Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer who lives a double life as a hacker named "Neo," feels that something is wrong with the world. When he is contacted by the enigmatic Morpheus, he is offered a choice that reveals the terrifying truth: reality is a simulated construct created by sentient machines to harvest human energy. Neo must join a rebellion to free humanity, all while discovering if he is the prophesied "One" who can end the war.
Information |
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|---|---|
Language |
English |
Country |
United States |
Premiere date |
March 31, 1999 |
Running time |
136 minutes |
Genre |
Action Sci-Fi |
Budget |
$63,000,000 |
Box Office |
$467,222,728 |
Crew |
|
Directed by |
Lana Wachowski Lilly Wachowski |
Produced by |
Joel Silver |
Written by |
Lana Wachowski Lilly Wachowski |
Music by |
Don Davis |
Cinematography |
Bill Pope |
Edited by |
Zach Staenberg |
Production Co. |
Warner Bros. Village Roadshow Pictures Silver Pictures |
Distributed by |
Warner Bros. Pictures |
Official Trailer
The Plot
The Trace and the Escape from Room 303
The story begins in the shadowed corners of Mega City within the Heart O' The City Hotel. A high-stakes phone call between Trinity and a man named Cypher reveals a deep-seated tension; they are monitoring a target they believe to be "The One." Trinity’s intuition flares when she hears a trace signal leaking through the audio, a sign that their secure line has been compromised. Despite her warnings, Cypher insists everything is in place. Moments later, the hotel is swarmed by police officers. When three mysterious, suit-clad Agents—Smith, Brown, and Jones—arrive at the scene, they dismiss the local police lieutenant’s confidence, coldly informing him that his men inside the hotel are "already dead."
In Room 303, Trinity is cornered by several officers. With a display of seemingly impossible strength and agility, she effortlessly defeats them, moving with a speed that defies human limits. Following Morpheus’s urgent instructions, she flees across the rooftops, pursued by the Agents who mirror her superhuman athleticism. She barely reaches a public telephone booth as a garbage truck, driven by Agent Smith, hurtles toward it. Just as the vehicle crushes the booth into scrap metal, Trinity vanishes through the "hard line" exit. Left with nothing but the debris, the Agents acknowledge that their informant was right and shift their focus to their next target: a man named Thomas Anderson, known in the hacking underworld as "Neo."
The Double Life of Thomas Anderson
Thomas Anderson lives a fractured existence. By day, he is a quiet programmer for a reputable software company; by night, he is "Neo," a hacker searching for the meaning behind a cryptic phrase that haunts the digital world: "The Matrix." His restlessness culminates when his computer screen mysteriously flickers to life, instructing him to "follow the white rabbit." This lead takes him to a late-night club where he meets Trinity. She warns him that he is in grave danger and that a man named Morpheus—whom Neo considers a legendary figure—is the only one who can provide the answer to the question that consumes him.
The following day at work, Neo’s mundane life is shattered when a courier delivers a cell phone. It rings immediately; it is Morpheus. He guides Neo through the office cubicles in a desperate attempt to evade a team of Agents who have entered the building. However, fear takes hold of Neo at the ledge of a skyscraper, and he allows himself to be captured. In a nightmarish interrogation room, Agent Smith offers Neo a deal: his criminal record will be expunged if he helps them capture the "terrorist" Morpheus. When Neo defiantly demands his phone call and his lawyer, his lips horrifically melt together, sealing his mouth shut. The Agents then pin him down and plant a robotic, insect-like "bug" that burrows into his navel. Neo awakens in his bed, gasping, convinced it was a vivid hallucination until Morpheus calls again to arrange a meeting.
The Choice: Red or Blue
Neo is picked up by Trinity and her associates, Apoc and Switch. Before they can take him to Morpheus, they use a specialized device to visceral-ly extract the robotic bug from Neo’s body, proving his "dream" was terrifyingly real. Finally, Neo meets Morpheus in a rain-slicked, Gothic room. Morpheus explains that Neo has been a "slave" born into a prison for his mind. He offers Neo a life-altering choice: take the blue pill, and he will wake up in his bed and believe whatever he wants to believe; take the red pill, and he stays in "Wonderland" to see how deep the "rabbit-hole" goes. Neo swallows the red pill.
The effects are immediate and terrifying. Neo watches as a nearby mirror begins to liquefy and crawl up his arm, coating him in a cold, metallic substance. In the real world, the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar works frantically to track Neo's location. Suddenly, Neo's consciousness is ripped from the simulation. He awakens naked, weak, and hairless in a liquid-filled pod, surrounded by millions of other pods stacked in towering, mechanical spires. A terrifying machine descends, detaches the cables plugged into Neo’s spine and skull, and flushes him down a waste chute into a dark sewer. There, he is rescued by a mechanical claw and brought aboard Morpheus’s levitating hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar.
The Desert of the Real
As Neo recovers, his muscles are rebuilt with needle-like electrodes and he receives his first true lesson. Morpheus plugs Neo into "The Construct," a blank virtual workspace, to explain the truth. The year is not 1999, but likely closer to 2199. Early in the 21st century, humanity gave birth to AI, a singular consciousness that spawned a race of intelligent machines. A war broke out, and when humans scorched the sky to cut off the machines' solar power, the machines turned to a new energy source: the bio-electric and thermal energy of the human body. Humans are now grown in fields, kept in a perpetual dream state to serve as "batteries."
The "Matrix" is that dream—a computer-generated simulation of the world as it was at the height of human civilization, designed to keep the enslaved population docile. Morpheus explains that he and his crew are part of a resistance based in Zion, the last human city deep underground. They hack into the Matrix to "unplug" those they believe can help the fight. Overwhelmed by the realization that his entire life was a lie, Neo vomits and collapses in shock, but Morpheus is undeterred. He believes Neo is "The One," a man prophesied to have total control over the Matrix and the power to end the war forever.
Training and the Rule-Breakers
Neo begins a rigorous training regimen. Information is downloaded directly into his brain via the neural port at the base of his skull. In hours, he masters various martial arts, including Kung Fu, Jujitsu, and Drunken Boxing. To test his progress, Morpheus challenges Neo in a sparring program. Here, Neo learns that the physical laws of the Matrix—gravity, speed, and strength—are merely rules of a computer program. Some rules can be bent, and others can be broken. Though Neo struggles initially, his potential begins to surface as he mirrors Morpheus's impossible movements.
The training continues with the "Jump Program," where Neo is tasked with leaping between two skyscrapers. Morpheus explains that he must "free his mind." Neo fails and falls, hitting the pavement with the force of a car crash. When he awakens in the real world, he is bleeding. He learns a grim truth: "The body cannot live without the mind." If you die in the Matrix, your brain makes the death real, and you die in the real world. Morpheus also warns him about the Agents—sentient, lethal programs that can take over the body of anyone still connected to the system. He tells Neo that while everyone else has died facing an Agent, Neo will eventually not even have to dodge their bullets.
The Oracle and the Price of Fate
The crew enters the Matrix to take Neo to see The Oracle, a prophetic figure within the system. While waiting to see her, Neo encounters "potentials," including a young boy who teaches him that the secret to telekinesis is realizing that "there is no spoon." When Neo finally meets The Oracle, she appears as a grandmotherly woman baking cookies. She examines him and delivers a bittersweet message: she implies that Neo is not The One, or perhaps he is waiting for his "next life." More importantly, she warns him that a moment is coming where he will have to choose between his own life and the life of Morpheus, as Morpheus believes in him so blindly he is willing to die for him.
As the group heads toward their exit, Neo sees a black cat pass by twice—a "glitch" in the Matrix that signifies the code is being changed. They realize they have been walked into a trap. The Agents and a SWAT team have sealed the building's exits. In the ensuing chaos, the crew member Mouse is gunned down. To ensure Neo and the others can escape through the "wet wall" of the building’s plumbing, Morpheus sacrifices himself, leaping through a wall to tackle Agent Smith. Morpheus is captured, beaten, and dragged away.
The Traitor’s Toll
The tragedy deepens as the survivors reach the hard line. Cypher, who had secretly met with Agent Smith earlier to trade Morpheus for a comfortable, ignorant life back in the Matrix, is the first to return to the Nebuchadnezzar. He betrays the crew in the real world, shooting Tank and Dozer with a lightning gun. While Trinity and Neo are still plugged in and helpless, Cypher gloats over their physical bodies. He murders Apoc and Switch by abruptly pulling their neural plugs, killing them instantly. Just as he prepares to kill Neo, a wounded Tank recovers and kills Cypher with a blast of energy, saving the remaining survivors.
In the Matrix, Morpheus is held in a high-security government building. The Agents inject him with a truth serum, attempting to hack his mind for the access codes to the Zion mainframe. Agent Smith stays behind, revealing a startlingly "human" hatred for the Matrix, describing it as a "vile" world defined by the smell of the humans he is forced to endure. He is desperate to destroy Zion so he can finally be free of the simulation.
The Rescue and Bullet Time
Back on the ship, the survivors realize that the Agents will eventually break Morpheus's mind. Tank suggests "pulling the plug" on Morpheus to protect Zion, but Neo, remembering The Oracle’s prophecy, refuses. He realizes he has the power to save Morpheus and decides to go back in. Trinity insists on joining him. The duo launches a frontal assault on the government building, engaging in a spectacular gunfight in the lobby that leaves the room in ruins. On the rooftop, Neo faces an Agent in direct combat. When the Agent fires point-blank, Neo moves with such speed that he successfully dodges the bullets, a feat Trinity notes she has never seen before.
Using a helicopter, they provide cover fire and extract Morpheus from his shackles. As the helicopter crashes, Neo performs a heroic rescue, catching Trinity as she swings from a tether. Seeing this, Morpheus is convinced more than ever that Neo is the prophesied savior. They reach an exit at a subway station, where Morpheus and Trinity safely return to the real world. However, before Neo can follow, Agent Smith appears and destroys the phone booth. Instead of running, Neo turns to face him, finally beginning to believe in his own power.
Death, Love, and the Birth of The One
Neo and Smith engage in a brutal, visceral duel in the subway. Neo manages to knock Smith onto the tracks as a train approaches, but the Agent simply possesses another body and continues the pursuit. Neo flees through the city, guided by Tank toward an "old exit" in a nearby hotel. Meanwhile, in the real world, a swarm of mechanical Sentinels locates the Nebuchadnezzar and begins tearing into its hull. Neo finally reaches Room 303, the very room where the story began, but Agent Smith is waiting behind the door. Smith fires multiple rounds into Neo’s chest, killing him instantly. On the ship's monitors, Neo's heart stops.
As the Sentinels prepare to deliver a final blow to the ship, Trinity refuses to let Neo go. She whispers into his ear that The Oracle told her she would fall in love with The One, and since she loves Neo, he cannot be dead. She kisses him. In the Matrix, Neo’s heart begins to beat. He stands up, his perception of reality shattered and rebuilt. He no longer sees the world as objects, but as cascading lines of green computer code. When the Agents fire at him, he simply raises his hand, and the bullets stop in mid-air, falling harmlessly to the floor. Neo effortlessly blocks Smith’s attacks before diving directly into the Agent’s body, causing it to distort and explode into fragments of light. The remaining Agents, terrified, flee into the shadows.
A New World Without Rules
Neo returns to the real world just as the Sentinels breach the cockpit. Tank activates the ship’s EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse), instantly frying the machines and saving the crew. Sometime later, Neo enters the Matrix one last time. He places a phone call directed at the Machines, informing them that he knows they are afraid of change. He promises to show the people still trapped in the simulation "a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries." He hangs up the phone, steps out into a crowded street, and as the "human" world continues its oblivious routine, he looks up and flies into the sky, signaling the beginning of the revolution.
Top Cast
- Keanu Reeves as Neo / Thomas Anderson
- Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus
- Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity
- Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith
- Joe Pantoliano as Cypher
- Gloria Foster as The Oracle
- Marcus Chong as Tank
- Julian Arahanga as Apoc
- Matt Doran as Mouse
- Belinda McClory as Switch
