The Matrix (1999) as Cyberpunk: What It Borrowed and What It Changed

What it is#

The Matrix follows Thomas Anderson, a programmer who hacks under the name Neo, as he learns that everyday life is a simulation. Morpheus and Trinity recruit him into a rebellion against the machines that built it. Warner Bros. released it in the US on March 31, 1999, and it earned over $460 million on a $63 million budget.

The Library of Congress selected it for the National Film Registry in 2012. It won four Oscars, all in craft categories: visual effects, film editing, sound and sound effects editing.

Where the cyberpunk is#

Its influences include Gibson's Neuromancer, Plato's cave, 1990s Telnet hacker communities, anime and Hong Kong action cinema. The hero is the genre's classic type: a hacker who does not fit anywhere in his daytime office life.

The setup is familiar too. Neo wakes up wired into cables, and the system sends Agents, sentient programs, to protect it. If you have read Neuromancer or played Cyberpunk RED netrunning, the plug-in-and-fight-ICE feel will be recognizable.

Death in the Matrix means death in the real world, which is how black ICE works in Cyberpunk. For the lethal end of the net in the game's own lore, see the Blackwall.

Where it isn't#

Classic cyberpunk, as critics describe it, drops marginalized loners into a society ruled by technology and corporations. The Matrix has no megacorporations, no street gangs and no Night City. Its setting is a machine regime and a hidden city called Zion, around the year 2199.

Our read: it is closer to a chosen-one myth with a hacker skin. The film asks whether you want the truth, where Edgerunners and Cyberpunk 2077 ask whether you can survive the people who run things. If you want the genre's grubby side, go to Blade Runner.

What it gave the culture#

The film popularized 'the red pill' as shorthand for facing an unwelcome truth, and a visual effect called bullet time, where the action slows while the camera appears to move through the scene at normal speed. The green falling code is a custom typeface that mixes mirrored kana with Latin letters and numerals.

Cast and crew were told to read Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation.

Fixer's notes: how it plays at the table#

The Matrix is a decent template for a one-shot where the crew discovers their city is fake. It is a poor template for a campaign. RED is built on money, favors and street-level reputation, and a plot where nothing is real leaves players with nothing to bargain with.

If a player brings a Matrix character to a Cyberpunk RED table, steer them to Netrunner and let them wear the coat. In the game, the netrunner's powers work through a cyberdeck and a NET Architecture, not through bending reality. Say so before the session, not during it.

Compare the film with Ghost in the Shell and Akira. If you can only watch one other thing tonight, watch Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. The full list is on cyberpunk movies.