In an abandoned hotel, the police corner Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), who overpowers them all. She runs, pursued by police and agents in black suits, all superhuman. She answers a ringing public telephone and disappears. Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), a computer hacker called Neo, keeps running into the word Matrix. Trinity tells him that Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) has the answers.
A team lead by Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) comes to his day job office, looking for him. Neo surrenders instead of attempting a dangerous escape. The agents try to get Neo to locate Morpheus. When he refuses, they fuse his mouth shut and put a robot bug in his stomach. He wakes up, thinking he had a nightmare. Then, Trinity takes him to meet Morpheus and remove the bug. Morpheus offers him a choice: take the red pill to find out about the Matrix or take the blue pill to return to his ordinary life. He takes the red pill and wakes up in a pod, naked in a fluid, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of other naked humans in similar pods. He is taken away by a flying ship called the Nebuchadnezzar.
Neo has to recuperate from a lifetime in the pod. Morpheus explains that a war had broken out between humans and intelligent machines in the 21st Century. When the humans cut off the machines’ access to solar power, the machines captured humans and turned them into biological batteries for power. They kept their minds occupied with artificial lives in the Matrix. A few free humans hid in the underground city of Zion. Morpheus and his crew hack into the Matrix to unplug humans and free them. In the Matrix, they can have superhuman powers, but death in the Matrix means death for real.
The agents are sentient programs that protect the system. Machines called Sentinels can kill rebels in the real world. Some rebels believe Neo is The One who is prophesised to free humankind. They enter the Matrix to visit The Oracle (Gloria Foster), the prophet who predicted The One. She tells Neo he is not The One. Agents and police ambush the group, betrayed by Cypher (Joe Pantoliano), who has been promised a life of luxury in the Matrix. Morpheus fights Agent Smith and is captured. Cypher murders the crew in their sleep on the ship. Tank (Marius Chong) wakes up and kills Cypher and saves Neo and Trinity.
The agents interrogate Morpheus to learn his access codes to Zion’s mainframe computer so they can destroy it. Neo returns to the Matrix to rescue him, and Trinity accompanies him. Neo discovers his amazing powers as he battles the agents. Morpheus and Trinity escape and Neo is killed. Sentinels attack the Nebuchadnezzar. Trinity tells Neo that she was prophesied to love The One, and it is he. He awakens with new powers, defeats Smith, and leaves the Matrix as the ship’s electromagnetic pulse destroys the Sentinels. Back in the Matrix, Neo flies away.
The film was written and directed by the Wachowski siblings, a cyberpunk story heavily influenced by Japanese animation and martial arts films. The fight scenes made everybody sit up and take notice and influenced many films afterwards. It was mostly praised by critics for its innovations and won technical Oscars, BAFTA Awards, and Saturn Awards. It inspired three sequels, not to mention comic books, video games, and animated short films.
Nicholas Cage, Will Smith, Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer, and Leonardo DiCaprio turned down the role of Neo. Will Smith did Wild Wild West instead and said it was the dumbest move of his life. Carrie-Anne Moss was picked for Trinity over Salma Hayek and Jada Pinkett-Smith, and it made her career. Chinese martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping was hired. Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving both trained while injured. Several stuntmen were also injured. The score was by Don Davis, who used contrapuntal music because of the abundance of mirrors in the movie. Philosophical musings about the film referenced Plato, Immanuel Kant, and René Descartes, and of course Neo makes us think of Jesus. Like the Jedi, the Matrix inspired a tongue-in-cheek religion called Matrixism.
For the scene in the pod, Keanu Reeves lost fifteen pounds and shaved his whole body. The opening scene took four days to shoot after six months of training. Most actors will wear sunglasses to hide their faces on the street, but Carrie-Anne Moss couldn’t wear them without being instantly recognized. Laurence Fishburne suggested that Morpheus was a cross between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader. Nebuchadnezzar was the builder of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. In the Bible, he had a dream he could not interpret.
The film used sets from Dark City. There were conscious references to William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, but Gibson himself thought it more like Phillip K. Dick. Neo’s mouth being melted shut is a conscious homage to “I Have No Mouth but I Must scream” by Harlan Ellison. There are also references to Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Zen, The Odyssey, and Alice in Wonderland. Neo, The One, lives in Apartment 101, while Trinity lives in Apartment 303. The Waschowskis wanted Brandon Lee for Neo, but he died. Appearing on TVs in the movie are Night of the Lepus and the British series The Prisoner.