Talk:The Matrix

Reeves donated his salary?

Did Reeves donate his salary to the crew, thus ensuring that the sequels got made?

~ender, 2018-06-07 8:59:AM MST

Bullet effect first used in 1962 film

The special visual effect of a slowly moving bullet fired from from a handgun by a villain toward a human dressed in black (tuxedo), who steps out of the way, was first used in the 1962 fantasy comedy Zotz! starring Tom Poston. If you type in zotz matrix in Google, it's a recognized predating effect even by Google's AI, which describes it as "an early version of the "bullet time" effect used in The Matrix and originally featured in Zotz!. The scene with the effect can been seen in the film's trailer. If any regular editor wants to give this a brief one-sentence mention in the article, I just want to point this out. There's nothing in the past talk page archives about this. 5Q5|^✉ 12:52, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Please tell me you're not relying on an AI to provide factual information. Can you provide a reliable source that has discussed this? DonIago (talk) 16:29, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

"In an unnamed city"

Re this revert:

Per WP:FILMPLOT, the plot summary should contain only the most important details for a concise overview.

The fact that the city's name isn't specified isn't important and can be ommitted.

"So where is all of this taking place then?" We don't know and it doesn't matter to the plot. If the specific location mattered, it would be in the movie.

The plot summary could use a trim generally. Sentences like "Morpheus guides Neo's escape by phone, able to somehow remotely observe their movements, but Neo ultimately surrenders rather than risk a hazardous getaway" can be reduced to "Morpheus guides Neo's escape by phone, but Neo surrenders." Popcornfud (talk) 20:26, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

For the reader, establishing the setting of a city is a basic requirement. Otherwise there is no context for where it is taking place. It's like saying we don't need to state that Batman takes place in Gotham City. He's just free-roaming and beating up criminals in a black void? Darkwarriorblake (talk) 20:29, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

We mention the Batmobile in Batman summaries too, because it’s important to the Batman stories, but we don’t identify the cars the agents drive in The Matrix, because it doesn’t matter to this story. Popcornfud (talk) 21:01, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

For clarity, I don’t object to saying the story takes place in a city, but writing that we don’t know its name is extraneous detail. That’s what I’m getting at. It doesn’t matter that we don’t know the name of the city. Popcornfud (talk) 21:02, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

We're not talking about vehicles or gadgets though, we say Gotham City because it instantly provides the reader with context that it's A) a city, and b) specifically Gotham City if the reader has context for that. Similarly, it's important the reader knows that the Matrix simulation is not an isolated barn and an office block. The "unnamed" part is not the only thing you removed though, as you also removed the "city" part. So I feel like you're backtracking. "In 1999, in a city," isn't a great opening either. For the sake of the 1 word, I don't see the issue with retaining it, it's important to establish it is a city, and that it's anywhere and nowhere. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 21:13, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

No, I removed "in an unnamed city" in its entirety because I think removing the detail entirely is the simplest solution to the whole thing and I don't think the city setting is truly important. If it is truly important then there's probably a more elegant way of getting it into the summary. Popcornfud (talk) 21:24, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Well, you're wrong. "In 1999, in an unnamed city," is clear, atmospheric, and entirely acceptable, it immediately conveys a sense of placelessness and universality, the idea that this could be any city. And it does that in four words. You're not providing an alternative beyond deletion. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 21:32, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

"atmospheric"? what are you talking about? seems like we have very different understandings of the purpose of Wikipedia plot summaries. Popcornfud (talk) 21:34, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Might I humbly submit that we're quibbling over roughly four words in a plot summary that's comfortably below the maximum word count as it is? I favor the inclusion of "in an unnamed city" because it a) specifies that it is a city versus any other environment, b) establishes that it's not a known city, fictional or otherwise. It's not Gotham, it's not Metropolis, it's not NYC and it's not Cleveland. Given the nature of the film, it's likely intentionally unnamed versus a more conventional, "This could be set anywhere..." That said, I'm open to hearing alternative phrasing, but I think "in an unnamed city" is pretty compact as it is. DonIago (talk) 23:18, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I'm clearly not convincing anyone and there are bigger problems to fix. And as I said above, there's a lot of other needless verbiage anyway. Popcornfud (talk) 01:37, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Casting section?

Would people support the creation of a Casting section? We could move content related to casting from the Cast section into the new section, and the Cast section would then become simply a list of the characters/actors. OrdinaryOtter (talk) 02:47, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Having both a Cast section and a Casting section is duplicative. If there's sufficient information to drive a well-formed Casting section, I would recommend looking to Jaws (film) as a good example of an endstate for something like this. DonIago (talk) 06:18, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

As a reader of Wikipedia (not an editor), having separate Cast and Casting sections (see The Empire Strikes Back for an example) does not feel duplicative to me. For me, the sections serve different purposes. If I want to quickly look up which actor played a character, or the name of a character, I consult the Cast list. If I want to know about the process of casting the film, I scroll down to the Casting section.

If I understand correctly, the average reader spends 1-2 minutes on a Wikipedia page, as they are usually looking for a quick fact or two. I could be mistaken, but my guess is that most readers use pages about films to check the cast list or the plot. To continue with the Star Wars examples, they want to know who played Chewbacca or the younger version of Han Solo. A simple, barebones cast list with one-line character descriptions is ideal for these readers, because it's easy to find and navigate. The readers who are looking for a quick fact are not necessarily interested in knowing about Mark Hamill's audition or which other actors got rejected for the role of Princess Leia. Therefore, in my humble opinion, the formatting used for The Matrix hinders the many readers who are looking to check a quick fact, by introducing large chunks of text between character descriptions. The section turns into a wall of text rather than an easy-to-navigate list.

In my experience, the vast majority of film articles use the formatting either from The Empire Strikes Back or The Matrix, which tells me that both formats have their supporters. My motivation to use the Empire formatting is based on a desire to make it as easy as possible for the majority of readers to find what they are looking for when visiting the page. I am absolutely open to the possibility that I am mistaken in my assessment of what readers are looking for.

The Jaws formatting, which I had never seen before, has both benefits and downsides in my mind. The cast list is harder to find when you first visit the page, as there is no "Cast" header in the table of contents, and the cast list is a small box rather than its own section with a large header (and it's a little farther down the page). The lack of character descriptions is also less than ideal. However, having a cast list nested within a description of the casting process is useful, as the reader can look back and forth between them.

Sorry for the essay! I just wanted to explain my thoughts on the matter. I'd be happy to hear more of your thoughts as well. OrdinaryOtter (talk) 07:50, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

We have MOS:FILMCAST to guide us, and I think it depends on the content on hand. Like you said, a standalone "Cast" section can be beneficial, and it can also be beneficial to have a wikitable embedded in a "Casting" subsection. Like for Fight Club, I think I had the latter before, but someone else changed it to be a separate cast list, which I didn't push back on. I feel like that article's "Casting" content fits the general production flow. For Apt Pupil (film) and Panic Room, I did "Cast" sections that were more prose-based with embedded wikitables because I felt like the content was not quite casting-centric but more thematic, if that makes sense. (You can see that casting detail is still in Panic Room's "Casting" subsection.) Plus, for these films, the starring actors are tighter groups (like with Panic Room, the burglars prose is all in one paragraph).

I guess for The Matrix, there is more of an extended cast list, and one difference here from the examples is that these tend to have brief character descriptions. We do see content mainly focused around the top four that could perhaps be rearranged to belong in a "Casting" subsection. I know that for a lot of franchise film articles, it has been traditional to have "fat" bullets for the starring actors followed by simpler bullets, which feels to me to be uneven. It doesn't help that we can't bold the names per MOS:BOLD. For me, it's been cleaner to have a simpler list with prose aside it or elsewhere. I'd be okay with some rearrangement here, but did you plan to keep the brief character descriptions or not?

A different kind of idea could be a three-column table with Actor, Role, Description, and the content around the four starring actors/roles could be either below it, or in a "Casting" subsection? Thinking out loud. Honestly, this film has probably been written about so much that has not been mined, and that could reframe things still. For example, assuming a major expansion, Neo (The Matrix) could have most of the related actor/role detail (especially across all the films) with the first film being relatively brief in that coverage, focusing more on the overall production and themes. List of Matrix series characters could hold more detail too (but is not in great shape). Erik (talk | contrib) 15:29, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for offering a thoughtful reply. It's good to know about the different formatting styles out there, and I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks about the intricacies of Cast and Casting sections!

For the Matrix, yes, I was envisioning that we'd keep the character descriptions. I think the table+prose format you suggested could work as well, although if we do that, I think it would be best to bulk up the prose with more information, which I suspect is out there.

I recently did a mid-level overhaul of Wonder Woman, and was struggling with the fact that my Casting section was not just about casting, but also about character description and development, as well as the actors' performances. Maybe we should change the format of that page to more closely resemble the Apt Pupil format? OrdinaryOtter (talk) 16:13, 9 May 2026 (UTC)