“What is the Matrix?” inquired Morpheus, as Neo stared in awe at a world that had once been real, but had crashed all around him. “It is control.” And Morpheus was right, but in two senses. First, the lore about a “Matrix” in which all humans are “jacked” into, says that this tall, dark (and handsome?) character is correct. There is another meaning, however. You see, ever since this “little” film hit the box office, it has controlled the minds of millions of people the world ‘round. Some dislike the movie, others hate it, some are jealous and the rest are well… “jacked.”

    First off, some of you (maybe two percent of you?) may be wonder what exactly this piece is ABOUT. The plot is set in the year 2199 (or so, no one is sure). The problem is, James Anderson (played by Keanu Reeves) believes he is living in the year 1999. His life is based in computers, from his life to his career. Working on the side as a computer hacker, he is searching for something that is missing from his life, making him unsure if he is “awake, or still dreaming.” His search for the “Matrix” and “Morpheus” (played by Laurence Fishburne) is met with Morpheus’s search for “The One.” Upon meeting, “Neo” (Anderson’s hacker alias) is “unplugged.” Morpheus explains that around the turn of the century, Artificial Intelligence (and eventually robots) fought with the humans and enslaved the human race to collect the electricity from their body heat and normal electrical signals. These humans spend time within “The Matrix”, a computer-generated world that is set at the “height of [our] civilization.” Neo has been “unplugged” and secured in Morpheus’s hovercraft, which is able to hack into the Matrix and continue “the resistance.” Morpheus believes Neo is The One, a human capable of manipulating anything in the Matrix as he pleases. Although Morpheus and his crew are capable of superhuman feats in the Matrix, Neo would (in theory, if he is the One) be able to break the “rules” of the system. Attempting to capture Morpheus and his crew are “Agents” which are computer programs that are capable of “bending” the rules (dodging bullets, moving at extremely high speeds and immeasurable strength) of the Matrix program, although not as (technically) well as The One can, but much more than Morpheus and his crew. Much goes haywire as one of Morpheus’s crew, Cypher, betrays the crew and turns Morpheus over to the Agents, where they can interrogate and torture Morpheus to the point of releasing codes into the super computer of the last human city, Zion. If you got all that, and at least understand it somewhat, congratulations, because it is a complex story to explain in short.

    What makes this 1999 Warner Bros. film so “friggin’ awesome”? The answer is not simple, but a couple quick glances can reveal at least the reason for its popularity. First off, the martial arts and fighting scenes are excellently choreographed and provide some of THE best in any film to date. The movie also follows a “gritty” feel that is very popular today, and even defined what a “gritty” film looked like. The “matrix” scenes have a green tint, while the “real world” ones have a blue tint, supplying theme as well as a unique viewing experience. Probably the most well known feature of the movie is the “bullet time” effect. You may have seen this used in games like Max Payne and other movies, but “The Matrix” engineered and created this style of seeing things in “slow time.”

    Combining myths, lore, sci-fi, excellent visuals, and extreme action scenes while making a movie GREAT is a feat the Wachowski’s were able to accomplish. Games, movie spoofs, and movie imitations have been only part of the phenomenon that has been spurred by the Matrix. It’s doubtful a movie this great will be lost in the minds of many people for decades to come. We will all be sitting in our hover-wheel-chairs gumming to one another about the “good old days” where “The Matrix” kicked major “pah-tootie”.