Do not try and bend the spoon — just look at these throwback photos from the premiere of The Matrix, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this month.
The iconic sci-fi film, directed by sisters Lana and Lilly Wachowski, debuted on March 24, 1999, in Los Angeles. Starring Keanu Reeves as a computer programmer named Neo who learns that humanity has been enslaved by intelligent machines, the movie became an instant box-office hit and ushered in a new look for action movies.
In addition to introducing the concept of “bullet time,” The Matrix also kicked off an interest in black leather, both on and off the screen. Neo and his cohorts — especially Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) — are rarely seen without cascading leather trenchcoats and buckle-heavy boots.
“[The Wachowskis] always say, and they’ve never deviated from this, ‘We want it to be dark, we want it to be high contrast, we want Trinity to be like an oil slick,’” costume designer Kym Barrett said in an interview published on the film’s website in 1999. “They give me simple sentences and let me go away and come up with stuff, then we talk about it and it just grows.”
While patent leather was in short supply on the red carpet, the film’s stars and their fellow A-list attendees certainly got the “dark” memo. Keep scrolling to see what the stars wore to the premiere of The Matrix in 1999: