1. Who plays Neo?
Keanu Reeves
Will Smith turned the part down to make Wild Wild West, a decision he has joked about ever since. Reeves trained for four months in wire work and martial arts before shooting a frame.
2. Who directed it?
The Wachowskis
It was their second film, after the thriller Bound. They pitched it with the whole film drawn as a comic, which is how they talked Warner Bros. into the budget.
3. What colour is the pill Neo takes?
Red
The blue one would've sent him back to bed believing whatever he wanted to believe. The phrase has long since left the film behind and taken on lives of its own.
4. What's Neo's name in the ordinary world?
Thomas Anderson
Agent Smith insists on calling him Mr. Anderson to the end. His apartment number is 101, a nod to the room in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
5. Who plays Morpheus?
Laurence Fishburne
Fishburne's calm delivery carries the long explanations the film needs the audience to swallow. His ship is the Nebuchadnezzar, named for the Babylonian king who dreamed dreams he couldn't remember.
6. What's the slow-motion camera effect called?
Bullet time
A ring of still cameras fired in sequence around the actor, with computer work in between, so the camera seems to glide while the action hangs in the air. Plenty of films and games borrowed it in the years that followed.
7. Who plays Agent Smith?
Hugo Weaving
Weaving built the voice out of 1950s newsreaders and the odd way Smith lingers on his vowels. Jean Reno was offered the part and turned it down.
8. Which city stood in for the unnamed city of the Matrix?
Sydney
The Wachowskis come from Chicago and the street names are Chicago's, but the whole film was shot in Australia to save money. The same studio sets had just been used for Dark City.
9. What tells the crew that something in the Matrix has been changed?
Déjà vu
Neo sees the same black cat walk past a doorway twice, and Trinity explains that a glitch like that means the Agents are changing something. It's the moment the mission turns into a trap.
10. Which crew member betrays the others?
Cypher
Joe Pantoliano's Cypher wants to be put back in, steak and all, in exchange for Morpheus. 'Ignorance is bliss,' he tells Agent Smith over dinner.
11. What does the Oracle offer Neo?
A cookie
She also tells him he isn't the One, which may or may not be what he needed to hear. Gloria Foster played her, baking in a kitchen full of children bending spoons.
12. How does the crew get in and out of the Matrix?
Through hard-wired telephone lines
A ringing landline is an exit, and mobile phones won't do, which is why so much of the film takes place in phone booths and dusty offices. The Agents know it too.
13. How many Academy Awards did the film win?
Four
Visual Effects, Film Editing, Sound and Sound Effects Editing, every category it was nominated in. It beat The Phantom Menace to the effects award, which pleased a great many people.
14. Which real book is hollowed out to hide Neo's discs?
Simulacra and Simulation
Jean Baudrillard's book on copies without originals, which the Wachowskis asked the cast to read. Baudrillard himself said the film had misunderstood it.
15. Who plays Trinity?
Carrie-Anne Moss
Moss opens the film with the leap across the rooftops and the run from the Agents, and did most of it herself after months of training. Jada Pinkett Smith auditioned for the part and later joined the sequels as Niobe.
