The Matrix turns 20: A look back at the everlasting legacy of The Wachowskis' seminal sci-fi action film

A handsome, somewhat taciturn hero goes about his wanderings in peace until one day he hears something that sounds a lot like the voice of God. Ushering in the VFX Era It’s a little funny that some of the most famous VFX sequences in The Matrix — Neo stopping bullets with his mind at the end, for instance —were actually inspired by the anime cyberpunk movie Ghost in the Shell, a story which also dealt with distinctly existential questions set against a techno-dystopian backdrop, like The Matrix. When he tries to protest, Neo’s mouth is literally sewn shut, he is unable to speak in that moment, aptly called “trans panic” by Cook, reflecting the trans community’s rightful fear of legal and judicial processes Then there’s the deadnaming reference with Agent Smith —“deadnaming” is the phenomenon of a cis person calling a trans man or woman by their previous or given name, rather than the one they’ve chosen for themselves, post-transition. The Red Pill refers to the scene where Morpheus offers Neo two pills, one red and the other blue, with the caveat that the blue pill will return him to his usual, blinkered life as Thomas Anderson while the red one will “reveal the true nature of the Matrix”. And while all of this is — for the most part — unrelated to the actual storyline of The Matrix, or any of the characters’ attitudes towards women, the Red Pill story has lessons aplenty.