Do we like them?

Do we like Neo?

A character from The Matrix (1999)

Our score: 9 out of 10. Yes, we'd back him. He starts out confused and reluctant, but he risks everything for his friends and for strangers, and he doesn't pick up a cruel streak along the way.

Thomas Anderson works a dull software job by day. By night he's a hacker called Neo, and he suspects something is off about the world. He wants to find a man named Morpheus, who might explain it. That search leads to the film's famous choice between a blue pill and a red one. The Matrix follows a software developer who discovers that reality is a computer simulation and enters a war between human rebels and their machine overlords.

Neo isn't a born hero. He's stunned, scared and unsure he's the person everyone says he is. What wins us over is that he keeps choosing the harder path, and his reasons are loyalty and love. He never shows power-trip tendencies. He doesn't hurt people for fun, and he's most at ease when he's helping someone.

He loses points for a slow start. He's passive early on and needs a lot of guidance. In the sequels his choices can look reckless, and his loved ones are sometimes weighed against the bigger picture. Even so, the story keeps him on the side of people over systems. For most of it, he's the one we'd follow into the dark.