This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains what the philosophical project of the films themselves is. Providing an answer to this question gives the book a two-fold purpose. Firstly, addressing the issue of the films' own project requires the delineation of a new methodology for inter-relating philosophical and filmic texts. Secondly, this methodology will be put into practice through a detailed assessment of the ways in which the trilogy takes up and metamorphoses Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. The book then examines the complex construction of key objects, specifically mirrors and television/computer screens, in Baudrillard's work and their reformulation in The Matrix. It also addresses the re-emergence of the word/image dichotomy in philosophical analyses of the first film and its impact on the reading of narrative and character.