Action · Science Fiction
The Matrix
American
1999 · Directed by Lana Wachowski & Lilly Wachowski · 136 min
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Action · Science Fiction
American
1999 · Directed by Lana Wachowski & Lilly Wachowski · 136 min
Meaning, unpacked
Central idea
The film can be read as a story about waking up: the gap between comfortable appearance and uncomfortable truth, and the idea that belief and choice are what make a person capable of changing the reality they inhabit.
What it means
The Matrix is a story about waking up. It is about the gap between a comfortable appearance and an uncomfortable truth, and it suggests that belief and choice are what let a person change the reality they live in.
The hinge is the two pills. Morpheus offers Neo red, and he learns the truth, or blue, and nothing changes. A huge question, how do we know our experience is real, becomes a simple, clear choice. Neo wakes in a pod and finds his world is a simulation run by machines. His power was never really about training. It was about what he accepted as possible. The film also plays with fate and choice, and with the fear that technology might quietly run our lives.
Why it mattered
In 1999 the film showed what happened when Hollywood spectacle met Hong Kong action craft. Yuen Woo-ping's wire-assisted fights, shot with wide framing and longer takes, let you see the performers' skill. Bullet time, a ring of still cameras joined by digital interpolation, made the viewpoint orbit a frozen moment.
It did not invent the effect: time-slice precedents ran from Muybridge's photography to 1990s ads and music videos. Its achievement was to put it at the centre of a blockbuster. Design carried the story too, with a green tint for the simulation and cooler, plainer tones for the real world. And the Wachowskis won over a doubtful studio by having comic-book artists storyboard their action in detail.
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Create your free spaceIts influence is huge. Bullet time was quickly imitated and parodied, and the blend of wire-assisted martial arts and digital effects shaped action cinema in the 2000s. It won four Academy Awards, for editing, sound, sound effects editing and visual effects. Neo's long coat, narrow sunglasses and green falling code are instantly recognisable, and have been parodied in Scary Movie 2 and countless ads.
Today it is widely regarded as one of the most influential science-fiction action films. Philosophy classes use it to introduce Plato's cave. "Taking the red pill" has become shorthand for waking up to a hidden truth, a phrase later adopted, and contested, by online political groups. Many viewers now also read it as a trans allegory, as both Wachowskis have described it. The sequels divided audiences.
What happens
Neo dies in a fight with Agent Smith, but Trinity's declaration of love brings him back. Now he sees the Matrix as code, destroys Smith, and escapes, showing that its rules can be bent.
The last image
After promising the machines he will show people a world without their rules, Neo flies up into the sky.
What it says
The ending shows that Neo's power comes from belief, not training. Once he accepts what is possible, the simulation can no longer hold him. The film ends with him flying because it is about choosing to wake up.
Or follow an idea from this film
Follow the idea
Blade Runner (1982)
A key precursor of the film's cyberpunk atmosphere, it handles questions of identity and reality in a slower, more reflective way.
Compare another approach
The Truman Show (1998)
Released a year earlier, it also centres on a man who comes to doubt the world around him, in a gentler, more satirical key.
See its influence
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Yuen Woo-ping's wire-work choreography reached Western audiences through this film just after The Matrix, now in a Chinese wuxia setting.
Explore the era or movement
Fight Club (1999)
Released the same year, it is another stylish, anxious film in which a disaffected man awakens to a hidden reality beneath modern life.
Jump forward
Inception (2010)
Christopher Nolan's heist film takes the blockbuster-meets-philosophy approach in a new direction, with layered realities and set-piece action.
