The Matrix

The Matrix arrived in 1999 and rewrote how action films looked for the next decade. Bullet time, the long coats, the wire work borrowed from Hong Kong cinema and taught to actors over four months of training - every one of those things got copied immediately and badly by everyone else.

The premise still holds up because it's asking something real. If the comfortable version of your life is false, do you want to know? The film gives you a choice between two pills and refuses to pretend the answer is obvious, which is why the imagery escaped the film entirely and became a way people argue about everything.

The falling green characters were designed from scanned Japanese katakana and, according to the designer, sushi recipes. They are now the universal shorthand for computer code in any medium.

The Wachowskis also built one of the more coherent science-fiction worlds in blockbuster cinema, with rules the sequels then enthusiastically complicated.

This collection covers Neo, the pills and the code. Choose accordingly.