1. Thomas A. Anderson is a man living a double life. One, working for a highly respectable software company as a computer programmer. Two, a hacker under the alias “Neo”. Cryptic messages are appearing on Anderson’s computer. He wants to learn the answer to the question, “What is the Matrix?”
2. Actually, the world which Neo has inhabited since birth is the Matrix. The Matrix is an illusory simulated reality construct of the world as it was in 1999. Created by a malevolent (wishing or appearing to wish evil to others) Artificial Intelligence, the Matrix hides the truth from humanity, allowing them to live a convincing, while machines grow and harvest people to use as an ongoing energy source.
3. Neo is contacted by underground freedom fighters who explain that reality as he understands it is actually a complex computer simulation called the Matrix. The Matrix uses the human population bodies’ heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source (humans as batteries).
4. Neo encounters three sinister agents that lead him to a group led by the mysterious underground hacker Morpheus. Morpheus informs Neo that the year is not 1999, but estimated to be closer to 2199, and that humanity is fighting a war against intelligent machines created in the early 21st century. The sky is covered by thick black clouds created by the humans in an attempt to cut off the machines’ supply of solar power. The machines responded by using human beings as their energy source in conjunction with nuclear fusion, later growing countless people in pods and harvesting their bioelectrical energy and body heat.
5. Morpheus and his crew are a group of free humans who “unplug” others from the Matrix and recruit them to their resistance against the machines. Within the Matrix, they are able to use their understanding of its nature to bend the laws of physics within the simulation, giving them superhuman abilities. Morpheus believes that Neo is “the One”, a man prophesied to end the war through his limitless control over the Matrix.
6. Morpheus offers Neo the chance to learn the truth about the Matrix: swallow a red pill and learn the truth or swallow a blue pill and return to the world as he knows it. Neo accepts by swallowing the offered red pill, and subsequently finds himself naked in a liquid-filled pod, his body connected by wires and tubes to a vast mechanical tower covered with identical pods.
7. The connections are severed, and he is rescued by Morpheus and taken aboard his hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar. Neo’s neglected physical body is restored, and Morpheus explains the situation. Neo is drawn into a rebellion against the machine, involving other people who have been freed from the “dream world” and into reality. Together with Trinity, Neo and Morpheus fight against the machine’s enslavement of humanity as Neo begins to believe and accept his role as ” the one”.
7. Neo is trained to become a member of the group. A socket in the back of Neo’s skull, formerly used to connect him to the Matrix, allows knowledge to be uploaded directly into his mind. In this way, he learns numerous martial arts disciplines, and demonstrates his kung fu skills by sparring with Morpheus in a virtual reality “construct” environment similar to the Matrix, impressing the crew with his speed. Further training introduces Neo to the key dangers in the Matrix itself. Injuries suffered there are reflected in the real world; if he is killed in the Matrix, his physical body will also die. He is warned of the presence of Agents, fast and powerful sentient computer programs with the ability to take over the virtual body of anyone still directly connected to the Matrix, whose purpose is to seek out and eliminate any threats to the simulation. Morpheus is confident that once Neo fully understands his own abilities as “the One”, they will be no match for him.
8. The group enters the Matrix and takes Neo to meet the Oracle, the woman who has predicted the eventual emergence of the One. She tells Neo that he has “the gift” of manipulating the Matrix, but that he is waiting for something, possibly his next life. From her comments, Neo deduces that he is not the One. She adds that Morpheus believes in Neo so blindly that he will sacrifice his life to save him.
9. Returning to the hacked telephone line which serves as a safe “exit” from the Matrix, the group is ambushed by Agents and SWAT teams. Agent Smith corners Neo but Morpheus pins him down and gives everyone the order to get out. Morpheus allows himself to be captured so that Neo and the others can escape. They later learn that they were betrayed by the crew-member Cypher, who preferred his old life of ignorance over the real world’s hardships and therefore made a deal with the Agents to give them Morpheus in exchange for a permanent return to the Matrix. Cypher is defeated but not before his betrayal leads to the deaths of all crew-members except Neo, Trinity, Tank, and Morpheus, who is imprisoned in a government building within the Matrix. The Agents attempt to gain information from him regarding access codes to the mainframe of Zion, the unplugged humans’ subterranean refuge in the real world. Neo and Trinity return to the Matrix and storm the building to rescue their leader. Neo becomes more confident and familiar with manipulating the Matrix, ultimately dodging bullets fired at him by an Agent. Morpheus and Trinity use a subway station telephone to exit the Matrix, but before Neo can leave, he is ambushed by Agent Smith. He stands his ground and eventually defeats Smith, but flees when the Agent possesses another body.
10. As Neo runs through the city toward another telephone exit, he is pursued by the Agents while “Sentinel” machines converge on the Nebuchadnezzar’s position in the real world. Neo reaches an exit, but he is ambushed by Agent Smith and shot dead. In the real world, Trinity whispers to Neo that she was told by the Oracle that she would fall in love with “the One”, implying that this is Neo. She refuses to accept his death and kisses him. Neo’s heart beats again, and within the Matrix, Neo revives; the Agents shoot at him, but he raises his palm and stops their bullets in mid-air.
11. Neo is able to perceive the Matrix as the streaming lines of green code it really is. Agent Smith makes a final attempt to kill him, but his punches are effortlessly blocked, and Neo destroys him. The other two Agents flee, and Neo returns to the real world in time for the ship’s EMP weapon to destroy the Sentinels that had already breached the craft’s hull. A short epilogue shows Neo back in the Matrix, making a telephone call promising that he will demonstrate to the people imprisoned in the Matrix that “anything is possible”. He hangs up the phone and flies into the sky.
