	Bill Pope
Edited by	Zach Staenberg
Music by	Original: Don Davis Rob Dougan Jack Dangers Chino Moreno Hive Non-Original: Tim Commerford Madonna Wayne Gacy Stéphane Grappelli Liam Howlett Harry James Grant Marshall Tom Morello Zack De La Rocha Brad Wilk David Wyndorf Robert del Naja Sara J. Mushroom Vowles Matt Schwartz Jimmie Haskell
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release dates	31 March 1999 11 June 1999 8 April 1999
Running time	136 min
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$63,000,000
Box office	Domestic $171,479,930 Foreign $288,900,000 Worldwide $460,379,930

Template:Infobox movie certificatesThe Matrix is a science fiction/action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss and Hugo Weaving. It was first released in the USA on March 31, 1999, and is the first entry in the Matrix series of films, comics, video games and animation.

The film describes a future in which our world is actually the Matrix, an artificial reality created by sentient machines in order to pacify, subdue and make use of the human population as an energy source by growing them and connecting them to the Matrix with cybernetic implants. It contains numerous references to the cyberpunk and hacker subcultures; philosophical and religious ideas, including messianism and Socratic, Cartesian, and Platonic idealism; and homages to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Hong Kong action movies and Japanese animation.

Plot synopsis

Template:Spoiler A telephone call from a woman, Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), in a dark hotel room is interrupted as a group of police officers attempt to arrest her. Using superhuman speed, she fights and escapes from them, fleeing across rooftops. The officers pursue her, along with three sinister government agents possessing similarly incredible abilities. At street level, she reaches a ringing telephone booth, answering it just as a garbage truck driven by one of the Agents smashes into it. Examining the wreckage, the Agents discover no body, but state that they have gained "the name of their next target": "Neo".

"Neo" is the alias and screen name of Thomas A. Anderson (Keanu Reeves), a computer programmer for a software company who leads a secret life as a hacker. One night he wakes to find messages appearing on his computer monitor, "The Matrix has you" and "Follow the white rabbit". This cryptic instruction leads Neo to a nightclub, where he is met by Trinity, who is aware of his desire to learn the answer to the question: "What is the Matrix?" Neo believes that a man named Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) is somehow connected to the answer.

At work the next day, Neo receives a telephone call from Morpheus, warning that three agents are searching for him. Despite Morpheus' seemingly-omniscient guidance, Neo is apprehended by the agents, who present evidence of his criminal activities as a hacker. They explain that Morpheus is a wanted terrorist, considered by many to be the most dangerous man alive. The agents request Neo's help in locating him; in return they will erase his criminal record. He refuses to cooperate and the scene turns nightmarish as his lips melt and fuse together and the agents implant a robotic bug in his navel. Neo wakes up at home, assuming the event to be a dream, but immediately receives a call from Morpheus, requesting a meeting. He is picked up by Apoc, Trinity and Switch, who remove the bug from Neo and take him to meet Morpheus. During their meeting, Morpheus explains that he has been searching for Neo his entire life, and informs him that the Matrix is "the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth". He then offers Neo a choice between two pills: one blue, which would enable him to wake up safe in his bed but never learn the truth about the Matrix; the other red, which would allow him to "see how deep the rabbit-hole goes". Neo accepts the red pill, and abruptly wakes up naked in a liquid-filled chamber, his body connected by wires to a vast mechanical tower bristling with pods identical to his. The wires, the largest of which is connected to a plug in the back of his head, are disconnected and Neo is ejected out of the pod into a pool of water. He is rescued by Morpheus and taken aboard his hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar. As Neo passes in and out of consciousness, Morpheus urges him to rest while his atrophied muscles are rebuilt.

When recovered, Neo is introduced to the crew of the ship, and is told that it is not the year 1999 as he believed, but estimated to be 2199 — the exact year is unknown. Sitting in a chair on the ship's main deck, a wire is plugged into the socket in the back of Neo's head. Instantly, he appears in a blank white expanse, his appearance back to normal. Morpheus is also there, and explains that they are in "the Construct", a virtual reality environment used for training. He explains that humanity is fighting a war against intelligent machines created early in the 21st century. After being denied their primary power source, the Sun, by the human race, the machines responded by enslaving human beings and using them as their source for energy, growing countless people in immense fields of pods identical to the one in which Neo awoke. It turns out that the world which Neo has inhabited since birth, the Matrix, is an illusory simulated reality construct of the world of 1999, developed by the machines to keep the human population docile while they are connected to generators and their energy is harvested. Morpheus and Trinity are part of a group of free humans who "unplug" other humans from the Matrix and recruit them to their resistance against the machines. Shocked by what he is told, Neo refuses to believe him, vomiting and fainting when he is unplugged from the chair.

Neo awakens in his bed on the ship, Morpheus at his side. He confirms that Neo cannot go back to his life in the Matrix, and apologizes for the stress he has caused him. However, he explains that he disconnected Neo for a reason: he believes that he is "the One", a man prophesied by the Oracle to "hail the destruction of the Matrix, end the war, bring freedom to our people". Morpheus believes that Neo has the power to free humankind from its enslavement through complete mastery of the Matrix, but Neo is skeptical.

In the morning, Neo speaks to the ship's "operator", Tank (Marcus Chong), who describes Zion, the last human city and a refuge for unplugged humans. In order for Neo to join the group, he must learn how to bend or break the rules of the Matrix in order to subvert the simulation's laws of physics. He is plugged back into the chair on the main deck, and Tank demonstrates that Neo can instantly learn new skills by uploading training programs directly into his mind. Over a period of ten hours, he learns martial arts disciplines such as Jujitsu and Kung Fu, then demonstrates his skills by entering another simulated environment similar to the Matrix and sparring with Morpheus. Despite a level of speed which impresses the crew, Neo is unable to land a strike on the more experienced Morpheus and is defeated. Morpheus encourages Neo to understand the idea that the Matrix is nothing more than a computer program with rules which can be bent or broken by mental effort; muscles have nothing to do with a person's abilities within the Matrix. In a second round Neo moves faster and finally manages to evade Morpheus's defenses, leaving the crew amazed.

They are then transferred to "the jump program", a simulation of two skyscrapers a significant distance apart. Morpheus tells Neo to "free his mind" and jump from one building to the other, a leap Morpheus easily achieves, but Neo attempts and fails. After being unplugged from the simulation, he is bleeding. He questions Morpheus about this, as he thought the training program was not real, and is told that any injuries suffered in the Matrix are reflected in the real world: if he is killed in the Matrix, his physical body will also die, as "the body cannot live without the mind".

In another training program Morpheus warns Neo of the rebels' main hazard in the Matrix: Agents. The men in suits who interrogated Neo earlier were actually self-aware programs who behave as anti-virus utilities; their purpose is to seek out and eliminate any threats within the Matrix in order to keep it stable. Anyone who has not been unplugged from the Matrix is potentially an Agent, since Agents have the ability to take over the body of anyone still connected to the system. They possess incredible martial arts skills, superhuman strength, agility, and speed, but Morpheus explains that Agents are still nonetheless limited by the physical rules of the Matrix. Once Neo, being "the One", fully understands the true nature of the Matrix, the Agents will be no match for him. However, later, another member of the crew, Cypher (Joe Pantoliano), advises Neo to disregard Morpheus's advice, telling him that if he sees an Agent, his only chance of survival is to flee. Cypher is later seen having dinner inside of the Matrix with Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). Stating that he prefers the artificial world of the Matrix to reality, Cypher strikes a deal with Smith that he will arrange for Morpheus to be captured if the machines will reinsert him into the Matrix as a celebrity and with no memory of true reality.

The group enters the Matrix and takes Neo to the apartment of the Oracle (Gloria Foster), a woman Morpheus describes as being very old and with the rebels "since the beginning ... of the resistance." Neo is puzzled at her ability to predict future actions. She then implies that Neo is not the One, and that he seems to be waiting for something — his next life, perhaps. She states that Morpheus believes Neo is "the One" so blindly, he would sacrifice his life to save Neo's, and predicts that Neo must make a choice between his life and that of Morpheus. As they leave, Morpheus explains to Neo that the Oracle's words were for him alone.

After the meeting, the crew heads toward the nearest "hard line", a telephone line in the Matrix which may be used by the rebels to safely exit the virtual world. As they approach the exit they realise that the line has been cut and they have become trapped, with Agents and a police SWAT team in pursuit. In their attempt to escape, an unarmed Morpheus saves Neo from Agent Smith's grasp, but is effortlessly beaten and captured himself. The others manage to escape, but Cypher is separated from the group and is the first to reach a new hard line. After exiting the Matrix, Cypher wounds Tank and kills Tank's older brother, Dozer (Anthony Ray Parker). The crew discovers that Morpheus was captured due to the betrayal of Cypher, who preferred living in ignorance within the Matrix and blames Morpheus for giving him the red pill. Cypher murders Apoc and Switch by unplugging them, but before he can kill Neo and Trinity, Tank recovers and shoots Cypher. Meanwhile, Morpheus has been imprisoned in a government building. Three Agents attempt to use a serum to gain information from him regarding access codes to the mainframe of Zion. During this time, Smith confesses to Morpheus that despite being a computer program he hates the Matrix and he demands the codes, so that Zion can be destroyed and he can leave.

Neo decides to rescue Morpheus despite Tank's warnings and the mission being virtually impossible. Trinity accompanies him. Entering the building, Neo and Trinity kill the dozens of guards. In the process, Neo becomes more confident and familiar with manipulating the Matrix, allowing him to perform feats such as dodging bullets fired at him by an Agent. They finally succeed in rescuing their leader, and, in an abandoned subway station, Morpheus and Trinity exit the Matrix through a hard line. However, before Neo can follow, the phone being used is destroyed by Agent Smith. Instead of fleeing from him as Cypher advised, Neo duels with Smith, eventually managing to force him onto the tracks in front of a moving subway train. However, Agent Smith quickly possesses another body and pursues Neo.

Neo is chased through the city by the three Agents while Sentinels (robots used by the machines to "search and destroy" human ships) locate the Nebuchadnezzar's position in the real world and close in fast. However, the ship's electromagnetic pulse device, the crew's only weapon against the Sentinels, cannot be activated until Neo has left the Matrix. As they prepare to use it, Tank guides Neo towards an "old exit", but Smith is already waiting. He shoots him several times, and Neo collapses to the floor in the Matrix as a flatline readout of his heartbeat appears on a screen inside the Nebuchadnezzar. Trinity whispers to Neo that she refuses to accept his death, since the Oracle told her that the man she would fall in love with would be the One, she confesses that she is in love with him and kisses him. Neo's heart monitor begins to beat again, and within the Matrix he stands up. The Agents shoot at him, but he raises his palm and stops their bullets in mid-air. As they fall to the ground, Neo looks up and sees the artificial Matrix as lines of streaming green code: he finally becomes "the One". Agent Smith makes one last ditch attempt to physically attack him, but Neo effortlessly blocks his punches with one hand. He then plunges directly into Smith's body, causing it to rupture and then explode, leaving Neo standing. The other two Agents flee, and Neo returns to the real world barely in time for the ship's electromagnetic pulse to destroy the Sentinels.

A short epilogue shows him back in the Matrix, making a telephone call promising:

"I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you... a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world... where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you."

Neo hangs up the phone, looks up, and flies into the sky above the city. Template:Spoilerend

Principal cast

From left to right: Agents Brown, Smith, and Jones

Actor	Role
Keanu Reeves	Neo/Thomas Anderson
Laurence Fishburne	Morpheus
Carrie-Anne Moss	Trinity
Hugo Weaving	Agent Smith
Julian Arahanga	Apoc
Marcus Chong	Tank
Matt Doran	Mouse
Gloria Foster	the Oracle
Paul Goddard	Agent Brown
Belinda McClory	Switch
Joe Pantoliano	Cypher
Anthony Ray Parker	Dozer
Robert Taylor	Agent Jones

Production

The Matrix was a co-production of Warner Bros Studios and Australian Village Roadshow Pictures, and was filmed in Sydney, Australia. Several landmarks and locations in the city are visible in some scenes, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Martin Place and a Commonwealth Bank branch.

Production design

File:MatrixCodeCloseUp.jpg

Screenshot of a freeware PC screensaver which emulates the appearance of the Matrix digital rain.

In the film, the code that comprises the Matrix itself is frequently represented as downward-flowing green characters. This code includes mirror images of half-width katakana characters and Western Latin letters and numerals. In one scene, the pattern of trickling rain on a window being cleaned resembles this code. More generally, the film's production design placed a bias towards its distinctive green color for scenes set within the Matrix, whereas there is an emphasis on the color blue during the scenes set in the real world. In addition, grid-patterns were incorporated into the sets for scenes inside the Matrix, intended to convey the cold, logical, artificial nature of that environment.

Also, the Chroma key screens used for shooting special effects scenes were bluescreen for Matrix scenes and greenscreen for real world scenes. This was done to ensure that the predominant colors of the sets did not interfere with the CGI editing processes.

The "digital rain" is strongly reminiscent of similar computer code in the film Ghost in the Shell, an acknowledged influence on the Matrix series (see below). The linking of the color green to computers may have been intended to evoke the green tint of old monochrome computer monitors.

Visual effects

The film is known for popularizing and evolving the use of a visual effect known as bullet time, which allows the viewer to explore a moment progressing in slow-motion while the camera appears to orbit around the scene at normal speed.

One proposed technique for creating these effects involved accelerating a high-frame-rate motion picture camera along a fixed track at a high speed to capture the action as it occurred. However, this was discarded as unfeasable, as the destruction of the camera in the attempt was all but inevitable. Instead, the method used was a technically expanded version of an old art photography technique known as time-slice photography, in which a large number of cameras are placed around an object and fired simultaneously. When the sequence of shots is viewed as a movie, the viewer sees what is in effect two-dimensional "slices" of a three-dimensional moment. Watching such a "time slice" movie is akin to the real-life experience of walking around a statue to see how it looks at different angles.

Some scenes in The Matrix feature the "time-slice" effect with completely frozen characters and objects. Interpolation techniques improved the fluidity of the apparent "camera motion". The effect was further expanded upon by the Wachowski brothers and visual effects supervisor John Gaeta to create "bullet time", which incorporates temporal motion, so that rather than being totally frozen the scene progresses in slow and variable motion. Engineers at Manex Visual Effects pioneered 3D visualization planning methods to move beyond mechanically fixed views towards complex camera paths and flexibly moving interest points. There is also an improved fluidity through the use of non-linear interpolation, digital compositing and the introduction of computer generated "virtual" scenery.

File:Neo SmithPic.jpg

Neo's confrontation with Agent Smith features the bullet time effect

The objective of bullet time shots in The Matrix was to creatively illustrate "mind over matter" type events as captured by a "virtual camera". However, the original technical approach was physically bound to pre-determined perspectives, and the resulting effect only suggested the capabilities of a true virtual camera.

The evolution of photogrametric and image based CGI background approaches in The Matrix's bullet time shots set the stage for later innovations unveiled in the sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Virtual Cinematography (CGI-rendered characters, locations and events) and the high-definition Universal Capture process completely replaced the use of still camera arrays, thus realising the virtual camera.

This film upset the juggernaut release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace by winning the Academy Award for Visual Effects.

Music

See also: The Matrix: Original Motion Picture Score and The Matrix: Music from the Motion Picture

The film's score was composed by Don Davis. He noted that mirrors appear frequently in the movie: reflections of the blue and red pills are seen in Morpheus's glasses; Neo's capture by Agents is viewed through the rear-view mirror of Trinity's motorcycle; the broken mirror that mends itself as Neo is looking at it; reflections warp as a spoon is bent; the reflection of a helicopter is visible as it approaches a skyscraper. (The film also frequently references the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which has a sequel entitled Through the Looking-Glass.) Davis focused on this theme of reflections when creating his score, alternating between sections of the orchestra and attempting to incorporate contrapuntal ideas.

In addition to Davis's score, The Matrix's soundtrack also features music from acts such as Rammstein, Rob Dougan, Rage Against the Machine, Propellerheads, Massive Attack, The Prodigy, Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson.

Influences and interpretations

Main articles: The Matrix series and The Matrix character names

A precursor story is "They" (1941) by Robert A. Heinlein. A manipulated reality is the context, and at one point the protagonist even calls the setup a matrix: "Why the grand scale to the deception, countless creatures, whole continents, an enormously involved and minutely detailed matrix of insane history, insane tradition, insane culture?"

The Matrix makes numerous references to recent films and literature, and to historical myths and philosophy including Messianism, Buddhism, Advaita Hinduism, and Gnosticism. The film's premise resembles Plato's Allegory of the Cave, while Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation is featured in the film. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is frequently referenced, and there are similarities to cyberpunk works such as Neuromancer by William Gibson.

Japanese director Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell was a strong influence. Producer Joel Silver has stated that the Wachowski brothers first described their intentions for The Matrix by showing him this animé and saying, "We wanna do that for real". Mitsuhisa Ishikawa of Production I.G., which produced Ghost in the Shell, noted that the anime's high-quality visuals were a strong source of inspiration for the Wachowski brothers. He also commented, "... cyberpunk films are very difficult to describe to a third person. I'd imagine that The Matrix is the kind of film that was very difficult to draw up a written proposal for to take to film studios." He stated that since Ghost in the Shell had gained recognition in America, the Wachowski brothers used it as a "promotional tool".

Reviewers have commented on similarities between The Matrix and other late-1990s films such as Strange Days, Dark City, and The Truman Show. Comparisons have also been made to Grant Morrison's comic series The Invisibles; Morrison believes that the Wachowski brothers essentially plagiarized his work to create the film.

Trace program

In the first scene we see a green cursor blinking on a black screen, synchronised with a quiet beep, similar to that of a heart monitor. In this first metaphor is hidden the most profound meaning of the entire film, a living machine, the duality of human and Artificial Intelligence. In a 1996 version of the film's screenplay, the Wachowski brothers described the cursor as pulsating like a heart (A common effect with greenscreen terminals due to the phosphorus' persistence):

A blinking cursor pulses in the electric darkness like a heart coursing with phosphorus light, burning beneath the derma of black-neon glass

Names

Main article: The Matrix character names

In the Matrix series, the name of a character often refers to their role in the story.

• Neo comes from the Greek word meaning "new", and is an anagram of "One", Neo's title in the story. Neo's last name and hacker alias combined, Neo Anderson, might be read as "New Son of Man" (Greek "andros" meaning man, human). His first name, Thomas, refers to the disciple Thomas, who according to the Christian scriptures, after his resurrection, wanted proof that Jesus had indeed been raised from the dead, which mirrors Neo's doubt in himself throughout the movie.
• Morpheus ("he who forms, shapes, molds", from the Greek morphe) is the principal Greek god of dreams and sleep. He is the one who awakens Neo from his dormant state, giving him a new life.
• Trinity commonly refers to the equal union of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit Godhead. It also is the cardinal number "that is the sum of one and one and one." Just as Christianity maintains that life comes from the Trinity, so is Neo brought back to life through his Trinity.
• Cypher differs from the rest of the crew from various aspects. He is the only one with facial hair, and during Neo's introduction to his new comrades, Cypher is the only one to speak. "Cypher" undoubtedly comes from the word cipher, meaning the set of rules used to encrypt a set of data. It also literally means "zero", a reference to Cypher's faithlessness. Cypher betrays Neo and makes a deal with the agents. He is promised to get rich and famous in return of Neo like Judas Iscariot, according to New Testament, who gave Jesus away for 30 silver pieces. When the enemies of Jesus come, he kisses him on the cheek as an identity code. Cypher coughs while they were running away from the agents and tries to give Neo to the agents. "Cypher" may also be a play-on-words as short for "Lucifer".
• Smith, Jones and Brown are common surnames in Western English-speaking countries. It indicates the seriality and the lack of identity of the Agents, who are programs. In the second film of the series, Agent Smith betrays his own kind and doesn't obey anything or anyone. In the third one of the series Neo sees him as made of fire. Agent Smith's story is very parallel to the Devil's.
• Tank and his brother, Dozer, are the only two main characters naturally born. This reflects in their names being earthy in nature.
• Switch and Mouse, in the same routine, are parts found on a computer.
• Apoc is likely a shortening of "apocalypse." An early draft of the screenplay included a line when Neo is introduced to Apoc, attributing him as the creator of a "Four Horsemen Virus," named after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Release

The Matrix was first released in the U.S. on 31 March 1999, less than two months before the highly anticipated sci-fi film Star Wars: Episode I. It earned $171 million in the U.S. and $460 million worldwide, and later became the first DVD to sell more than three million copies in the U.S.

Critical reception

The combination of special-effects-laden action and philosophical meandering was considered fresh and exciting. Roger Ebert praised the film's visuals and premise, but disliked the third act's focus on action. Other reviewers criticised the comparative humorlessness and self-indulgence of the movie. Philip Strick commented in Sight & Sound, "if the Wachowskis claim no originality of message, they are startling innovators of method", praising the film's details and its "broadside of astonishing images".

In 2001, The Matrix was placed 66th in the American Film Institute's "100 Years... 100 Thrills" list.

Awards and nominations

The Matrix received Oscars for film editing, sound effects editing, visual effects, and sound. Furthermore, the film won these awards in the year that Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was released, making it the first film to win the special effects Oscars when competing with an entry in the Star Wars series.

It also received BAFTA awards for Best Sound and Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects.

The Matrix series

Main article: The Matrix series

The film's mainstream success led to the greenlighting of the next two films of what was conceived as a trilogy, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. These were filmed simultaneously during one shoot and released in two parts in 2003.

The first film's introductory tale is replaced by a story centred on the impending attack of the human enclave of Zion by a vast machine army. Neo also learns more about the history of the Matrix, his role as the One and the prophecy that he will end the war. The sequels also incorporate longer and more ambitious action scenes, as well as improvements in bullet time and other visual effects.

Also released was The Animatrix, a collection of nine animated short films, many of which were created in the same Japanese animation style that was a strong influence on the live trilogy. The Animatrix was overseen and approved by the Wachowski brothers but they only wrote four of the segments themselves and did not direct any of them; much of the project was created by notable figures from the world of animé. Four of the films were originally released on the series' official website; one was shown in cinemas with the Warner Bros movie Dreamcatcher; the others first appeared with the DVD release of all nine shorts.

The franchise contains three video games: Enter the Matrix (2003), which contains footage shot specifically for the game and chronicles events taking place before and during The Matrix Reloaded; The Matrix Online (2004), a MMORPG which continues the story beyond The Matrix Revolutions; and The Matrix: Path of Neo, which was released 8 November 2005 and focuses on situations based on Neo's journey through the trilogy of films.

Available on the official website are a number of free comics set in the world of The Matrix, written and illustrated by figures from the comics industry. Some of these comics are also available in two printed volumes.

Impact

The Matrix has had a strong effect on action film-making in Hollywood. It upped the ante for cinematic fight scenes by hiring acclaimed choreographers (such as Yuen Woo-ping) from the Hong Kong action cinema scene, well-known for its production of martial arts films. The success of The Matrix put those choreographers in high demand by other filmmakers who wanted fights of similar sophistication: for example, Yuen Woo-ping's brother Cheung-Yan Yuen was choreographer on Daredevil (2003). There was a surge in movies, commercials and pop videos copying "the Matrix look", usually without the training and attention to detail that made it successful in the first place.

Following The Matrix, films made abundant use of slow-motion, spinning cameras, and, often, the famed bullet time effect of a character freezing or slowing down and the camera panning around them. In several video games, most notably Max Payne and its sequel, bullet time and the ability to dodge bullets became core gameplay elements. The bullet time effect has also been parodied numerous times, in comedy films such as Scary Movie, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Shrek and Kung Pow: Enter the Fist; in TV series such as The Simpsons and Family Guy; and in video games such as Conker's Bad Fur Day.

The Matrix source code has been adopted in logos, advertisements and used in various media (e.g., computer screensavers) to denote the 'digital era.'

In 2003, GRACE, the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, commissioned Free Range Studios to produce The Meatrix, a dark satire of The Matrix, to encourage the purchase and consumption of organic foods and sustainable, free-range meats. In the Adobe Flash short, Leo, a pig on a seemingly bucolic farm, is approached by Moopheus, an anthropomorphic bull, who reveals to him that the farm he has known is an illusion, and in reality he is trapped in a horrific "factory farm". The animated short has won numerous awards, been reported in major international media, has been viewed over 10,000,000 times and translated into 13 languages. In 2006, this was followed by a sequel, The Meatrix II: Revolting, themed around the factory farm treatment of dairy cows.

Some considered that The Matrix signaled the end of significant exploration in the cyberpunk movement. Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky commented,

I walked out of The Matrix [...] and I was thinking, "What kind of science fiction movie can people make now?" The Wachowskis basically took all the great sci-fi ideas of the 20th century and rolled them into a delicious pop culture sandwich that everyone on the planet devoured. Suddenly Philip K. Dick's ideas no longer seemed that fresh. Cyberpunk? Done.

Sophia Stewart legal case

On April 24, 2003 Sophia Stewart filed suit against Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Joel Silver and the Wachowski Brothers claiming that the stories of The Matrix and Terminator franchises were based on a manuscript she wrote titled "The Third Eye". She allegedly submitted the manuscript to the Wachowskis in response to an advertisement. On October 4, 2004, a California court granted Stewart leave to continue her case. One account misreported the October 4th decision as Stewart winning her lawsuit, rather than simply winning permission to continue with the case. The case was dismissed in June 2005 on the basis that "Stewart and her attorneys had not entered any evidence to bolster its key claims or demonstrated any striking similarity between her work and the accused directors' films"..

Trivia

• The locations mentioned in the film are all named after places in Chicago, Illinois. Maps of the city shown in the film also resemble Chicago, although most filming was done in Sydney, Australia. Landmarks were purposely not included in order to maintain the setting of a generic American city. However, at the beginning of the scene where Neo is talking with his boss, the Sears Tower is visible in a picture on the wall. In the last scene, in which Neo hangs up the phone, the camera pans and the Sydney Harbor bridge is visible in the background.
• The film was almost completely filmed in Fox Studios, Sydney, Australia and in the vicinity of Sydney, New South Wales as per the acknowledgements in the film credits. Apart from one or two scenes shot in the United States, the film has been almost completely pictured only in the Fox Studios, Sydney and some outdoor scenes in the city of Sydney
• Some of the rooms shown early in the film are featured again later. Room 303 in the Heart O' the City Hotel, where the police officers find Trinity, is the same room where Neo is killed by Agent Smith and resurrected as the One; the building in which Neo meets Morpheus for the first time is the place in which the group later appears before meeting the Oracle; and the room in which Neo takes the pill is the same room in which Mouse dies.
• The rooftop set that Trinity uses to escape from Agent Jones is one left over from the production of Dark City.
• According to The Art of the Matrix, only one filmed scene was omitted from the final cut. In the scene, Cypher explains to Neo that he is not the first person Morpheus has singled out as the One.
• The first phone call from the Matrix between Cypher and Trinity is shown as: Call trans opt: received. 2-19-98 13:24:18 REC:Log >, and Neo's final call from The Matrix at the end of the movie is: Call trans opt: received 9-18-99 14:32:21 REC:Log >, which is approximately 576 days of Matrix time.
• Towards the beginning of the film, Neo hears the knock at the door in his apartment in the Matrix he goes to get a disk for the person at the door. The disk is hidden in a book with a hole cut into it. The book is Simulacra and Simulation by the French Philosopher Jean Baudrillard. This book was required reading for most of the principal cast and crew involved in the film.
• "The Lady in The Red Dress" is likely a reference to Ana Cupnanas, who was believed to be wearing red after FBI agents shot him in the back, the same manner that the simulation showed.

External links

• Official website
• The Matrix at IMDb
• http://www.dictionary-of-matrix.com/ - Matrix Wiki
• The Matrix multiple scripts by Andy & Larry Wachowski
• Complete list of actors who were considered for roles
• The Matrix has you...

Reviews

• Roger Ebert's review of The Matrix
• James Berardinelli's review of The Matrix
• The Matrix on Rotten Tomatoes
• The Matrix on Meta Critic

Articles and books

• Stacy Gillis (Editor), The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded, Wallflower, 2005. ISBN 1-904764-32-0
• The Many Meanings of The Matrix, Larry Wachowski in a dialogue with Ken Wilber. This costs $10.00 to stream or download.
• The Matrix: A Christian Review
• Dark City and The Matrix - A Spanish site that compares the similarities between The Matrix and Dark City, a film directed by Alex Proyas and released a year earlier that used the same sets.
• Unplugging The Matrix, an article on Slate.
• Technology - The Shadow of the Matrix
• - Essays on Reloaded and Revolutions
• Matthew Kapell and William G. Doty have edited a volume on the entire franchise entitled Jacking In to the Matrix Franchise: Cultural Reception and Interpretation (NY: Continuum 2004).
• The Rebel Sell (2004) a nonfiction criticism by Canadian authors Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, of 'counter-culture' is highly critical of The Matrix movies' philosophical underpinnings as being essentially individualistic and only artificially in opposition to our capitalist paradigm.
• Synchronistic Linguistics in The Matrix

Religion/philosophy/theory of The Matrix

• Philosophy of The Matrix (official Warner Brothers Site, mentioned previously)
• Matrixism - the path of the One
• Idealism, the Philosophy of the Matrix, and the True Nature of Matter by Harun Yahya
• Man as the World-Builder, one of many philosophical articles inspired by the movie
• Possible Connections with Judaism History
• The Matrix and issues in modern philosophy
• The Matrix in Advaita Vedanta
• The Matrix in Fusion Anomaly
• Network Forensics Evasion: How to Exit the Matrix
• The Shadow of the Matrix
• Template:It"Matrix - a modern parable" Two books on gnosticism in the Matrix (IT)
• Which pill would you take, the red or the blue?