Let me take you back to the year 1999.

The song that topped the charts that year was “Believe” by performing artist and possible ageless vampire Cher. Plastic chokers, slip dresses, cardigans, and capri pants were hot fashion items. Gwen Stefani’s pink hair was about to be featured on the album art of Return of Saturn. Pink’s career was about to really take off. Fears of Y2K and several systems failures around the world mounted as the end of year approached. It is also the year the groundbreaking film The Matrix hit theaters at the end of March 1999.

The film grossed $466.6 million worldwide. The Matrix won four Academy Awards (Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Sound and Best Sound Editing) as well as several other accolades including BAFTA Awards and Saturn Awards. The film is arguably among the best science fiction films of all time and was added to the National Film Registry for preservation in 2012. I think it is safe to say this is a film worth revisiting – even after twenty three years.

Starring a very young-looking Keanu Reeves, the film takes us on an adventure as experienced through the main character Neo. When we are first introduced to Neo, he is a scared loner who locks himself away in his apartment and spends hours on end sitting in front of his computer. (This is how many of the guys I went to college with at North Dakota State University spent their early twenties.) When a client shows up to purchase some sort of illicit disk from Neo, the customer comments on how pale and worn out our protagonist appears.

Yadda yadda yadda. There is a call to adventure. Neo answers the call, but chickens out because he does not wish to plummet to his death. More stuff happens. Our hero suffers self-doubt. Neo dedicates himself to absorbing new information and accepting this new reality. Neo and his pals re-enter The Matrix, this time he does so as a freed mind. Someone turns out to be a mole. There is betrayal. There is death. There is tragedy. There are some amazing fight scenes with fantastic choreography!

To sum it all up, if you haven’t seen The Matrix yet then I don’t know what rock you’ve been hiding under these past two decades. Go see it already! If you’ve seen it already, then watch it again!!