Nestled somewhere between Plato's Allegory of the Cave and a slow motion Gap commercial from the '90s lies the Matrix franchise. It's a cyberpunk head trip, equal parts Joseph Campbell and a Shadowrun campaign run by a bunch of philosophy majors. Out of all of the billion-dollar film series in history, it has cemented itself as the fictional universe that made the largest percentage of its fans go, "Wait, what just happened?" Were Lana and Lilly Wachowski being purposely perplexing when they presented the in-world explanation for whatever the hell was going on in the Matrix movies? It's impossible to say for sure, but based on how much exposition is given via an Architect monologue that you have to slow down more than the Kennedy assassination film to understand, we're inclined to say yes. That's why we have the internet, though: to combine the power of billions of minds and, once and for all, figure out the particulars of a make believe story where Keanu Reeves can move faster than bullets. Spoiler alert for anybody who didn't have time to catch up on pop culture in the last... wow, has it really been 20 years? Time flies when you're hooked up to a simulation and having your bioelectricity drained for the benefit of your machine overlords.
The entire Matrix timeline explained