The 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
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 here is a choice I leave to you."
Neo hangs up the phone, looks up, and flies into the sky above the city.
