It's a given amongst Matrix fans that the second two movies in the trilogy were horrible. Then again, most of us watched them anyway, because we're fans.

The thing about the movie is that you have to realise a number of things, if you want to enjoy it beyond a sci-fi action flick. This is going to take a while to explain, so get comfortable before moving on to the next bit.

First of all, The Matrix was produced and released in the '90s. The X-Files was still going strong, Consumerism was still riding off it's 80's peak, and this weird thing called the "World Wide Web" was entering the mainstream conciousness. The Cold War had ended, but the world still sucked. Iraq was a TV War, with Yugoslavia being the next episode, and skullduggery from the past era was coming to light at the same time that Rondey King was happening.

In fact, pretty much most of the 90s was a result of the 80s - the afteraffects of the revolutionary decade. With every golden age, comes a dark age after it, and while the 90s wasn't medieval levels of gloomy, for adults in the know it still wasn't the promised land people thought a post-Soviet world would be.

Thanks to recent advances in communications technology, almost everyone knew what was happening, almost as soon as it happened. For the first time in modern history, everyone could tune in to what their tax dollars contributed to, and what their elected officials were doing about it. Every missile strike, every skeleton-filled closet, every mass-shooting was now packaged and delivered to everyone who had the means to recieve it. Combined with consumerism, which marketed every new development, and government secrecy, none of this felt, well, real.

What I mean is that people knew what was happening was "real" in the sense that it was occuring, and was a thing in the public conciousness; however, you can only take so much before your mind grows numb to it. As the saying goes, "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic"; this, combined with common distraction from the TV and the local store, as well as with nagging doubts that what we were seeing wasn't the full picture, meant that the volume on the world outside your social bubble was essentially muted.

As a result, people trust "The System" less and less; simultaneously relying on it more and more. Everyone wanted to be left alone with their toaster ovens, and their TVs, and their steel-belted radials. Well, almost everyone.

You see, with every culture, inevitably there grows a counter-culture. For the old empires, it was republicanism and democracy; for the post-WWII era, it was the hippie lifestyle and free-love. For the 90s, it was something called Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk can essentially be summed up in one statement - "High tech, low life". Everything’s newer, but it's obvious that not everything’s better. This was essentially the epitome of the 90s, with the latest technological advances offering indulgences beyond your wildest dreams - so long as you can afford it. Every sensual input could be pleased with readily available entertainment, from movies, to music, to food - but they feel more like props and replicas, not like the real thing. The Information Age meant that news and opinions from around the world could be recieved, collated, and digested at a moments notice - but people had to ask, is all of it true? There was doubt in the air, about our institutions, and our lifestyles, and some sought answers. Zines and underground websites sprung up devoted to this culture, and to mastering the engine of the era - the computer.

This is where The Matrix comes in, and why it was a huge success.

Thomas A. Anderson, a faceless programmer at a nameless megacorp, expresses and subsequently reflects these feelings of malaise in people. He's a bit in the system, but he can feel the bit rot in the background. Everything should be complete, but there's always the sense that something's missing in his life. He begins by taking his life into his own hands, bit by bit, beginning by crawling the web for information, while becoming a player on the scene in his own right under the alias "Neo". Eventually, Neo learns more about that missing sense, and why the world is the way it is; from there, the rest is cinema history.

Combined with this is a healthy infusion of Indian and East Asian philosphy, which comes with one of the original inspirations of The Matrix - the wuxia genre. Originally, this applied to high-adventure sword-and-sorcery novels sent in ancient chinese times (the equivalent of modern medieval tales, or Conan the Barbarian), this eventually extended to the silver screen with the age of cinema. There are plenty of earlier-known adaptions of eastern tales in western cinemas - the most popular one you might know of is The Magnificent Seven, which was based off a cinematic adaption of a medieval Japanese tale titled The Seven Samurai. While not a wuxia film in itself, it still incorporates many of the same elements, as well as setting a precedent for future adaptations, like most spaghetti westerns of the era. While most wuxia films focused on rightousness, they did explore into other areas of philosophy as well, depending on the story. One of cyberpunk's main tenents, and a common motif in cyberpunk literature and cinema, are questions on the nature of reality, especially in a world capable of replicating it to an almost indiscernable degree. Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist philosophy is chock-full of exploration into these concepts, so they became a natural click for a film whose core focus was questions on the nature of the world, and of the self.

This is reflected in turn by the audio and visual effects, which incorporate little clues and easter eggs to the film's premises and concepts. You might have noticed that the Matrix scenes were tinted slightly green, while those of the real world appeared in harsher, garish, shades to reaffirm themselves to the eyes. The dress of the crew members of the Nebuchadnezzar, (the name itself a reference to the biblical king seeking the answer to his lost dream), is reminiscient of the chinese Changshan, and the acupuncture scene was done with real needles, and not CGI. Not to mention the actual 6 month training all actors undertook for the martial arts scenes in the film, which was rarely seen before, and rarely seen since. Don't even get me started on the sound effects mirroring the choreography throughout the film.

On a side note, The Matrix paved the way for mainstream wuxia films into the United States after its release, beginning with a little something called Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which arrived more than a full year after The Matrix rocked theaters worldwide.

I realise that the movie has been tainted by hordes of neckbeards, armchair-anarchists, and general idiots looking for any excuse to say "fuck the rules", smash shit, and practice poor life management skills in general. Lord knows the cyberpunk scene is aware - they've even made their own jokes about it. But that's not the ultimate point of the story, or why people love it. It's not about the kick-ass gravity-defying fight scenes inspired by freshly-dubbed wuxia films. It's not about the subtle undertones on the nature of reality, and the incredibly well-made VFX and SFX incorporated throughout to reflect that. That's not why people love The Matrix.

The movie is loved not because it tells us to fight the system, but that we can fight back. That we're more than statistics, and can find for ourselves what's truely real, and what can complete our lives. And it's beautiful.

These sentiments shouldn't sound too alien - this same environment was what spawned the X-Files, Fight Club, and a film adaptation of Johnny Mnemonic.

Feel free to double-check my citations, or provide new ones - Wikipedia's a lazy-man's source, but I ain't paid for internet posts.* If you have more questions, I'll do my best to answer them.

As a side note, I think Keanu Reeves is a solid actor and baller human being too. If you really want proof, I highly recommend the John Wick Trilogy, as well as this article on his ongoing charity work.

*Which would be a dream job.