Computer programmer Thomas Anderson leads a secret life as a hacker under the alias “Neo”. He wishes to learn the answer to the question: “What is the Matrix?”. Cryptic messages appearing on his computer monitor and an encounter with several sinister agents lead him to a group led by the mysterious Morpheus, a man who offers him the chance to learn the truth about the Matrix.
Neo accepts, and abruptly wakes up naked in a liquid-filled chamber, his body connected by wires to a vast mechanical tower covered with identical pods. 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.
The year is approximately 2199, and humanity is fighting a war against intelligent machines created early in the 21st century. The sky is covered in thick 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, growing countless people in pods and harvesting their energy.
The world which Neo has inhabited since birth is the Matrix, an illusory simulated reality construct of the world of 1999, developed by the machines to keep the human population docile. 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.
