What is the Matrix? In the movie The Matrix, this is the question that plagues computer programmer Thomas A. Anderson, who is also secretly the hacker Neo. Played by Keanu Reeves, Neo begins to discover mysterious messages on his computer. He starts to be harassed by three scary Agents under the command of Agent Smith.

Neo soon meets Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne) who opens his eyes to the real nature of the Matrix. Just like Alice in Wonderland, Neo follows a white rabbit and comes upon Morpheus. In another reference to Alice, Morpheus offers Neo the choice of two pills. “You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes…”

Neo of course, takes the red pill. This leads to his disconnection from the Matrix. He finds out that the Matrix is an illusion, a simulated reality of the world before humans and machines went to war. During the war, the humans torched the sky to try to cut off the machines’ source of power. In turn, the machines learned how to harness humans to gain power from them. Now scores of humans are kept in pods and used as batteries by the machines.

Morpheus is one of the leaders of a group of free people who disconnect people from the Matrix in an effort to resist the domination of the machines. These humans understand how the Matrix works, so they are able to rise above the law of physics in the simulated world and thus gain superhuman powers. Morpheus is also captain of the ship the Nebuchadnezzar.

Morpheus tells Neo that he believes that the latter is the One, a man who is said to be able to bend the Matrix to his will. This will lead to the end of the war between humans and machines.

In the back of every enslaved human’s skull is a socket that is used to connect him to the Matrix. Now programs are uploaded to Neo’s mind to enable him to learn different kinds of martial arts. He is fast, but not skilled enough to jump over buildings on his first try.

Neo soon learns that if he is killed while he is inside the Matrix, his physical body will also be killed in real life. Neo also learns about agents, who are mighty computer programs that can think for themselves. They are there to find and stop any threat to the Matrix.

After Neo visits the Oracle, the team is betrayed by Cypher (Joe Pantoliano), who has made a deal with Agent Smith to hand over Morpheus in exchange for being reinserted into the Matrix. Morpheus lets the agents arrest him in order to allow Neo and the others to get away.

Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss) tells Neo that the agents want Morpheus into order to get the codes for Zion, which every ship captain has. Zion is the last refuge of human beings located far beneath the earth.

With the help of Trinity, Neo frees Morpheus. Before he can exit the Matrix however, he is attacked by Agent Smith and shot dead. There is a chilling moment when Neo dies. But back in the real world, Trinity tells his body that he cannot die because the Oracle has prophesied that Trinity would fall in love with the one and she has fallen in love with Neo.

Neo is revived. He stops a rush of bullets and begins to see the Matrix in green code.

To commemorate the Matrix, add Matrix world wallpapers to your computer. This way, you can enter the Matrix whenever you turn on your computer.