Case Study: The Matrix
The Matrix can be used to illustrate some elements of the story cycle.
the genre-establishing in-medias-res cool action scene to establish genre and tone:
This isn't part of the cycle, but it is something I mentioned in the story cycle chapter as a good idea for genre fiction.
Trinity is almost caught by some cops. Instead of being caught by said cops, Trinity easily defeats them with weird magic hacker kung-fu. Agents are established as bad, scary, and at least as dangerous as Trinity. Trinity escapes, through a public pay-phone, at the last minute1.
This scene is not part of the plot of the film, not really:
It's here to make the genre promise: action, guns, weird magic hacker kung-fu.
It's established early and often in the world of The Matrix that hackers can travel over land-lines, which the AI could have quite easily foiled by simply choosing to set the simulation 20 years later or 100 years earlier, at which point the hacker's access to land-lines would become a serious structural issue.
a zone of comfort, the mundane world
Thomas Andersen (Neo) is a shlub in a dirty apartment selling... I don't know, some kind of diskette drugs2 to a gang led by a guy with a suspiciously low-cut shirt.
Thomas's smug boss, an officious character who's name I had to look up in order to learn what it was3, chews him out for showing up late to work.
I knew it, they're shonking T-Nubs.
"Mr. Rheinhart"
something isn't right, call to action
Following a hint left by his computer, Thomas follows the diskette gang to a sexy underground industrial music club where Trinity warns Thomas that he's in danger. 4
Later, at work, a phone arrives by mail and Thomas follows the instructions of Morpheus, a mysterious voice who warns Thomas that Agents are coming for him. Thomas attempts to run from the Agents but chickens out and is caught.
The agents attempt to flip Thomas to capture Morpheus. He refuses. The agents do some spooky belly button bug stuff to Thomas and show off some of their spooky goon powers. Was it just a dream?
Thomas meets up with Trinity and some hacker goons, who threaten him and ask him to follow. He refuses briefly but returns at Trinity's insistence.5
Hacker team extracts the Agents' bug from Thomas. It wasn't a dream! Creepy! Also it was easily the size of a pretty large light bulb so I don't know how Thomas missed it. 6
This is intertwined with the events of the first beat, above: that's right, the beats don't necessarily even have to happen one after the other in strict chronological order!
In the Hero's Journey Classic, the formula that this movie adheres to quite closely, this would be the refusal of the call. Honestly, this refusal feels almost perfunctory, like it's just included to check the "refusal of the call" checkbox.
In a DVD extra deleted scene, we see the version of the scene left on the cutting room floor where the rather hefty device was extracted from Thomas Andersen's b-hole rather than his belly button. It's still available, on YouTube, here.
crossing the threshold into the new and exciting
Thomas meets Morpheus, who explains that in order for Thomas to understand the mysteries of The Matrix, he'll need to make a choice: take a specific colored pill7.
After taking the pill, Thomas is dragged into the "real world", a science-fiction dystopia. The music swells and chorus of people go "waaaaaaaaa", then Thomas gets flushed down a science fiction toilet, where he is claw-game collected by the Nebuchadnezzar, the floating airship of the science-fiction dystopia resistance8.
Some very internet communities have adopted the red pill as a metaphor for "going down the rabbit hole" and learning whatever they think the spooky truth behind the world is, and that spooky truth is usually something like "actually women are terrible" or "congress is harvesting the blood of children in satanic orgies", so it's pretty safe to say that fans of the Matrix are not doin' so hot.
It's never explored in the movie, but in The Animatrix we get a short film explaining Tank's absolutely insane claw-game skills in a short where he spends hours in the Matrix winning stuffed animals in a small arcade. It can be found on YouTube, here.
gaining knowledge, tools, and allies
Neo (Thomas) gets to know his crewmates. Morpheus explains to him that the world Neo knew was just a simulation, and computers are using humans as a power source according to some extremely shaky science.
The crewmembers allude to Neo's importance and upload a whole whack of magic hacker kung-fu directly into his brain.
The rules of the world are laid down in detail: what are the stakes? What is the matrix? Who are agents?
We get some humanizing moments with the rest of the cast.
Our betrayer, Cypher, establishes that he's working against the team in a scene where he offers to betray everyone in exchange for his own re-establishment in the Matrix. (This is a set-up for the later betrayal twist)
adapt to the new world
At first, in a kung fu test with Morpheus, Morpheus wins, but Neo is learning quickly and manages to almost best Morpheus, the first sign of adaptation.
Neo joins the crew on a mission, their journey to an Oracle to find out if Neo is really "The One" who can save them all.
Here's where the Matrix case study starts to come off of the rails a little bit: this movie doesn't give Neo much of a chance to show off his growing mastery of his new understanding of The Matrix: he gets one solid kung-fu scene with Morpheus and then we're off to the movie's midpoint. That's right, we're just skipping a beat. Don't worry, that's okay.
mastering the new world, false victory, the goal achieved
The ultimate goal of the entire first half of The Matrix is to get Neo to The Oracle so that he can be anointed as The One.
And here, finally, Neo is brought back in to the Matrix and makes it to the Oracle.
... Honestly, very easily. Suspiciously so. We're only at the midpoint.
the cost becomes apparent, gathering troubles
Wuh-oh. The Oracle explains to Neo that he is not, in fact, The One, and this whole plot has just been a big mistake. Morpheus had better keep looking.
Worse still, the cost of this journey? An ambush by the Agents.
Morpheus is captured!
the twist, betrayal, everything falls apart
Cypher's betrayal is revealed! He kills off just about everyone in the cast except for Trinity, Morpheus, Tank, and Neo, then dies.
the darkest before the dawn, return to the familiar, a hope spot
Everyone but Morpheus escapes the Matrix, and they plan to pull the plug on Morpheus: he has secrets that are too valuable to lose to the Agents.
With everyone lost, Neo plans to risk everything to save Morpheus.
Morpheus is tortured by Agents.
To add extra pressure, the Nebuchadnezzar itself is under attack and can't defend itself until everyone is out of The Matrix.
the grand showdown, climax and apotheosis
Big cool action sceen. Neo and Trinity are big damn heroes.
Neo almost manages to take down an Agent. Whoa. Then Trinity manages to take down that Agent, by surprise: probably our first confirmed Agent kill in history.
Morpheus escapes with the team. Moments away from victory, everybody makes it out of the Matrix...
the even darkest-er before the even dawn-er, return to the familiar, a hope spot
...except for Neo.
Whoa there, we went back a step! This is another darkest-before-the-dawn moment!
That's right! There's nothing in the rules that says we can't do story beats again if it's effective!
Neo is forced into a final confontation with an Agent, who kills him. Neo is just straight-up dead.
The Nebuchadnezzar has almost been completely disassembled by team evil AI's nasty robots.
Dang. Game over. Humans lose.
the grand showdown, climax and apotheosis
With a kiss and a declaration of love from Trinity9, Neo is reborn. As The One. He easily, casually dispatches an Agent.
Weakly supported by the plot, it's established early and often that Trinity likes Neo, but the on-screen chemistry between the two actors is essentially nil. Nevertheless, the prospect of a smooch from a pleather-clad Carrie-Anne Moss would have brought me back from the dead in 1999, so I can't judge too harshly.
master of both worlds, returning and becoming whole
Everyone escapes The Matrix just in time.
An epilogue: Neo returns to the Matrix to be hacker kung-fu Jesus, delivering a speech then flying into the sky.
Really Wedged it In There
With a hopelessly jumbled together "zone of comfort" and "call to action", an essentially missing "adapt to the new world", and not one but two climactic endings one after the other, you'd think that this isn't an ideal example of the story beats in action.
But here's the thing: the template isn't prescriptive, or a formula. Mixing, skipping, repeating, rearranging story beats? All of that is totally allowed!