Neo follows the white rabbit (The Matrix): That moment early in the first film when hacker Thomas Anderson realises there’s something unusual going on, but it seems more curious than sinister. He knows only that he must follow the white rabbit, like Alice in Wonderland. It’s a woman with a rabbit tattoo that ends up leading him to Morpheus and team, his first step on the path to change.
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Trinity’s opening chase (The Matrix): The Wachowskis drop you right in the middle of the action as they open the first movie. A mysterious woman, in skintight PVC and sunglasses, knows exactly how to speed away from her pursuers. She’s almost caught, but she can run across walls, leap over buildings, leaving laymen (and us) stumped. It’s a taste of the movie to follow, with 360-degree swivel, stunning fights, and scenes that look like comic-book panels.
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Neo is disconnected (The Matrix): Keanu Reeves reportedly lost 15 pounds to depict the human Thomas Anderson emerging from his pod, breaking free of the machines much like a newborn learning to survive without the umbilical cord. That connector in the back of his neck will now be used for an entirely different feed. This is where man and matrix separate.
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Fighting Morpheus (The Matrix): “I know kung-fu,” says Neo, amazed as a computer program is fed directly into his body. But how well can he use his new skill? That practice fight against Morpheus, bodies flying, cameras spinning, arms blurry as they move too fast for the eyes to track… “I’m trying to free your mind, Neo,” Morpheus says. He’s trying to bend ours too.
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Neo meets the Oracle (The Matrix): She’s not quite what anyone was expecting. The all-knowing being is a picture of domestic bliss. She’s baking cookies as her students bend spoons with their minds. She’s already pegged Neo as cute, but not too bright. She reveals to him that either he will die, or Morpheus will. But is she telling Neo what she knows to be true, or only what she thinks he needs to hear?
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The lobby shootout and the final battle (The Matrix): The gang heads out to rescue Morpheus. Bullets fly, bodies pile up and the Wachowskis show us that the best visuals need only wirework and cleverly timed destruction. It’s in the climax — when Neo figures it all out, not dodging bullets but actually freezing them in their path, and effortlessly moving faster than his nemesis — that the CGI really takes over.
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The freeway fight (The Matrix Reloaded): The second film is more of the same, but with one epic chase and fight. It’s sunny, not dark. There are sinister twin agents in dreadlocks. Trinity motorcycles into oncoming traffic. A 2.4-km highway was built just for the scene. More than 100 cars were destroyed. It’s a great follow-up to the action scenes of the first film.
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The Architect is revealed (The Matrix Reloaded): A twist on the idea of meeting one’s maker. Neo comes face to face with the computer program that created and runs the matrix and controls the machine mainframe. He’s well dressed and disappointingly dull. Neo, it seems, was part of the plan all along; and he’s the fifth iteration of The One.
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Neo fights the Smith clones (The Matrix Reloaded): What’s scarier than one Agent Smith? Hundreds of them in the rain, all smirking. Neo ultimately flies straight up into the sky to escape them all.
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The battle for Zion (The Matrix Revolutions): We know Zion as the last human outpost in a world overrun by pods in which humans are harvested to keep the matrix going. But what is Zion really like? A steampunk, cyberpunk lair. The big fight in the third film pits the humans (and their mechanised suits) against the smart machines. At stake is humanity itself.
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