Of course any review on Matrix can only say how spectacular it was when it came out, and it still is a great movie, I still love it. And I do appreciate that it’s got one of the greatest female characters in movie history, of course I’m talking about Trinity, and I’m very happy that it stays true to herself even in the 2003 sequels. I even appreciated her more after watching those two movies as well, because we see more and better understand her character. Back in 1999 there were those who said that she was trying too hard to be cool, that she acted like a man (what a horrible thing to say) but that’s not the heart of the matter. .She doesn’t speak much because that’s her character, she’s a warrior and has seen a lot and is simply tired with wastes of time and stuff like that. She says and does what needs to be said and done because she’s not living in a Barbie world, but she has feelings lilke everybody else. Just because she doesn’t giggle or make heart-shaped eyes at him it doesn’t mean that she’s not in love, she’s an adult who’s had a hard life. If you think about it, most of Zion’s adults are toughened by hard life.
To the movie:
It starts with her, Trinity is found out by the police - not sure why th normal police was after her, she was alone in a room with a telephone… not very criminal, and yet there’s many police cars and agents ready to arrest her. Maybe they were sent or she’s probably wanted as some serious hacker, but then two Agents arrive so we know the police were ordered to not arrest her, that it was for their protection - how it always annoyed me that that lieutenant refered to her as a little girl. Indeed, in a few moments Trinity kills them all, and there is that very cool scene where she jumps and the camera rolls around her, with her arms stretched and her legs bent at the knees before she resumes the attack. it was super cool then and it holds very well now.
She runs to reach the next “exit”, avoiding the Agents as much as possible. She jumps from one building to the next and enters through a window and lands at the bottom of the stairs with her guns aimed at the window, but nobody appears so she runs to the public telephone that was her target. She can see a truck aiming at it, but it’s already ringing and she has to try so she runs and answers the phone right before the truck smashes the phone box. Of course she had to try, three Agents were there, and she made it, she’s disappeared. The Agents say that it doesn’t matter that she got out, because “the informant is real” and because of that they have “the name of their next target”.
Thomas A. Anderson, Neo in the digital world, sees weird words appearing on his computer: “The Matrix has you” and “Follow the white rabbit”. He sells computer disks like it were drugs, and he sells one now, and then follow the group because the girl has a white rabbit tattooed on her shoulder.
At this club with loud music Trinity approaches him, and she knows her by reputation. Neo thought that “you were a guy” - “most guys do”, which is a great answer.
She warns him that he’s in danger, that they’re watching him, and that once she had the same question that bugs him now: “what is the matrix?”
We move to the next day, when he wakes up late and rushes to work, where he gets scolded and then he receives a phone by mail: Morpheus is calling him, and Neo knows his name; “they’re coming for you, Neo” and indeed there’s Agents and policemen looking for him. Neo follows his instructions, but when it comes out that his only way out of that building is either with the cops or using a scaffold outside the window to reach the roof, he can’t do it and is arrested.
Agent Smith does a nice speech, meaning that he should keep doing his job as a software programmer and leave his hacker life, stop it. Smith wants to use him to get Morpheus, “the most dangerous man alive” for them. Neo actually acts very rude and cocky here, knowing his rights and demanding a phone call… until his mouth disappears, they hold him down and put a sort of robotic-bug inside him - it enters his bellybutton.
He wakes up at home thinking it wasn’t real. Morpheus calls him, “they’ve underestimated how important you are, if they knew what I know, you would probably be dead”; Morpheus also says “you are the one, Neo, you may have spent the last few years looking for me, but I’ve spent my entire life looking for you”.
They arrange a meeting: under a bridge he gets in a car with Trinity. Apoc is driving and Trinity uses a strange device to free Neo of that bug.
Finally Neo and Morpheus meet. The famous scene of the two pills :-)
Of course Morpheus wears a long black coat, they’re super-cool, Neo will wear it too later.
Morpheus says that Neo is there because “you know something, what you know you can’t explain but you feel it, you’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world”, and it’s about the matrix, which is “everywhere, it is all around us”, “it is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth”, “that you are a slave, Neo, like everyone else”, that he was “born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch, a prison… for your mind” and here it’s his last choice to go back to his old life - yeah, I wonder what would have been Morpheus’ reaction had the one chosen the blue pill…
To the pills: a blue pill and the story ends there, he’ll go back to his old life, red pill and “you stay in wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes”
That pill is “part of a race program” so they can pinpoint his location. They strap him to some equipment and search… and the real Neo wakes up in a tub of weird liquid, with metal tubes attached to him, in a place full of pods like his, as long as the eye can see… they retrieve his body and bring it aboard their ship, to “the real world”. They “work” on him for a while because his body has never really been used, his muscles, his eyes that ‘he has never used before’… then they let him rest.
Neo wakes up with some clothes, and Morpheus explains that they’re not sure but it’s not 1999 anymore, it’s maybe a century later. They’re now in his ship, the Nebuchadnezzar, it’s a hovercraft and it was made in the year 2069. He meets Apoc again propery, and also Switch the blond woman, Cypher with the moustache, Tank and his big brother Dozer, and young Mouse. By attaching a metal thing to the plug in the back of their necks they ‘enter’ the matrix, or any part of it they want. They have loading programs where they can train or do anything they need.
The matrix now is a neural-interactive simulation set at the end of hte 20th century. They don’t even know the full story of how the Earth got to this point, they only know that “at some point in the early 21st century all of mankind was united in celebration, we marveled at out own magnificence, as we gave birth to AI”, “a singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines”. Mopheus also says that “we don’t know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky; at the time they were dependent on solar power” so humans took that energy away from ai thinking it wouldn’t survive without it. Humans have always depended on machines to survive, and now the machines are using humans to survive. “The human body generates” a lot of bioelectricity and body heat and the machines are using it. “There are fields, Neo, endless fields, where human beings are no longer born, we are grown”. He says the matrix is “a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control” in order to use them as batteries. It’s really a lot to take in, so of course Neo doesn’t want to believe it. It’s difficult for everyone at first. He needs rest before he can calm down. There’s no going back now though. That’s why they usually only “free a mind once it’s reached a certain age”, because an adult mind finds it much more difficult to let go of everything it used to know and face the truth. There was once a man “who had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the matrix as he saw fit”, he was the one “who freed the first of us”, then he died and the Oracle “prophesied his return and that his coming woul hail the destruction of the matrix, end the war, bring freedom to our people” and Morpheus is sure that Neo is the one.
Tank and Dozer have no plugs because they’re born free, “genuine child of Zion”, “the last human city”, placed “deep underground, near the Earth’s core where it’s still warm”.
Tank is Neo’s operator, and he loads his head with training programs, so that in Matrix he knows all kinds of martial arts and combat training, starting with Jujitsu through Tae kwon do and Kung fu, 10 hours straight of loading… which means a lot since Jujitsu was loaded in like three seconds…
Morpheus loads a sparring program and they fight, and Morpheus goes Yoda on him: “don’t think you are, know you are”… which in this case is important because it’s a basic notion on how things go in the matrix.
Neo does really well, very fast :-) The jump program though places them both on top of a very tall building, and they should reach the other building with a jump… but he was terrified of heights, when he couldn’t get out the window and got arrested before… so of course he can’t make it on his first jump.
This is where we are told that if one dies in the matrix, they die in the real world too because their mind makes it real, and a body can’t survive without the mind… which means that everytime they kill people inside the matrix, they’re really killing them… because ‘they’re part of the system and therefore enemies’…
The Agents can become anyone - this is not clear to me, the person taken over by the Agent dies or they come back to themselves once the Agent leaves them?
The Agents are sentient programs and nobody has ever beaten an Agent before, they all run from them.
In the real world is not at all easier, there’s what they call a Squiddy, sentinels, killing machines designed to search and destroy. The only way is to avoid them if possible, if they’re near then shut off all power and only when the power is off-line they arm the EMP, electromagnetic pulse, which “disables any electrical system in the blast radius”, the “only weapon we have against the machines”.
Cypher looks at the programs “encoded”, which means that we see green symbols cascading on a black screen… and I guess he sees things in it, he says “you get used to it” and that he sees blondes and brunettes in there… mah. He tells Neo what is probably the only sincere thing we’ve heard him say till now: “why oh why didn’t I take the blue pill?” Neo thinks it’s a joke and chuckles, but he meant it, and the proof is in the next scene, when he makes a deal with Agent Smith: he wants to be reinserted into the matrix because “ignorance is bliss” and he wants to remember nothing of this reality, he wants to be “someone important, like an actor”, and in exchange he’ll give them the information they want: since he doesn’t know the “access codes to the Zion mainframe” he will give them someone who knows them: Morpheus.
To make that scene stand out even more, while he tasted a delicious meal inside the matrix, in the “real world they ‘eat’ something that looks disgusting, “a single-celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins and minerals, everything the body needs”… and that may be true but it still looks disgusting…
The whole group minus the operators enters the matrix… not sure why, since t’s only Morpheus and Trinity that take Neo to see the Oracle. She is a guide that has been with them since the beginning of the Resistance. Neo meets a child that can bend a spoon with his mind, and tells him: “do not try to bend the spoon, that’s impossible, instead only try to realize the truth” which is “there is no spoon”.
The Oracle is a woman baking cookies; she makes a show of taking a good look at him then says that he already knows what she’s gonna tell him, and it’s him that says he is not the one. Later Morpheus will tell him that she only told him what he needed to hear.
She tells Neo that Morpheus believes in him so much, so blindly, that he’s going to sacrifice himself to save him. And then Neo will have to make a choice, because one of them “is going to die” and it’ll be his choice.
Cypher left a phone with the line open in a trash can as soon as they ‘entered’ the matrix, right outside the building they’re using and entry/exit. When Neo sees a cat walk twice he says “déjà vu” out loud, allowing the others to know something is wrong because “a déjà vu” is usually a glitch in the matrix, it happens when they change something” and right now they’ve changed the building, the windows are walled. Mouse dies first… shot by the police? The others ask Tank for a new route, and he guides them. They hide inside a wall, a wall cavity of some kind, and move downwards as silently as they can… but Cypher coughs and Smith finds them. When Morpheus sees that an Agent has grabbed Neo, he breaks the wall with his head and falls on Smith, separating him from Neo, and shouts at Trinity to get Neo out, to safety, because “he’s all that matters”. He tries to fight valiantly, but can’t do much against an Agent.
Neo doesn’t want to leave, so Trinity grabs him and drags him away.
That moment, when Morpheus saves him, is another great moment, very powerful.
Cypher separates from the others and calls Tank before them, so he gets out first. Cypher takes some kind of lightning rifle, a heavy weapon that shoots an ‘intense bolt of electrical energy’, getting Tank before he can bring out Neo. Dozer sees Cypher shooting his brother and tries to defend him, getting shot too, and worse than his brother. This time, when Trinity calls it’s Cypher who answers… and here it’s the scene that I didn’t like of the whole movie.
I know they probably thought it built suspence or something, but it was so absurd and so very annoying that Cypher would start talking and talking, and worst of all jumping on Morpheus real body and talking directly to him as if he could here, when of course he can’t, only Trinity can hear him because she has the phone. I understand that he couldn’t kill Neo right away, of course not, but let’s admit it, it makes no sense that here Cypher would start killing them starting by the less important (to the plot, sorry Apoc and Switch), no sense at all.
I know that killing them was part of the deal he had made with Smith, but I don’t like how it went. Maybe there was no other way, since he certainly could not go for Neo first, but it was still bad. And anyway, the deal makes sense for Tank and Dozer that were on the ship, but it makes no sense for the others inside the matrix, I don’t think those deaths were part of the deal.
Anyway, this is how it is: Cypher starts a monologue, sniffing Trinity’s body :-/ telling her that she’s beautiful and he used to dream about her, and on and on, and then he pulls the plug on Apoc and he dies, and while Switch looks at her crying “not like this” she dies too, poor thing, after all they’ve been through this is so not the way they thought they’d go.
Twice now Trinity has looked at one of them - the one Cypher mentioned to her - and that one died, and now she looks at Neo. Cypher thinks that if he’s really the one then some kind of miracle will happen to stop him… and indeed it happens, because Tank was not yet dead, and he managed to shoot Cypher.
This was the first time Trinity admitted believing that Neo was the one, but only Cypher hears it. Also, Cypher calls Neo’s eyes “big” and “pretty”.
Tank is still alive and brings out Trinity and Neo. I really liked this short moment between Trinity and Tank, their hug, even before they bring Neo out, short but meaningful.
Smith has Morpheus tied up, they give him some kind of injection that should weaken the mind, they want those access codes that he knows; Smith talks a lot, for being just a program, although sentient, and he explains to us how the first matrix “was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would be happy” but it was a failure because people could not accept to believe in it.
On the ship, there’s a difficult decision to maek, because as a ship captain Morpheus does have those access codes, and Tank says “Zion’s more important than me, or you, or even Morpheus”, and their only solution might be to pull the plug on him. This is why the Agents wanted the ship crew dead, so that nobody would do exactly that.
Neo stops him, of course, and obviously he doesn’t tell them what choice the Oracle told him he’d have to make, or they wouldn’t have let him do it. Neo tells them he’s not the one - “you have to be” - and then he says that he believes in something, he believes that he can bring Morpheus back. So they accept, and she goes with him… he tries to say “no” but she tells him what’s what and she does have big eyes :-)
Smith keeps talking, saying mammals work with their environment and find a just equilibrium, therefore the human race can’t be that, it’s more like a virus, that multiplies and consumes.
He wants to stay alone with Morpheus so the other two Agents Brown and Jones leave the room. Smith takes off his ear piece and says that he hates this place, that’s why he wants to destroy Zion so much, so there will be no more need of him here.
Neo and Trinity enter this military-controlled building with two black bags full of weapons, all dressed in black and of course with long black coats, because those are so cool. They are.
A big shooting scene starts here, and with that cool music this was one of the legendary scenes. There’s lots of shooting and jumping and breaking walls, then they take the lift, go above it and reach the roof, where there’s the other iconic scene, when Neo moves so quickly - we see it in slow motion though - that he can dodge bullets. Tank loads Trinity with a helicopter course so she can fly the one there. She takes the helicopter right in front of the huge glass walls of the room where they’re keeping Morpheus, and it is a cool scene when Neo starts shooting with the machine gun - that Google ai says it’s called a minigun because it’s smaller - and bullets start dropping like rain drops, but really, how is it possible that he doesn’t hit Morpheus? Is he able to shoot only above chair-level?
Well, why not, after all… and Morpheus, whose mind has not given up yet, manages to free himself and run out, but since he can’t jump well with an injured foot, Neo jumps too and catches him. Trinity flies until they can safely land on the top of a building, and then Neo saves Trinity, and brings her back up. Morpheus is ever so sure that he’s the one, and sure that the Oracle told him what he needed to hear at the time because “there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path”. Wise words.
There’s a phone on the subway, Morpheus goes first, then Trinity.
This is the scene I never understood, she tells him that everything the Oracle told her came true, “everything but this”… what does she mean? She knows he’s the one, and she knows she’s in love with him, that’s what the ‘No, you have to be!’ was about, right? Or it’s just that she hasn’t admitted it to herself, not really really? Then why say anything here and now? This is the second moment I didn’t like, after Cypher’s monologue.
After she’s out, Smith takes over the body of a homeless man cutting the connection, and Neo doesn’t run, he turns and confronts Smith. It’s a long hard fight where they’re basically at the same level, only Smith doesn’t feel tired or in pain ever, Neo does; still, despite Smith’s words of inevitability, it’s him that ends up hit by the train, giving Neo time to run to the next exit.
Sentinels are approaching the ship but they can’t use the EMP while Neo is in the matrix, it would kill him, severing the connection.
Tank guides Neo through streets and doors and stairs and doors on ‘his other left’ :lol:
The sentinels reach the ship and breach the hull; finally Neo reaches the door, we hear the phone ringing, he opens the door and… surprise, Smith is there and shoots him dead! That was such a surprise back then, a shock to the system, and Morpheus “it can’t be” mirrored our thoughts, because Neo in the Matrix was dead… Trinity talks to him (after he’s died) saying he can’t die because the Oracle told her she’d fall in love with the one so he can’t die, meaning she’s in love with him so he must be the one. She tells him she loves him and kisses him reversed-SnowWhite style.
His heart starts beating again, and inside the Matrix he gets up and doesn’t need to dodge the bullets, he can stop the bullets with one hand, they stop before reaching him. He can now see everything and everyone around him encoded, and can stop the Agents with just one hand, then he runs and jumps into Smith, and blows him up from the inside out. When Trinity yells his name he somehow hears her voice? Or does he simply hear the phone ringing? Anyway, he must get out as quick as he can because the sentinels are inside the ship, so at the last minutes the Emp destroys them and Neo is out, and they kiss, of course.
The last scene is a phone call to… the Agents? Then Neo gets out of the phone box and… flies up high…
P.s. Why did Trinity have a different outfit when they were above the elevator? Where did that high-collared outfit come from?
Neo is Keanu Reeves
Morpheus is Laurence Fishburne
Trinit is Carrie-Anne Moss
Smith is Hugo Weaving
The Oracle is Gloria Foster
Tank is Marcus Chong
Cypher is Joe Pantoliano
ITA Matrix
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