3. Dark City (Film)
Alex Proyas 1998 neo-noir science fiction thriller Dark City pre-dates The Matrix and is so similar from start to finish that its impossible to ignore. The Neo of the story is John Murdoch, who awakens in a bath tub suffering from amnesia and gets a phone call telling him to bail before The Strangers show up. Following the advice, he gets out just before they show up to investigate. Communicating through their ear-pieces, The Strangers who have names like Mister Book and Mister Wall as opposed to Agent Smith and Agent Brown and are dressed in identical black garb attempt to hunt John down as he goes about discovering that the world he inhabited before he woke is not real. Before long, John learns how to manipulate this fabricated reality and the hunters have a real job on their hands. It transpires that Strangers need humans to survive and, much like reality outside of the Matrix, they are used like livestock, kept in the Dark City. It all comes to a head as Neo sorry John goes head to head with the top Agent sorry Stranger in a gravity defying, structure smashing battle. The Wachowskis even filmed parts of The Matrix in the same Fox studio in Sydney, using some of the same exact sets and employing some of the same exact choreography Proyas used in his movie.