Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1453602
4 cgw j a n u a r y • f e b r u a r y • m a r c h 2 0 2 2 Re-entering the Matrix EFFECTS HELP SET SCENES INSIDE THE REAL WORLD AND WITHIN THE MATRIX BY KAREN MOLTENBREY Images ©2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. & Village Roadshow Films. T he red pill or the blue one, which would you choose? For fans of the iconic sci-fi fi series The Matrix, there is only one choice: red. It is the one Thomas Anderson (also known as the hacker Neo) chooses that leads him on the path toward discover- ing the truth about the Matrix. The blue, on the other hand, would allow him to remain in blissful ignorance, unaware of the horrors of his reality. In 1999, the Wachowskis and Warner Bros. fi st introduced us to Neo and the Matrix, a simulated reality created by intelligent machines to block humans from their actual reality: being used as a power source for the machines that rule the world. Anderson (Keanu Reeves), a computer programmer, discovers the harsh reality that humanity finds i self in, aer he is offered the pills by Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne in the fi st three films) Morpheus is part of a rebel group that hacks into the Matrix to unplug and recruit the enslaved humans, all the while looking for "the Chosen One," who is said will free humankind from their predic- ament. Neo awakens from his simulated state and escapes from the Matrix, joining up with the rebellion as the free humans — including Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) — wage war on the machines (CGW, May 1999). In 2003, the second and third films in th series, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, released a few months apart, continued the story and the battles in both the real world and simulated world (CGW, December 2003). In the third and "final chapter, Neo confronts his continual nem- esis, Agent Smith, an AI program that has gone rogue, acting as a self-replicating virus that even the machines can no longer con- trol. Neo makes a deal with the machines: