Really, can anyone necessarily blame him? Maybe a comfortable illusion is better than an unpleasant truth – particularly when the illusion is literally indistinguishable from reality. “Nothing, you understand?”įurther reading: The Matrix: Sandra Bullock Was Almost Cast as Neo “I wanna remember nothing,” Cypher says, waving a glass of wine. Jacking into the Matrix, Cypher meets with Agent Smith – one of the programs that patrols the system, sniffing out rebels – and, over a particularly bloody slab of steak, agrees to sell out the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar in order to have his body plugged back into the Matrix.

In fact, Cypher’s disgust with the harshness of reality – a claustrophobic ship, slop for food, the constant threat of death by machine – leads him to cut a deal with the bad guys. Before he knows it, Neo’s aboard the Nebuchadnezzar, a gravity-defying ship which Morpheus uses to search for The One – a person who will save humanity from the machines.Īmong Morpheus’ crew is Cypher, who unlike Neo has had the time to regret his decision to swallow the red pill.

Earth is a blackened husk governed by machines which patrol the endless battery farms of unconscious humans. No sooner has he swallowed the red pill than the simulation begins to liquify and collapse a CGI shot or two later, and Neo is thrust into the realm beyond the Matrix: a bio-mechanical world of tubes and pods filled with gallons of ooze. But maybe at least a small part of Neo lives to regret not choosing ignorance rather than truth. That’s a big decision to make in such a hurry, and we should be grateful that Neo’s curiosity gets the better of him had he taken the blue pill, The Matrix would’ve been a far shorter movie. And I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland. “You take the blue pill, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. “After, this there is no turning back,” Morpheus says. Neo’s choice between the simulated world and reality is symbolized by Morpheus’s outstretched hands offering a red or blue pill. It’s really the 21st century, the machines have enslaved humanity and turned them into slumbering batteries – the Matrix being a baby-sitting program designed to keep everyone pacified. From behind his mirrored shades, Morpheus tells Neo that he is, in fact, living in a simulated version of 1999: everything Neo sees and senses is a construct. But then he starts hearing of something called the Matrix, and encounters a mysterious, leather-clad figure called Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne). The Matrix is largely told from the perspective of Neo (Keanu Reeves), a programmer and hacker living an ordinary late-90s existence: he has a steady yet sterile office job, he has the Internet, and he goes to nightclubs that play Rob Zombie music.

Matrix red pill or blue pill quote