The movie, “The Matrix” is a complex, yet easy watching movie. It involves many things to think about, but is easy to understand. “The Matrix” combines love and action into one great movie. The story is as follows: Thomas Anderson (played by Keanu Reeves) is a dull and lifeless employee for a computer firm. He also lives a “secret” life as a hacker who sells some sort of illegal software. What he is involved in we can only guess, since the film hasn’t the time to tell us.
Somehow, along the way, he has been brought into contact with a man named Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne), a notorious “terrorist” whom he has ever actually met but has been seeking for some time. Thomas is given hints and clues first of all by the mysterious Trinity (played by Carrie Ann Moss), who sends him messages on his computer that predicts coming events. Shortly thereafter, Thomas is hurled bodily into “the game,” and there he is left to run, hide, make the leap or plummet to his death.
His engagement in this game begins when he is at work and receives a call from Morpheus, warning him that “they” are after him. Sure enough, the sinister men in black are at that precise moment being directed to his desk. Following intricate instructions from Morpheus (who appears to be able to see the entire layout of Thomas’s world as if he is looking at a map, or like a god looking down from on high), Thomas sneaks past the agents into an empty office. There Morpheus tells to make an improbable leap to safety.
He fails to make the leap, does not even try in fact, and allows himself to be captured by the government agents instead. He is taken into custody and while there is offered a deal which demands him to cooperate in the tracking of Morpheus, in return he will get a clean slate. When he refuses the deal, his world without warning warps into a nightmare, as the agent whose name is Smith (played by Hugo Weaving) literally wipes Thomas’s mouth off, leaving him speechless and in horror.
The other agents hold him down as a mechanical, but living parasite-like cyber-organism is inserted into his body, through the naval. At this point, Thomas wakes up, as though from a dream. Little respite is allowed him, however, as he is promptly picked up by Morpheus’s team (also dressed in black), held down in the back of the limo, and subjected to another bizarre procedure, as the parasite implant is removed. Thomas yells out in horror, “That thing is real? ” By now we have no more clue than he does. As it turns out, it isn’t real, but then nothing else in his life is, either.
When Thomas finally meets Morpheus, he finds a regal and highly stylish man with soft, seductive tones to match his name. In what is perhaps the most unforgettable part of the movie, Morpheus explains everything to Thomas. First of all, following his opening speech, he offers Thomas a choice. He can take a blue pill or a red pill. By taking the former, he will wake up again and all this will be just a dream. Take the red, however, and he goes through the looking glass and finds out “how deep the rabbit hole goes”. Of course, he takes the red.
His decision is already built into Morpheus’s offer, because, if it’s only a dream, why not take the red; and if it’s not, then why take the blue? But what Thomas undergoes as a result of the red pill is like every psychedelic seeker’s worst trip. As the betrayer Cypher (played by Joe Pantoliano) puts it, “Why-oh-why did I take that damn pill? ” Thomas is torn from a very real world, and there given the hideous, literally mind-shattering Truth that he is a slave to an rder of inorganic beings that until this moment, he did not even know existed.
Morpheus explains that the year is not really 1999, that it is in fact closer to one century later, and that civilization has in the meantime already been destroyed. Civilization’s destruction was a result of the discovery of Artificial Intelligence (AI), somewhere around the start of the twenty-first century. There had been a standoff between man and machine, between the creation and the creator, and the machine won. AI discovered a means not merely to destroy civilization and inherit the Earth’s prospect, ut to develop for itself cybernetic, semi-organic bodies, using human beings as its primary energy source.
The machines were solar-powered, but the human-engineered holocaust blocked out the sun. To this end, human beings were enslaved. They were put into a deep sleep, and a collective dream was engendered to keep them tractable and docile, like babies in their cribs, while their vital life force was sucked from them. Humans are bred and raised directly into these incubators, and fed intravenously with the liquefied remains of the dead. The collective dream that was engineered to keep humanity docile is life n Earth, circa 1999, and this is “the Matrix.
Within the Matrix, however, there exist certain possibilities for escape, and this is where Morpheus and his crew come in. They are the “awakened” who have made it out of the computer-simulated fantasy grid and liberated their bodies from the energy farms in “the real world”. As a result of liberating their bodies, these Illuminati were able to enter the Matrix, or dream world, at will, and function therein with superhuman potential. For example, any knowledge, information or training required could simply be downloaded, on the spot, irectly into their consciousness by computer.
On top of this, they have a contact line to their associates up in the real world, like gods or guardian angels, which can monitor and direct the agents’ operations within the Matrix, providing them with a god-like omniscience. Despite such apparently superhuman abilities to navigate the Matrix, the “resistance” fighters are at a profound disadvantage when it comes to facing off the sinister men in black. These men in black are “in fact” concentrated AI projected energy fields sent by the Matrix into the Matrix to maintain a hold over its reality program.
To this end, these agents hunt down and eradicate all potential “dissidents”, those Illuminati counter agents hell-bent on disrupting the Matrix’s spell, and on breaking down reality as we know it. While Morpheus’ crew can leap improbable distances, sustain an inhuman amount of damage, take out SWAT teams single-handedly, and so forth, they are not actually (officially) superhuman. They can bend, and even break, some of the rules of the Matrix, but not all of them. They cannot simply override its tyranny and assume their godlike status as holograms within a hologram, because only “the One” can do this.
At present they are all still restricted by the confines of their minds, still working to eradicate the old program imposed upon them by AI. Hence Morpheus’ training of Thomas, now Neo, the One, or Eon, is centered around “freeing his mind,” or making him realize that he is not in fact restricted by the laws of the body at all, but only by his belief in such. As a rather hokey but touching child-Buddha spoon-bender explains to Neo, “Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead . . . only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon. Then you’ll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.
The AI “agents,” though still subject to the laws of the Matrix, are not restricted by the same beliefs that dog the humans. They are able to shape-shift, and perform other miraculous feats, yet even these are within certain apparent limits. Obviously, the Matrix must sustain, keep constant, its reality mirage, otherwise the sleepers will start to awaken. So these agents must move subtly, within restraints, and at least appear to be human. Although the Matrix can change anything it wants within the game, it still has to deal with the living, individual consciousness that it has enslaved here.
None of this is explained in the movie, but it seems fair to deduce that the Matrix is limited, despite being the creator of reality; and also that there is presumably some reason for this limitation. Neo, as the One, is expected to turn the tide in favor of the human uprising, the “awakening,” by shifting the balance, by making the leap, both literally and metaphorically, from game player to game master, from ordinary man to shaman. And this of course he accomplishes. What’s so satisfying about the movie is that in the end, despite its reliance on violence and estruction, it is the power of the imagination that wins the day.
Once Neo reaches a certain realization he is able to simply stop the bullets with his mind, since they don’t exist in the first place, and to project himself into the (holographic) body of the Enemy and explode it from within. The movie ends with Neo warning the AI through the telephone what is in store for the future. The ending really makes way for a sequel, which I hope, will be just as good. The main characters in this movie are Morpheus, Trinity, Thomas Anderson (Neo), Agent Smith, and Cypher. Morpheus is the leader of the resistance and the commander of the Nebuchadnezzar, the ship they use in the real world.
He has been told by the oracle that he would find the one. He believes he has with Neo. Morpheus helps Neo with his training and helps him get over the fear of being the one. Morpheus is like the father figure of the good guys and most of them would risk their lives for him. Trinity is the second in command of the “Neb. ” She is the first to approach Neo online and in person. Originally she was a hacker who managed to crack the IRS database before being freed from the Matrix. Trinity is lso told by the Oracle that she will fall in love with “The One”, which she did. Trinity played an important role in freeing Morpheus.
Agent smith is the head program sent by the matrix to keep everything under control. His job is to stop the Resistance and break into the mainframe computers of Zion, the last human city, to destroy it. Agent Smith is the best fighting thing in the matrix except, for of course Neo. Cypher is one of the crew helping Morpheus, but the only one who doesn’t want to keep fighting against the agents. He makes a deal with the Agents to set up Morpheus and gang, in exchange for him to be hooked back up o the matrix Neo is a computer programmer by day and high-tech hacker by night.
He is what Morpheus and Trinity believe is “The One”, the man who will bring about the salvation of the human race. Neo doesn’t disappoint, after going through most of the movie thinking he wasn’t the one, he finally realizes he is, in a very butt-kicking way. This is the best movie I have ever seen, it’s even beyond “The Dark Crystal” and “Willow”. This movie also had the weirdest and most thought provoking plot. I remember thinking after seeing “The Sixth Sense,” ” there will never be a movie like that”. Well I was wrong, very wrong.
During “The Matrix,” if you were listening you were lost. The movie put so much stuff on you, but it was easy to understand. Another thing I like about this movie is it’s strong connotation to the Bible. Take the names Trinity and Nebuchadnezzar. Also look at main idea of the movie. The chosen one comes to free his people free his people from slavery. You could go on and on about it but I’ll stop there. There is so much to say about this movie. This movie has better fight scenes than a Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan movie, and also has a more interesting plot than “The Sixth Sense” or “The X-Files”.
Even my sister, a diehard X-Files fan, said it was no match for The Matrix. The only negative things I’ve heard about the movie is it’s hard to understand. I ask these people why it’s so hard when it’s all explain in the movie, and they say it was so confusing to watch so they cut it off. I say to these people just watch the movie and you too will want to join a kung-fu class and talking for months about the fight scenes and the plot of this movie, just because of watching this movie. I give “The Matrix” a perfect 10. It’s not just a movie; it’s an experience.
