Lana Wachowski
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Connections, in both directions
These influences include, but are not limited to: Moebius; David Lynch’s Dune; entry-level critiques of capitalism; the 1980 Flash Gordon movie; Brazil, which gets both a dialogue reference (“27b-stroke-6”) and a Terry Gilliam cameo; spiritual transmigration; personal transformation; transhumanism.
Whether they are borrowing from “Star Wars” in creating a series of nutty looking characters or goofing with a wink and a nod on “Hitchhiker’s Guide” or even “Brazil,” the meaning of it all is hallow and comes off as a pale imitator.
Fans will notice a sequence echoing Terry Gilliam's “Brazil” that doesn't seem to fit.
It deliberately recalls Brazil , the brilliant dark comedy that Terry Gilliam famously had to smuggle out of Universal 30 years ago and screen for critics himself to prevent the studio from mutilating it.
I was strongly reminded of Brazil - an intentional allusion made concrete when the final bureaucrat on Jupiter's odyssey is played by none other than Terry Gilliam.
It's filmed as an homage to Terry Gilliam's Brazil and Gilliam himself has a cameo at the climax of this scene.
Star Wars (1977)
Directed by George Lucas
influenced Jupiter Ascending (2015), The Matrix (1999), Speed Racer (2008), Cloud Atlas (2012)
Dialogue Themes Visuals
What many people forget when comparing The Matrix to its own sequels (or the Star Wars prequels , or any other maligned sci-fi epic ) is that this 1999 original has bad dialogue too.
Star Wars is an especially big influence on The Matrix.
Commentators have found influences from Plato and Descartes, Lewis Carroll and Star Wars .
This is simpleminded fun for roughly the first hour, until the movie becomes overwhelmed by its many sources--Blade Runner (rainy and trash-laden streets), Men in Black (men in dark suits with shades), Star Wars for mythology, Die Hard for skyscrapers, Alien for secondary characters and decor, Superman and True Lies for stunts, and Videodrome for paranoia.
The trilogy concept, of course, reminds us that every young sci-fi writer wants to start the next "Star Wars" saga.
Dazzling to behold yet puny of imagination, the movie takes the “Star Wars” formula — hero myths nicked from Joseph Campbell, cutting-edge visual effects, comic-strip dialogue, goofy-looking aliens — and reduces it to generic Big Box shelf product.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Directed by Daniel Scheinert
influenced by The Matrix (1999), Cloud Atlas (2012), Jupiter Ascending (2015), Speed Racer (2008)
Visuals Themes Characters
That’s also nothing compared to the gonzo greatness Michelle Yeoh gets to indulge in once she is encouraged (in a sequence that gleefully pays homage to The Matrix) to tap into her alternate versions, as Everything Everywhere All at Once boasts numerous sublime martial arts sequences shot by Larkin Seiple where just about everything but the kitchen sink becomes a weapon.
And by blending hard-hitting science fiction action with philosophical musings about the nature of existence, "Everything Everywhere All at Once" can't help but feel like "The Matrix" for the post-Trump era.
Charmingly, a lot of these adventures seem to hark back to various late-’90s antecedents: Like Neo in “The Matrix,” Evelyn is a messiah-in-training who must learn to absorb powerful fighting techniques in the trippiest possible way.
In Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s bold and boundless, nihilist multiverse spectacle, the co-directors known as the Daniels gleefully reference “The Matrix,” “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and the works of Wong Kar-wai to give the legendary Michelle Yeoh her most demanding, and possibly most fulfilling role, yet.
Without a breath’s hesitation, they start to explore the outer limits of the universe through whiplash-inducing montages, while peppering in a generous number of references to classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix and various Wong Kar-wai films.
The parallels to a thousand other things, from Cloud Atlas to The Matrix to Douglas Adams (AC Weisbecker’s 1986 book, Cosmic Banditos , arguably the funniest book ever written about quantum physics, also deserves mention here), are obvious, and the casting alone should give you some sense of the pop culture stunt the Daniels are trying to pull off.
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Directed by Rupert Sanders
influenced by The Matrix (1999), Cloud Atlas (2012)
Visuals Themes
Once again, echoes of other comparable fare — Blade Runner , which pre-dates the manga; The Matrix , which is widely regarded to have taken inspiration from it — remain evident, without overshadowing the end product thanks to the imagery’s all-round dazzling display.
There’s homage to the original anime, Christopher Nolan’s “Inception”, and of course there are inescapable comparisons to the canonical films of the cyber-punk genre such as “The Matrix” and “Blade Runner.”
The 1995 anime made an indelible mark on Hollywood cinema, most notably inspiring the Wachowkis’ The Matrix trilogy and the futurism of Minority Report.
The one where allies everywhere who defended Cloud Atlas are now coming down hard on Doctor Strange and The Great Wall without much knowledge or personal experience with the uniquely American issues of "whitewashing" and that great misused and ever-in-vogue term, "Orientalism."
Flash Gordon (1980)
Directed by Mike Hodges
influenced Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Visuals Themes Characters
These influences include, but are not limited to: Moebius; David Lynch’s Dune; entry-level critiques of capitalism; the 1980 Flash Gordon movie; Brazil, which gets both a dialogue reference (“27b-stroke-6”) and a Terry Gilliam cameo; spiritual transmigration; personal transformation; transhumanism.
Jupiter Ascending achieves a doofy grandeur from time to time, borrowing heavily from Dino De Laurentiis and Mike Hodges’ Flash Gordon with a gee-whiz sense of wonder.
Lana and Andy Wachowski, directors/writers/fabulators of the Matrix trilogy and Cloud Atlas return with an old-fashioned space opera that borrows heavily from the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars novels and cartoonist Alex Raymond’s Thirties-era Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.
It has the murky colors and helmet-clad design of Mike Hodges’ Flash Gordon, the wishful awe of Close Encounters, the artistic density of Ridley Scott (or Lisa Frank, for that matter), and of course, the operatic grandeur and sympathy of George Lucas.
Just look at 1980's enjoyably goofy Flash Gordon - or last year's Guardians of the Galaxy , for that matter.
Think Max von Sydow as Ming the Merciless in the 1980 camp classic "Flash Gordon" meets Steve Carell’s John du Pont in "Foxcatcher."
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Directed by Miloš Forman
influenced Cloud Atlas (2012)
Characters Plot
In his morph as the dominatrix nurse, he makes it "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" territory, channelling Nurse Ratched from the 1975 film.
And Broadbent ranges from racist 19th century sea captain to addled old composer to the dotty publisher who has to stage a prison break to escape a British nursing that draws on “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” for inspiration.
It's a karmic treadmill that takes a compendium of cinematic references — Amistad, Amadeus, The China Syndrome, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Blade Runner, Soylent Green and Mad Max — and turns them into a narrative collage of pop culture and fortune-cookie philosophy.
British actor Jim Sturgess is given cosmetic eye folds to look Asian, and Hugo Weaving plays a nasty female nurse, reminiscent of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest .
Other stories recall E.M. Forster (1936 Cambridge, where a young gay schemer played by Ben Whishaw provides crucial assistance to an aging composer played by Jim Broadbent), “Blade Runner” (23rd-century Seoul, where a clone-waitress played by Doona Bae tries to break free of her evil corporate masters with the help of a dashing young freedom fighter played by Jim Sturgess), “Amistad” (on the high seas of 1849, a slave played by David Gyasi educates Sturgess’ young attorney on the evils of plantation life) and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (Broadbent and pals scheme to escape from a Nurse Ratched-like figure, played by Hugo Weaving, holding them prisoner at an old-folks home in 2012).
I did like the transformation of Hugo Weaving into a female nurse as mean as Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
These influences include, but are not limited to: Moebius; David Lynch’s Dune; entry-level critiques of capitalism; the 1980 Flash Gordon movie; Brazil, which gets both a dialogue reference (“27b-stroke-6”) and a Terry Gilliam cameo; spiritual transmigration; personal transformation; transhumanism.
Lana and Andy Wachowski, its moneyed creators, have gone on record saying as much, but such defiance in the face of bloodthirsty chuckleheads is plainly evident from the film itself — a proud, super-expensive, quasi-explicable sci-fi semi-disaster in the vein of “Zardoz” and David Lynch’s “Dune.”
It ultimately reminds of David Lynch's notoriously bloated, overblown 1984 bomb, "Dune," and this is not a comparison which any movie should be thrilled to receive.Jupiter "Please, Call Me Jupe" Jones (Mila Kunis) was born on a ship headed for America, an illegal alien without a home, without a country, and without a father.
Their last film — the ambitious gender-bending and centuries-spanning D.W. Griffith-on-LSD “Cloud Atlas’’ — didn’t hang together as a narrative either, but at least nobody could accuse the Wachowskis of rummaging through the recycling bin for ideas from the likes of David Lynch’s “Dune’’ and their own “Matrix’’ trilogy.
The mythology of Jupiter Ascending reads like a high school book report on Dune by a student who never read the book, but instead got drunk, watched the David Lynch version, and passed out long before Sting showed up in his space underwear.
But since Cloud Atlas is an "epic folly" (like David Lynch's Dune ), many audiences will find themselves swept away and perhaps even enchanted by the movie's mere efforts to be huge and impressive.
Inception (2010)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
influenced by The Matrix (1999), The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Plot Themes Visuals
It’s a concept with a heavy debt to “The Matrix” (another team of pros hacking a simulated reality) and author Jeff Noon’s groundbreaking “Vurt” (with its programmed dreams and similar Orpheus-like theme), but Nolan sets it in a more mundane world closer to the one we all know.
"The Matrix" and its "what is reality" themes and storyline will obviously come to most viewers' minds, while the likes of "Total Recall," "Dreamscape" and others of their ilk have similarly mined the sci-fi world regarding dreams, memories and the like.
As much as some will immediately compare Nolan’s latest to “The Matrix” in that it also plays with the concepts of reality, “Inception” is like “The Matrix” times 10, as if you took that meeting between Neo and the Architect from “Reloaded” and stretched it out across an entire film.
Nolan's inspirations include The Matrix, Blade Runner and a fusion of M.C.
It's a haunting, high-octane trip reminiscent of The Matrix .
It inhabits a Philip K. Dick-style universe of psychological warfare that suggests “The Matrix,” “Total Recall” and “Minority Report” — all of them, by the way, better movies — but it’s fairer to call “Inception” a maze movie or a labyrinth movie than a puzzle movie.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2026)
Directed by Gore Verbinski
influenced by The Matrix (1999)
Themes Plot
Movies like The Terminator or The Matrix served as nebulous critiques on our reliance on technology and escapism…
The film exaggerates how it is affecting human relationships and is more aligned with the “Terminator” and “The Matrix” franchises than a rigorous, textured depiction of how it has potential to bring people together…
Other sources of inspiration—from 12 Monkeys to The Matrix to Ghostbusters to Night of the Living Dead—don’t get mentioned by name, but their influence is too obvious to ignore.
Someone finally thought up a prequel to The Matrix…
…it’s easy to feel like the robot apocalypse promised upon humanity by “The Matrix” and “The Terminator” is days away from our doorstep.
…giddily sweded amalgamate of The Matrix, Twelve Monkeys and Terminator 2: Judgment Day…
The Fifth Element (1997)
Directed by Luc Besson
influenced Jupiter Ascending (2015), Cloud Atlas (2012)
Visuals
Audiences will unavoidably, unfavorably compare Jupiter to past enjoyments like Star Wars and The Fifth Element, and the Wachowskis do no favors by taking a break in the story for what amounts to a five-minute Brazil fan film, complete with a cameo by director Terry Gilliam.
Sadly, even they are overshadowed by the movie’s garish production design which borrows liberally from Marvel Studios, “The Fifth Element,” Moebius, and bastardized Gothic architecture.
However, it plays out like a convoluted mix of The Princess Diaries meets The Fifth Element , with the siblings blending an overabundance of sci-fi premises and visuals.
There are conspicuous echoes of Stars Wars, The Fifth Element, Transformers, Men In Black, Brazil (Terry Gilliam has a small cameo), Signs, and at least a dozen more.
Luc Besson managed to juggle similarly assorted planets and subplots in the air, or lack thereof, with 1997’s The Fifth Element, but Jupiter Ascending has little of that space opera’s zany genius.
What I’m saying is that there’s about a 50-50 chance that Jupiter Ascending becomes The Fifth Element of the 2010s.
When it comes to bringing the Looney Tunes back together, Space Jam: A New Legacy does admittedly demonstrate a desire to get playfully fun, briefly taking the characters inside scenes from Mad Max: Fury Road, The Matrix, and a few others with inspired results (Foghorn Leghorn also hilariously recites a Game of Thrones catchphrase).
There are nods to The Wizard of Oz , Casablanca , A Clockwork Orange , King Kong , The Matrix , and Mad Max: Fury Road , among many others.
But so much of the film, directed by Malcolm D. Lee and credited to six screenwriters, functions as brand management, depicting a dazzling cinematic theme park filled with WB’s best-known titles (Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, The Matrix, even Casablanca) in an effort to equal the cultural ubiquity of rival studio Disney.
For no particular reason other than it happened in the first movie, James winds up meeting Bugs Bunny, who insists on slyly overriding his new friend’s more powerful recruitment suggestions (Superman, Trinity from The Matrix , et. al) in favor of gathering up the scattered Looney Tunes—who, you will recall, are a famously warm, supportive, and basketball-loving surrogate family.
We get callbacks and Easter Eggs from the likes of Casablanca (1942) to The Matrix (1999).
Infinite (2021)
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
influenced by The Matrix (1999), Cloud Atlas (2012)
Plot Themes
Sure, it plays with better ideas yanked from various sci-fi movies, books, and TV series, including The Matrix , Altered Carbon , The Fifth Element , and Total Recall .
I’m not in any way suggesting that screenplay writer Ian Shorr ( Office Uprising ) and screen story writer Todd Stein (2:22) absconded with someone else’s ideas, it’s that you can see the influences from stories like W anted (2008), The Matrix (1999), Total Recall (1990), and the John Wick universe in a variety of ways.
The Mark Wahlberg–starrer reveals just how stuck Hollywood sci-fi is in 1999, when The Matrix cemented ideas of digital consciousness in the Western mainstream (with a bent of pan-Asian spirituality).
The bare bones of the plot definitely possess the potential to deliver a strikingly original globetrotting epic, but the final product feels like an undercooked and underwritten slog that echoes superior films like Inception , The Matrix , Netflix’s The Old Guard and even the Fast & Furious franchise, and Infinite doesn’t bring anything to the table that either action or sci-fi fans haven’t seen done before, and much better.
Movies about “the one” — a relative nobody who realizes they’re actually the only person capable of stopping a threat, defeating a villain, or saving the world — had a good run from The Matrix (1999) through numerous YA adventures in the two decades since.
The Matrix is the biggest influence here – the story unfolds in a manner that follows that film almost beat for beat.
Visually, it is "The Matrix."
Beckinsale's trench coat and double-fisted gunplay also echo "The Matrix" series - but then again, "Underworld" looks to combine and reinterpret mythologies, not wholly reinvent them.
Imagine if “Blade” sided with vampires instead of against, had plenty of help all with the same fashion sense, all lived in “Dark City” and fought everyone as if they were in “The Matrix.”
Underworld could easily have been patched together from clips from a hundred other films, from Dark City to Blade to, most tiresomely, The Matrix .
(Nobody's complaining about that!) It's trying to be "The Matrix" and "The Lord of the Rings" and Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and "Romeo and Juliet" all at the same time, and it isn't 10 percent of any of those things.
Bathed in television-blue and punctuated by splashes of red, "Underworld" borrows much of its look from superior entertainments — "The Matrix" hangs heavily over the film, as do "The Crow," "Blade" and countless Hong Kong shoot-outs — but director Len Wiseman brings a nice Goth flavor to the proceedings.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Bliss is kind of a significantly less fighty and shooty The Matrix tossed in a blender with a high-concept WTF boggler like Serenity (2019).
A documentary that explores the belief and slim possibility that we’re living in a “simulation” world, not unlike that imagined in “The Matrix,” and “Bliss,” another film that toys with that idea in fictional-fantasy form, come out at the same time?
Although The Matrix is an obvious inspiration here, Bliss does eventually find its own groove, though Cahill initially struggles to make a story which features a certain amount of necessary detachment and disorientation coherent.
Ultimately, Bliss ’ messages about learning to appreciate what’s right in front of you, as well as facing ugly things about yourself that you’d rather just wish away, are made pretty clear, and it’s a way more intimate story about simulation theory than anything seen in, say, The Matrix .
Isabel is part-superhero out of spandex, part-manic pixie dream girl, part-Morpheus from The Matrix .
The unlikeliest pairing in recent memory, Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek are caught rummaging through a strange alternate reality in “Bliss,” which is basically “The Matrix” but with dumber tech and a Bill Nye cameo.
It’s Tron for the Xbox generation with the existential questions of Total Recall and The Matrix.
Rather than developing its own personality, the film struggles to shake the clear influence of other projects like “The Matrix,” “Ready Player One,” and even “The Truman Show” while also dropping in actual gaming and pop culture references with increasing regularity.
There are a couple of moments when screenwriters Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn seem almost willing to do that—at one point, Guy becomes an inadvertent sensation within the game by scoring points by doing good deeds instead of raising hell, inspiring others to do the same and threatening the very notion of the game—but almost as quickly, they retreat from the ideas that they raise, more content to simply graft together bits taken from “The Matrix,” “The Truman Show,’ “Ready Player One,” “Tron” and any number of other films before the dopey over-the-top climax.
It helps considerably that besides enlisting a hopelessly appealing cast (led by Ryan Reynolds and Jody Comer) and meticulous direction by Shawn Levy (TV’s Stranger Things), screenwriters Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn copiously — and gleefully — crib from some of the most crowd pleasing films of all time, including Groundhog Day, The Truman Show, Tron, What About Bob? and The Matrix…not to mention Penn’s own Ready Player One and Reynolds’s own Deadpool.
It’s Ready Player One mixed with The Matrix mixed with They Live mixed with The Truman Show mixed with Wreck-It Ralph mixed with…you get the idea.
“Oblivion” pays homage to modern classic sci-fi films such as “The Matrix,” “The Terminator,” the original “Total Recall” and tons of shout outs to “Star Wars: Episode V- The Empire Strikes Back” without making it feel like a complete rip-off.
It also is startlingly derivative as Kosinski, who directed 2010's TRON: Legacy, draws from a grab bag of sci-fi predecessors, including WALL•E, Total Recall, Planet of the Apes and The Matrix .
You know a pictures derivative when a list of titles in the same genre technically constitutes a string of spoilers Blade Runner, Independence Day, The Matrix, Moon, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, WALL-E, 2001.
A bit of The Matrix here, a lot of Total Recall there, with touches of Planet of the Apes, The Terminator, and even Wall-E scattered about, Oblivion loses a lot of steam as it forges ahead to its predictable outcome.
Plot points, images, and themes are cobbled together from a raft of sci-fi films including The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Moon, Wall-E, and Planet of the Apes, among others.
Like that movie, “Oblivion” incorporates all sorts of themes, ideas and images from science-fiction cinema of the last several decades, including “Blade Runner,” “The Matrix,” “Total Recall,” “2001: A Space Odyssey” and Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solaris,” among others.
Max Payne (2008)
Directed by John Moore
influenced by The Matrix (1999), The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Visuals Themes
It's not just that the story makes little to no sense or that the visuals are cribbed shamelessly from other sources—most notably The Matrix and Constantine.
Based on the popular video game of the same name, this action-thriller starring Mark Wahlberg borrows liberally and almost desperately from Sin City and The Matrix for its tale of an antihero cop out to avenge the death of his wife and young daughter.
Scripted by Austin, Texas-born newcomer Beau Thorne and set in a stylized film noir New York City, the film is a mashup of “Sin City” (2005), “The Crow” (1994), “The Matrix” (1999) and “Outland” (1981), featuring canned dialogue and tough-guy posturing by its star Mark Wahlberg.
There is more than a nod to actioners like “The Matrix” in the execution of the action.
With all the bullets flying, one expects a little "bullet time" – the slowed-down, 3D tracking shot popularized by The Matrix, and a major defining feature of the original Max Payne video game.
Soon after, the video game series Max Payne was developed and released, enforcing slow-motion gun-fu as a fresh, exhilarating, and vital tactic for survival).
While Bong's movies are typically anchored in a greater degree of credibility than his contemporaries Kim Jee-woon and Park Chan-wook (the latter is a producer here), "Snowpiercer" reflects the expressive aspects found in all of their works as well as many others, with its dystopian elements echoing countless precedents — from "Brazil" (there's even a newly developed character slyly named Gilliam) to "Mad Max" and "The Matrix," as well as the mother of them all, George Orwell's "1984."
You can see the film’s nods to “Brazil” and other similar, less mobile dystopias — the secret of the food supply for the back-of-the-train passengers evokes “The Matrix,” while the need for the young to serve the state touches on everything from “Logan’s Run” to the tale of Minos of Crete.
Watching it, I was reminded of the first time I experienced The Matrix or District 9. Snowpiercer sucks you into its strange, brave new world so completely, it leaves you with the all too rare sensation that you've just witnessed something you've never seen before...and need to see again and again.
They’re bribed into aiding the revolutionaries with the highly addictive hallucinogenic drug kronole, which adds Alice In Wonderland and The Matrix to the long list of pop-cult references Snowpiercer conjures up.
With shades of Brazil and The Matrix , Snowpiercer shifts between social satire, superb action sequences, and a vaguely philosophical "The train is, like, a metaphor for civilization , man" bent.
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)
Directed by Chad Stahelski
influenced by The Matrix (1999), Speed Racer (2008)
Visuals
Directed by The Matrix stuntmen Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, the film is an ultraviolent homage to Hong Kong action cinema which introduced the world at large to the concept of ‘gun fu’.
He became an action icon with “The Matrix,” indeed there is one line that is an upfront tribute to that classic, and as John Wick he again proves he can be the perfect, fictional superman, capable of speaking all languages and somehow defying all blows to his body.
Reeves even nails a nod to The Matrix – 20 years old this year – that is every bit as satisfying as it sounds.
There are points when the film could be taken for an occult allegory in the vein of Reeves' and Fishburne's earlier action franchise The Matrix (quoted directly at least once).
He also brings — to a cite a line from The Matrix, the landmark where Stahelski served as Reeves' stunt double, that gets reprised here — "Guns.
…the next “Mission: Impossible” has its work cut out for it, James Bond may have his license revoked and the “bullet time” from “The Matrix” is nothing compared to what a bullet from a silenced automatic weapon does under water.
The Lego Movie (2014)
Directed by Phil Lord
influenced by The Matrix (1999), Speed Racer (2008)
Themes Characters Visuals
According to an ancient prophecy repeated by Vitruvius, one day a “Special” will arise to dismantle the rigid conformity that governs the Lego universe — a concept that echoes Warners’ own “The Matrix,” albeit with none of that film’s self-seriousness of tone.
It focuses on a himbo construction worker named Emmet (Chris Pratt) who’s mistaken as a savior akin to Neo in The Matrix.
Movie nerds will delight at the smorgasbord of cinematic snippets sampled in this silly saga: "Star Wars," "The Matrix," "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter" lead the list of referenced works that probably made licensing the biggest portion of the "Lego Movie" budget.
(The film’s nods to Star Wars and The Matrix are more than just pop-culture asides.)
Taking inspiration from a grab bag of pop culture detritus — The Matrix and Toy Story among the key influencers — The Lego Movie follows ordinary Joe protagonist Emmet (Chris Pratt), a cheerful chap whose daily routine includes stretching, watching a dopey TV show called Where’s My Pants? and trundling off to work singing his favourite song: EVERTHING IS AWESOME .
The audience sided with the rebels against Lord Business, against his mono-minded robots, and against his frightful tentacle-splaying drones called Micromanagers (which look a lot like Sentinels from The Matrix ).