Winner of four Academy Awards and a strong influencer on sunglasses and trench coat designs, The Matrix combines cyberpunk, wire fu, digital camerawork, Jean Baudrillard, and a whole bunch of bullet casings. That unlikely mix of action genres and college philosophy syllabi staples launched a sprawling franchise with subsequent films and related texts (embraced by some but often derided). Further, its dystopian take on the future of a burgeoning digital world-both cinematically and socially-shaped filmmaking and discussions about digital connectedness for years to come. At its core, The Matrix is the story of Neo (Keanu Reeves), who red pills his way into realizing the world as he knows it is a simulation.