The woman in red walks in front of the fountain at Martin Place, by Elizabeth Street. There are some gorgeous banks there, and they put up a massive Christmas tree across the street, in the other half of the area.
The helicopter captured by Neo and Trinity takes off from the roof of the Aon Tower.
Morpheus is held in the Colonial State Bank Centre, Martin Place. When the chopper swings over the city, carrying Neo and Trinity, you can see the AWA tower and the IBM building before it crashes into the BT Tower on the corner of Market Street. Neo lands on the roof of the Allianz building (formerly the MMI Centre) on the other side of Market Street, grabs hold of the cable, and saves Trinity (however, it has been brought to my attention that it may be the Veritas building). The Mulpha building (look for the big sign) is also seen early in the movie, and that's at 25 Bligh Street, in the city. simonc used to work there, and passed on the info.
The Wachowski brothers wanted to use a real train for the scene with Neo battling Agent Smith. It was filmed on a section of track behind the silos at White Bay, on the Balmain side of the Anzac Bridge.
The old post office in Railway Square became the building in which Neo's cohort (Trinity, et al.) ends up inside the walls when they're trying to rescue Morpheus.
The Hickson Road overpass was used in the scene in which Trinity races to a phone booth seconds before it is crushed by a truck.
Just before Neo drops his cell phone down to the street, before he's captured by the agents, you can see the Anzac Bridge.
Both definitions make sense in the context of the character, but it is the second definition that really synchs well. In the scene where Cypher betrays and kills the others he has a nice long rant with Trinity about the whole thing, saying "all I do is what he (Morpheus) tells me to do," while bitching and moaning about conditions in the "real world" and how he feels betrayed. Cypher "has no weight or influence." and as a pawn he begins to develop a bit of a complex as a result.
The first definition also works quite well--with a bit of license. By himself Cypher isn't much; spending his time doing busywork and sucking down tin bowls of goop in between running his ass off escaping agents. When he is put in a position of some power--the Judas figure--he holds the lives of the whole group in his hands. Most of the team dies as a result.
One more thing: in the scene where Neo accidentally "sneaks up" on Cypher on the Nebuchadnezzar, Cyper immediately turns off any monitors that are not encoded--as if he didn't want Neo to see them. When Neo asks about the three displays which show parts of the Matrix, Cypher responds with something like "I don't even see it (encoded) anymore, all I see is blonde... brunette... redhead." This was intended to be a joke. I may be looking into this too much, but at certain times during the film, it appears that the three Agents appear to have different hair colors. It is only in one or two scenes--the rest of the time they all look pretty much the same--but I'd swear that one was blonde, one was a "brunette," and one had red hair. Perhaps this was literal, and the agents were really on the monitors, or perhaps it is only a vague (very vague) use of foreshadowing. Perhaps I'm losing my mind (if anyone could confirm this I'd appreciate it).
I liked this movie when I first saw it. It was eye candy to be sure, and it had a quasi-spiritual story that wasn't too thin. Upon repeated viewings the movie has dulled considerably, and I'm sorry to say that if I were to watch it now it would only be for the holy-shit effects and to heckle Keanu Reeves.
/me is off to watch Brazil and Blade Runner. Not 1984 though, it's too depressing...
Meaning behind The MatrixThree alternative interpretations
A "Decker" (Shadowrun's equivalent of our "Hacker") breaks into parts of the Matrix that he is not authorized to view, with huge risks involved. Activity in the Matrix such as "attacking" an intrusion countermeasure program (ICE) or breaking into a locked database occurs in a highly conceptual metaphor for the activities taking place. A "combat" program may appear as a blade or a firearm, for example, while a firewall may actually look like a wall of fire!
Mistakes in the Matrix can be fatal, since the Intrusion Countermeasures can subject the intruder to lethal neurofeedback. Damage to hardware is also a risk.
Besides Deckers, Shadowrun's rules mention an oft overlooked character class called Otaku (which is also a word for a "geek" or someone who is obsessed with anime or anything else). In Shadowrun, an Otaku can use the Matrix by plugging an information lead directly into their Datajack (brain interface implant) without buffering the connection through a Cyberdeck. Otaku can code the necessary algorithms for cyber-combat in their heads, on the fly, and therefore don't need to use a Cyberdeck. The downside of this, of course, is that any damage done to them is much more dangerous, because there is no Cyberdeck to perform damage control or filtering functions.
This writeup will discuss The Matrix as a thing; more specifically, a movie. My only comment of review is that I liked its action and its plot and its message and feel that its fans are more heavy-handed with its morality than it was. I am saddened that no one has yet noded The Matrix as a place; a discussion of the symbolism of a place like the matrix would be an interesting read indeed.
Main Players Keanu Reeves Neo Laurence Fishburne Morpheus Carrie-Anne Moss Trinity Hugo Weaving Agent Smith Gloria Foster Oracle Joe Pantoliano Cypher
Everything has its season; everything has its time, and this movie, in recognizing the nature of causality and the unidirectional flow of life, presents a linear plot to the viewer. However, the foreshadowing is unique and the writing complex, so that the movie ultimately transcends its gimmick (that phrase, incidentally, was employed liberally to describe Memento).
The movie opens with creepy green letters and numbers flashing across a black screen--the trademark "Matrix Screensaver." Though we do not know it, it is Trinity and Cypher that we hear conversing cryptically about a "clean line" and finding a guy who is "the one". It's suggested that their call is being traced, and we cut to a hotel room in which Trinity has been captured by police; she escapes and avoids capture with inhuman dexterity and elite kung-fu skills, matched only by those of a cryptic (and rather well-dressed) Agent. Trinity flees to a phone booth, which is flattened by a garbage truck only seconds after she has picked up the phone and disappeared.
Cut to Neo's apartment, where while he dozes, his computer is online in a hax0r chat room, searching for information on "The Matrix". An unexplainable message suddenly appears on his computer and tells him to 'follow the white rabbit', and just like that, his friend Anthony appears at the door. Spotting a small white rabbit on Anthony's girlfriend's jacket, he accepts her invitation to a party. At the club he meets Trinity; they converse on the dance floor and he asks her the central question of the exposition: "What is the Matrix?" She responds that one has to see it to believe it, and cryptically disappears.
Pounding, cacophonous noise is the background to this dance scene and the transition to the morning, where it is Neo's alarm clock that introduces the cut-and-dry corporate lifestyle of Neo's job at a nameless, monolithic software company. His boss tells him that if he is late again, he will be fired ("You have a problem, Mr. Anderson. You think you're special. You believe that somehow the rules do not apply to you."). As he returns to his cubicle, he accepts a FedEx package: it contains a cellular phone. It rings when he opens the package; it is Morpheus. Neo escapes the Agents with Morpheus's guidance and ends up standing out on a window-cleaner's scaffold outside his boss's office, high above the ground. Unable to continue, he runs back inside.
Neo is being interrogated now in a small, sanitary room, surrounded by Agents. Refusing to cooperate, he finds his lips literally sealed; then, producing a weird alien device, they insert some sort of probe into his abdomen in a rather disgusting scene. At the point where he should be screaming, the scene shifts again--to Neo's bed. Waking up, he finds his mouth and stomach apparently unmolested and is relieved; but then the phone rings. Following Morpheus's instructions again, Neo winds up abducted in a black van surrounded by Resistance wackos. After a painful scene in which the 'bug' is removed from Neo's stomach via electrocution and incision, he comes to the top of a large hotel and meets Morpheus. Morpheus offers an eloquent description of the Matrix, and more importantly offers him two pills: red and blue. "You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." Ever the hacker, he takes the red pill. He is hurried into another room, covered with electrodes, and a morphous, liquid mirror reflects the change within himself; as he loses his grasp on life, we fade to the real world.
Neo (naked) falls through an industrial complex of twisty tubules and is sucked up into a spacecraft of some sort, far more advanced than we recognize. He becomes adjusted to his new self and Morpheus fills him in on the plot viscera: the year is about 2200, he is in a ship called the Nebuchadnezzar, his comrades are technopirates. Sentient AI machines engaged in a bloody war with humanity and it looks like the machines won; "fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony", for after the war took away the sun which provided energy for the machines, they came to rely on a new fusion whose motive force was our brain's electricity--the machines began to use the humans. There is a human city called Zion which is full of free people; it was founded by a man to whom the laws of the Matrix did not apply, an ubermensch of sorts. The need of the Matrix to provide a false life to keep humans happy and surviving explains the jack in the back of Neo's neck, which can be employed more pragmatically to teach him jujitsu, kung fu, and "drunken boxing" (a style of kung fu!) from a CD in a matter of hours.
With that bit of exposition out of the way, the rest of the movie follows smoothly. Neo and those around him begin to question whether or not he is 'The One' when he can't jump farther than a normal human, and he realizes that injuries sustained in the fake world carry over to the real world--a mind over matter deal. Neo goes to visit the Oracle; he sees a boy bending a spoon--or, rather, he sees a boy but there is no spoon--and then the Oracle casually tells him "You're not the one...maybe next life." He returns
