Physical aspects
Agents appear in the guise of human government agents, [2] [1] wearing black-green business suits lined with a gold fabric, white dress shirts, black dress shoes, dark green neckties with a silver bar clip, square sunglasses, and a communication earpiece. These features are copied from the attire for plainclothes agents of the United States Secret Service, as well as those of the Men in Black conspiracy or the stereotypical G-Man/FBI official. [1] All known individual Agents within The Matrix universe appear as Caucasian males. [5] In The Matrix Reloaded , six months after the facts of The Matrix , the Source deployed the upgraded Agents Jackson, Johnson, and Thompson (portrayed by Daniel Bernhardt, David A. Kilde and Matt McColm), designed specifically by the Machines to defeat The One. Unlike the original Agents, they had a change of appearance: their suit jackets were lighter and had more of a grayish-green tone, they were bulkier, wider and taller in appearance. The Upgraded Agents also spoke with a slight, almost unnoticeable reverb effect to their voices, which made them sound intimidating even while discussing mundane matters; unlike the regular Agents who sounded perfectly normal. [6] [7] [8]
Agents are, in fact, highly advanced artificial intelligence entities, [9] programmed with a number of superhuman abilities. [1] As Agents do not exist in their own bodies as other programs do, being "killed" is a temporary inconvenience. Rather, they take over the virtualized body of a Bluepill—a human directly connected to the Matrix—which transforms into the Agent's form until the Agent leaves the body. [10]
Analysis
William Irwin said that the agents "are impersonal, generic and interchangeable" in contrast to the main characters who "are complex, different, and complementary". [11]
Lisa Nakamura said of Morpheus's initiative, "A black man leads the resistance or slave revolt against the machines, who are visible to us as Anglo-Saxon 'agents' wearing suits. They all look the same, as one would expect machines to do, but most importantly they all look white and middle class in a way that no one in the resistance does." Morpheus tells Agent Smith in one scene, "You all look the same to me." Nakamura said, "Primarily, the presence of people of color in the film lets us know we are in the realm of the real; machine-induced fantasies and wish fulfillments, which is what the matrix is, are knowable to us by their distinctive and consistent whiteness." Nakamura says the agents visually represent the machines' hegemonic regime in having associations with corporations and cops. The agents wear business suits, and they are "clearly allied with the hegemonic machine". The scene in which multiple white agents beat the black Morpheus is reminiscent of Rodney King being beaten by the Los Angeles Police Department. [12]
Stephen Faller said of the Agents that "fear seems to be the entry point", that "only when someone is afraid or startled can he or she become an unwilling Agent". [13]
Glenn Yeffetch described the agents as "software modules within the Matrix" that "are intelligent but mindless automata", with the film having no mention of quantum computing for accessing consciousness. He said that Agent Smith saying, "It's the smell, if there's such a thing," reveals the automation in which an agent doubts that a "noncomputable quality" is real and cannot differentiate between senses, where humans can find them "irreducibly different". [14]
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. It is the first installment in the Matrix film series, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano, and depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside the Matrix, a simulated reality that intelligent machines have created to distract humans while using their bodies as an energy source. When computer programmer Thomas Anderson, under the hacker alias "Neo", uncovers the truth, he joins a rebellion against the machines along with other people who have been freed from the Matrix.
The Matrix Reloaded is a 2003 American science-fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. It is the sequel to The Matrix (1999) and the second installment in the Matrix film series. The film stars Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Gloria Foster who reprise their roles from the previous film, while Jada Pinkett Smith was introduced in the cast.
The Animatrix is a 2003 American-Japanese adult animated science-fiction anthology film produced by the Wachowskis. The film compiles nine animated short films, detailing the backstory of The Matrix film series, revealing the major events of the apocalyptic war between humanity and machines which led to the creation of the Matrix in the two parts of The Second Renaissance short, in addition to providing side stories that expand the universe and tie into the film series.
The Matrix Revolutions is a 2003 American science fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. It is the third installment in The Matrix film series, released six months following The Matrix Reloaded. The film stars Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Jada Pinkett Smith, Monica Bellucci, Lambert Wilson, and Mary Alice who replaces Gloria Foster as the Oracle following Foster's death in 2001.
Neo is a fictional character and the protagonist of The Matrix franchise, created by the Wachowskis. He was portrayed as a cybercriminal and computer programmer by Keanu Reeves in the films, as well as having a cameo in The Animatrix short film Kid's Story. Andrew Bowen provided Neo's voice in The Matrix: Path of Neo. In 2021, Reeves reprised his role in The Matrix Resurrections with what Vulture calls "his signature John Wick look".
Enter the Matrix is a 2003 action-adventure video game developed by Shiny Entertainment and published by Infogrames under the Atari brand name. It was the first game based on The Matrix film series. Its story is concurrent with that of the film The Matrix Reloaded and features over an hour of original footage, written and directed by the Wachowskis and starring the cast of the films, produced for the game.
Agent Smith is a fictional character and the main antagonist of The Matrix franchise. He was primarily portrayed by Hugo Weaving in the first trilogy of films and voiced by Christopher Corey Smith in The Matrix: Path of Neo (2005), with Ian Bliss and Gideon Emery playing his human form, Bane, in the films and Path of Neo respectively. He also makes a cameo in the anime film The Animatrix (2003), voiced by Matt McKenzie. Jonathan Groff and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II portray Smith in The Matrix Resurrections (2021), the latter playing Morpheus in a dual role.
Morpheus is a fictional character in The Matrix franchise. He is portrayed by Laurence Fishburne in the first three films, and in the video game The Matrix: Path of Neo, where he was the only original actor to reprise his character's voice. In The Matrix Resurrections, an AI program based on him is portrayed by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.
The Matrix is an American cyberpunk media franchise consisting of four feature films, beginning with The Matrix (1999) and continuing with three sequels, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, and The Matrix Resurrections (2021). The first three films were written and directed by the Wachowskis and produced by Joel Silver. The screenplay for the fourth film was written by David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon, was directed by Lana Wachowski, and was produced by Grant Hill, James McTeigue, and Lana Wachowski. The franchise is owned by Warner Bros., which distributed the films along with Village Roadshow Pictures. The latter, along with Silver Pictures, are the two production companies that worked on the first three films.
The Oracle is a fictional character in The Matrix franchise. She was created by The Wachowskis, and portrayed by Gloria Foster in the first and second film and Mary Alice in the third film. The character also appears in the video game Enter the Matrix and the massively multiplayer online role-playing game The Matrix Online.
Trinity is a fictional character in the Matrix franchise. She is portrayed by Carrie-Anne Moss in the films. In the gameplay segments of Path of Neo, she is voiced by Jennifer Hale. Trinity first appears in the 1999 film The Matrix.
The Nebuchadnezzar is a fictional hovercraft captained by Morpheus in the Matrix franchise. Its name is a Biblical reference to Nebuchadnezzar II, from the Book of Daniel. It received scholarly attention due to its role in the series and metaphorical significance.
Niobe is a fictional character in The Matrix franchise. She is portrayed by Jada Pinkett Smith. She serves as a supporting character in the three sequels of the original film, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Resurrections, and one of the protagonists of the video game Enter the Matrix. Niobe also appears in the MMORPG The Matrix Online. In the game, however, Niobe's character voicing is portrayed by Gina Torres, who portrayed the minor Zion character Cas in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.
The Keymaker is a fictional character, portrayed by Korean-American actor Randall Duk Kim, in the 2003 film The Matrix Reloaded. He is a computer program that can create shortcut commands, physically represented as keys, which can be used by other programs to gain quick access to various areas within the simulated reality of the Matrix. He appears as an elderly, bespectacled Korean man dressed in a button-down shirt, smock, and an apron hung with bunches of keys.
Persephone is a fictional character in The Matrix franchise. She is portrayed by Monica Bellucci. In the films The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, Persephone is married to the Merovingian. She seems bored with her existence in the Matrix, and is dissatisfied with her husband.
The Twins are fictional characters in the 2003 film The Matrix Reloaded. Henchmen of the Merovingian, they are "Exiles", or rogue programs believed to be older versions of Agents from a previous iteration of the Matrix.
Zion is a fictional city in The Matrix films. It is the last human city on the planet Earth after a cataclysmic nuclear war between mankind and sentient machines, which resulted in artificial lifeforms dominating the world. It is actually a massive series of caverns deep under the ruined planet's surface, close to the planet's core, for warmth, power, and protection.
The red pill and blue pill represent a choice between the willingness to learn a potentially unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the red pill or remaining in the contented experience of ordinary reality with the blue pill. The terms originate from the 1999 film The Matrix.
The Matrix Resurrections is a 2021 American science fiction action film produced, co-written, and directed by Lana Wachowski, and the first in the Matrix franchise to be directed solely by Lana, without her sister, Lilly. It is the sequel to The Matrix Revolutions (2003) and the fourth installment in The Matrix film franchise. The film stars Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Jada Pinkett Smith. The film is set sixty years after Revolutions and follows Neo, who lives a seemingly ordinary life as a video game developer having trouble with distinguishing fantasy from reality. A group of rebels, with the help of a programmed version of Morpheus, free Neo from a new version of the Matrix and fight a new enemy that holds Trinity captive.
