FAQ for
The Matrix (1999) More at IMDbPro »

The actors that were hired had some kind of physical background; Carrie Anne-Moss was a dancer and Keanu Reeves used to play ice hockey. These experiences were used by Yuen Woo-Ping and his stunt crew when choreographing the fight scenes although all of the actors had stunt doubles for the more dangerous stunts.

Most of the actors had no previous training. The actors underwent a hard training under Master Yuen Woo-Ping who made them all look like expert Kung Fu fighters.

At the end of the credits, a URL and a password appears:

http://www.whatisthematrix.com/ password: steak

Go to the website above and select "High Bandwidth" or "Low Bandwidth", depending on how fast your Internet connection is. The password won't work in "Lite Version" or "Broadband Links". Look at the buttons on top of the screen. There are three buttons next to the "Mainframe": Two small black ones and a big red one. Click on the black button that is above the red one ("Input Code"). On the pop-up window that appears, type "steak" in the box and you'll have two options: "Flash" and "Non Flash". Make a choice, and a new window will appear, full of special features about the making of the movie.

When Neo first meets the Oracle, she tells him to not worry about the vase. A vase that he then breaks. He seems distraught and apologizes but the Oracle repeats not to worry and asks what will really drive him crazy is "would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?". This coded message is actually asking 'would you still act a certain way even if I told you not to?'. This notion becomes manifest later on when she realises that Neo is still having problems with his metamorphosis into the Christ-like Neo because of his own self doubt; she alleviates this by telling him that he is not the one. This then removes all of the stress and worry about his existence, thus allowing him to naturally become 'The One' by attempting to do the right thing by his friends, (in this case, saving Morpheus from Agent Smith).

The Oracle never explicitly says so. She asks Neo what he thinks; it is Neo who assumes that he is not the One, implying that he was not yet ready. He would never truly be the One until he was able to accept his destiny, and the Oracle knew this.

Also, she mentions that he looks like he's waiting for something. He asks what it is and she suggests, "Your next life maybe. Who knows?" foreshadowing what further events may need to happen in fulfilling his destiny. Although her words "Your next life, maybe?" could be understood in a more metaphorical way, in terms of changes and choices Neo is about to make, it could also be understood as her prediction that in his current life he is not the One - but in the next one, literary. Neo actually dies both in the Matrix and in reality while fighting the Agent Smith. After he comes back to life, he has powers of the One.

When Neo saves the life of Trinity on the rooftop shootout, the following dialogue takes place:

Morpheus: Neo you're going to realize just as I did there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

That is, the Oracle told enough to the 'doubting' Thomas Anderson what his mind could handle. He had to walk the path himself to understand that he was 'the One.'

The Art of the Matrix's script notes on an extended version of this scene confirm the fan theory that Cypher rigged the system to connect him to the Matrix automatically while the others were busy elsewhere. This is why he jumps so much when Neo surprises him.

The objective of the Matrix is not so much to harness energy; if this was the case, the machines would be able to get more than enough via nuclear fusion without using the humans at all. The machines need or want to keep the humans alive for other, less obvious reasons, which are open to debate as the authors refuse to provide a definitive explanation. On top of the spiritual-philosophical bond suggested in the sequels, the early tie-in story "Goliath" suggests that the machines use the humans' mental abilities to create an incredibly powerful supercomputer, and are basically using human brains for processing purposes. However, an alternative view is that the machines simply enjoyed enslaving human beings for their electrical output and feeding their liquified remains into feeding tubes so that baby batteries would grow up to be adult batteries before being liquified and fed into....sorry.

In the short films Second Rennaissance 1&2 in the Animatrix, it was also suggested that the machines felt a bond towards their creators and did not wish for them to die. The Matrix was their way of rendering the humans effectively harmless to them without having to take their lives away.

Also, it is mentioned (somewhere) that human bodies produce the exact amount of energy a machine needs to survive.

Another possibility is that without sunlight, there are no other living creatures.

This was not referring to any specific physical place, but rather to the act of Neo getting out of the car and not getting the answers he sought. In the past, he probably used to run away from the truth; this is the 'road' that he has been down before, and they know that he does not want to go that way again.

There are several possibilities:

1) The machines have a complete DNA database of every human plugged into the Matrix and also there are many people, animals, and other things within the Matrix that are actually programs within the Matrix that can monitor when two people get together. When they know that two of them are likely to have a child, all they have to do is harvest a respective sperm and egg from the parents and grow a baby, which they then insert into the Matrix. Based on the DNA, they would be able to tell what the child would look like, and can set his or her residual self-image respectively.

2) Babies are made at random and inserted at random into the Matrix. As such, children do not necessarily look like their biological parents, but this is something that everyone is used to and does not consider strange at all. However, if people are instinctively capable of rejecting the artificial world around them, they would certainly seem able to sense that their children are not theirs.

3) It has also been proposed that (Matrix Reloaded spoiler) the Matrix plays out exactly the same way with every new version of it, that Neo is ALWAYS born, he always falls in love with the same woman (Trinity) and always has to make the decision as to save her or to save the human race. This means it could be safe to assume that every choice is predetermined. The machines would know this, as a result they would know who we are going to mate with and who as a result is going to be born from this encounter, and would simply use the DNA from the previous incarnation to clone the "new" baby.

But this is not necessarily the case if we listen carefully to the explanation given by the Architect in Reloaded: an 'anomaly' (the 'One') always seems to emerge from the human population controlled by the Machines in every version of the Matrix. The Architect was never able to eliminate the Anomaly, only put it under some form of control, by programming it a firm attachment to the human race. The Architect does not explicitly say the One is always Neo/Thomas Anderson. Moreover, what is different about the situation in Reloaded is Trinity and Neo's love for her, which causes him to make a different choice than his predecessors, i.e. leave the Source, save Trinity and risk the extinction of mankind. This would suggest that Trinity is also unique to this version of the Matrix and Zion. This may also imply that Morpheus' presence is a coincidence as well, but since he has no special abilities, he may not be strictly 'essential': there will probably be a man or woman standing out as a natural leader in any version of the Matrix anyway.

4) Storks.

5)Cloning.

At first it looks just like a screen wall that you would expect in a police station's guard room, to monitor several areas at the same time, but that does not explain why Neo is displayed on every screen. Actually, the sequel The Matrix Reloaded later revealed this wall to be located in The Source, which is actually the origin of the signal that constitutes the entire Matrix. In the Source, the Architect resides, a Machine program who created the Matrix. The Architect apparently keeps a close watch on Neo, and the reason for this is that Neo is a complex and intricate part in the Machines' ploy to keep the humans subdued (for full details see the plot synopsis and FAQ on the Matrix Reloaded movie page).

Movies about memories or altered reality (whether distorted or artificial): Twelve Monkeys, A Beautiful Mind, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Movies that deal with population control: Dark City, Gattaca, Equilibrium.

Movies dealing about double lives in cyberspace: Existenz, The Thirteenth Floor.

Movies where the main actors studied martial arts solely for the film and did their own fight scenes: Charlie's Angels, Equilibrium.

Usually, science fiction films rarely even get nominated for the "majors" (acting, direction, best picture.) Rarely, they get nominated for what many considered to be the 2nd best award to Best Picture, screenwriting (Star Wars, 1977.) However, Matrix did win 4 Oscars for Sound effects, Visual Effects, Sound, and Editing (4 wins, 4 nominations) thus further embarrassing George Lucas and Star Wars: Ep 1 (3 nominations, 0 wins in the same year.)

It's a slang term for "make you think."

Edited to add another opinion: Another way of saying "blow your mind"

"Copper top" is the nickname used in the US for Duracell batteries. In the film, it is used to describe people who were born in the Matrix and used by the machines as batteries.