Ghost in the Shell - This 1995 Japanese animated film was a major inspiration for the Wachowskis and still holds up as a great science-fiction movie.  The plot follows a cyborg police officer named Kusanagi who is just as spunky and deadly as Trinity.  A hacker called the Puppet Master is hacking into human brains and running amok—and Kusanagi just can’t stand for that.  But what does her own artificial self have to do with the mystery?

Existenz - This is a dark film by the renowned director David Cronenberg, with a lot of scenes that could make you wince.  It stars Jennifer Jason Leigh as a virtual reality game developer who is being targeted by an assassin with bizarre weaponry.  Jude Law is the mild-mannered marketing trainee who is forced to go on the run with her.  Together the two uncover a strange rivalry between two game companies and the “realists”, who are fighting to maintain reality.

Minority Report – This 2002 sci-fi thriller is also a modern noir mystery, with an interesting twist: the crime hasn’t been committed yet.  Instead, a trio of psychics predicts crimes and Tom Cruise apprehends them before it occurs—that is, until the psychics “see” Cruise in the act of murder.  Director Steven Spielberg doesn’t disappoint in this exciting tale.

Tron: Legacy – This film hasn’t been released yet, but all signs point to it being an interesting and adult remake of an ‘80s favorite.  Garrett Hedlund plays the son of Jeff Bridges’s character from the original.  Hedlund goes looking for his father and finds him—trapped in a gladiator-like virtual world.  The two are forced to fight for their lives as they make their way back to reality.

His most popular early film, of course, was Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure in 1989, in which he played a time-travelling teen with a distinctive, spaced-out persona.  This film led to a 1991 sequel, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.  Reeves’casting in the 1994 action movie Speed was a turning-point in his career, when he began starring in more action films.  However, he continued to make unexpected choices, such as not appearing in Speed 2 in order to play Hamlet.  This turned out to be a good choice overall, as Reeves received good reviews for his performance.  However, Sandra Bullock and the other stars of Speed 2 found themselves trapped, not only on a cruise ship, but in a stinker of a movie.

Reeves has been known to go without a salary so that more famous co-stars could be cast, such as in The Devil’s Advocate with Al Pacino and The Replacements with Gene Hackman.  In the first Matrix film, Reeves started to gain a reputation of his own when he was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Actor.  So what is Reeves doing now?  His latest film was The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, in which he plays an unbalanced character who begins an affair with the main character.  He is also appearing in an upcoming science-fiction film Passengers and the comedy film Henry’s Crime.

To start things off, there is an original score by composer Don Davis, who has gone on to score films like Jurassic Park III and Antitrust.  He based his score off of the idea of mirrors, which played a large role in the film.  This comes out in the alternation between orchestral sections and in the use of counterpoint, which is when two or more independent voices (or instruments) create a harmony.

There is also a large variety of artists featured on the soundtrack itself.  Some of these include industrial metal bands like Rammstein and Ministry, whose eerie and dissonant mechanic noises fit in well with the themes of the film.  The aptly-named Rage Against the Machine was also a fitting choice to include.  Other artists on the soundtrack include the British rock group Fightstar, the electronic composer Rob Dougan, and the distinctive Marilyn Manson.

The music from the film was released on two albums—one featuring the original score and one featuring the original soundtrack.  Other songs appeared in the film, but were not included on either soundtrack, such as pieces by pianist and composer Duke Ellington and renowned guitarist Django Reinhardt.  Now, go and watch the film again, with your ears as well as your eyes.

The Matrix popularized slow-motion gunfights, spinning perspectives, and of course the unique “bullet time” effect.  For example, the shoot-out in the lobby made numerous lists of the greatest action scenes in recent memory.  These motifs became so popular that they even entered into the world of video games, most notably in the shooter Max Payne and the raunchy adventure game Conker’s Bad Fur Day.  Other films satirized the heavy use of these techniques and drew comedy from them.  Some examples include Scary Movie, Shrek, and Kung Pow: Enter the Fist.

The Matrix films (and fights) also borrowed much of their visual look from Japanese animated films like Ghost in the Shell.  This came full circle when The Animatrix was released.  A compendium of 9 short animated films, these stories filled in corners of the Matrix universe and were directed by legendary anime directors like Shinichiro Watanabe and Peter Chung.  Other non-related anime films also had action sequences inspired by the film, like the series FLCL.

A more modern philosophical influence was Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, published in 1985.  Supposedly, the Wachowskis required their cast and crew members to read this and understand it before filming, and a copy of the book appears in the film as a hiding place for some discs.  Baudrillard says that humans live in a simulated reality because society has replaced all meaning with symbols.  The book also references a short story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges called “On Exactitude in Science”, in which a kingdom devotes its energy to constructing a larger and larger map until the map perfectly overlays the kingdom.

The belief in Messianism also reflects on the character of Neo in the film.  Just as most major religions are centered around a divine savior, the world of the Matrix can only be redeemed by Neo.  Humans are seen as incapable of saving themselves in most messianic beliefs.  However, the later Matrix films change this notion by showing the revolt of the humans against the machines.

The next time you sit down to watch the film, think about exactly what you are seeing, and consider whether you can trust your eyes when you turn them away from the screen.