Happening at the very end of the LBJ era – with the US reeling from the Kennedys and King assassinations and Vietnam still devouring thousands of youths – the trial came to encapsulate, in a pithy courtroom-drama formula, the tensions tearing the country’s social fabric asunder. As anti-war, civil rights, and general hippie activists involved in the protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the Seven (theoretically eight) were picked as convenient scapegoats after the unrest was crushed at the behest of mayor Richard Daley, and arraigned before a judge whose views and demeanour put him to the right of Vlad the Impaler. If you are not an American boomer, the juxtaposition of the city of Chicago and number seven might mean little to you, but the formula stands for one of the causes célèbres of the Sixties. The Matrix brought questions about existential philosophy and nihilism to the forefront of the story and coupled them with intense action scenes that drew from martial arts and Japanese animation, to create an enduring cyberpunk sci-fi film that reverberates around contemporary culture. Several of the film’s stylistic inventions – such as the digital rain of the code that composes the Matrix – are iconic parts of contemporary culture. A hacker, Neo, is alerted to the falseness of the world they live in, and soon starts on a quest to uncover the truth. With The Matrix, released in 1999, the Wachowskis turned that on its head – depicting a dystopian future, where all of humanity had been trapped in a simulated reality, being used as an energy source for artificially intelligent creatures.

Commercial science fiction films could be stylish – like Blade Runner – but studios and filmmakers often focused on bringing science fiction elements to an otherwise human story.

Ninja village characters axe girl