Every pair of Matrix movie sunglasses, ranked

The Matrix franchise is full of visual signifiers — lines of green text, black trench coats, colorful pills — but one of the most notable is the sunglasses that seemingly every major character wears.

Designer Richard Walker at Blinde Design Project custom-crafted each style of eyewear for the movies’ leads, and every pair is different. To rank the sunglasses in each movie’s films according to their style, I watched all of them, even the latest one. I’ll try not to spoil the new flick, but all bets are off for the original trilogy.

20. Change

Warner Bros. Pictures

Switch is the crew member who earned the most points from the Nebuchadnezzar. Who prefers white to black in the Matrix? However, her choice in sunglasses is quite shabby. During the scene where the crew jacks in to visit the Oracle, she’s seen wearing just an absolutely hideous, bulbous pair of orange wrap-around shades. One piece of the worst of decade-long rave culture.

19. Neo Code: Friend of Choi, The Strange Guy Who Buys It From Choi

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Thomas Anderson is our first meeting. MatrixFilm, he knocks on his door in order to sell him a disc of code. A sleazy-looking guy called Choi arrives with an entire crew of dirtbags. One of those guys looks like WWE wrestler Edge and is wearing those late ’90s bubble goggle shades that were a big deal for a while. It’s kind of weird because we get all of these very intentional sunglasses-wearing characters in the movie and then there’s this guy who is never seen again.

18. Niobe

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The captain of the hovercraft Logos kind of came out of nowhere in the sequels if you didn’t play the tie-in video game, where Niobe was a key character. The worst flaws in the franchise are evident in her sunglasses, which have an angled lens that floats freely from the side and bottom rims. This creates an awkward space around the lenses. These sunglasses make it seem that the designers were in desperate need of a better idea.

17. Cypher

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Let’s be honest: Even for a piece of crap traitor, Cypher sucks. Cypher’s entire style is ridiculous. If every beard were ranked, The Matrix — or even in film history — his awful facial hair would be at the bottom of the list. However, the same goes for the glasses he uses in the scene when the crew leaps into virtual reality. It is maroon-tinted. They look rectangular from the outside. However, the inside of the sunglasses are rounded to ovals and tapered at the bridge. They stink.

16. Twins

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Bad aesthetics aside, the Merovingian albino-twin vampire henchmen (the Merovingian) are the most disturbing characters of the entire franchise. That’s kind of a shame, because their scenes — especially the first fight, where they’re misting through things and cutting suckers with straight razors — are great. The sunglasses they wear barely cover their eyes and feature black lenses with slightly rounded corners. These sunglasses could be worn by anyone walking down the street.

15. The Merovingian’s goons

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You have many reasons to be critical The Matrix Revolutions, but for this list there’s a big one: only one new style of sunglasses are seen in the entire movie. When Seraph, Morpheus and Trinity raid the snotty Frenchman’s club they fight their way through first three bald bouncers (one does have a great catchphrase, “Only way you’re getting through this door is over my big dead ass”) and then some goons in various fetishy outfits. They’re all wearing the same style of shades: oval lenses, black plastic frames. It’s not a significant difference in Matrix movie productions.

14. Apocalypse

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For sunglasses, there are two major schools of thought. MatrixThree-part: chunky or wire rims Apoc is the Nebuchadnezzar Crewman, who drives most of his driving in virtual reality, wears rounded plastic frames with rectangular lenses. They don’t look bad by any means but seem pretty dated and a little corny.

13. Berg

Neo fans are in Resurrections of the Matrix only jacks into the Matrix for one scene, so there’s not a ton to say about his whole aesthetic. He is fine with his sunglasses. They’re fine! They’re fine!

12. Trinity

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Carrie-Anne Moss is an absolute killer and most of Trinity’s looks slay. Her glasses are iconic but there’s also something about the size of them that looks vaguely insectoid. They feature oval lenses canted at a slight angle with a top frame that’s separated from them by a small amount. It’s a look that inspired a ton of knock-offs but doesn’t quite land. They work on Moss’ face, but I’m not sure there’s a pair that wouldn’t.

11. Mouse

Warner Bros. Pictures

It’s a great way to die. The first film’s comic-relief programming expert goes on in full glory, defending Lafayette Hotel employees. We only see Mouse in the Matrix once, and his sunglasses aren’t particularly dramatic or innovative, but they hit a sweet spot that’s nicely futuristic and minimal while not being absurd. This is definitely a pair you can wear in real-life without looking too silly.

10. Ghost

Warner Bros. Pictures

Another protagonist in the Get the Matrix game, Ghost didn’t get a ton of actual screen time in the movies. However, he had a strong sense of style when it came down to his sunglasses. They’re sleek and rounded to fit the curve of his face, but angular enough to add drama. These sunglasses are solid.

9. Smith

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You have a lot to consider. ResurrectionsJonathan Groff’s new Smith is a great example of how expectations are reshaped. While the aesthetic of the movies is unanimously future-forward, Smith sticks out by wearing a pair of Tom Davies “McCartney” shades that a finance bro would rock on his way to bet on some horses. It’s a smart and subtle way to establish him as being “outside” of the fiction’s narrative presentation.

8. Lexy

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The other female crew member in the new movie, Lexy’s glasses are kind of a mirror image of Niobe’s: angled upwards, with the frame separated from the lenses. In her case, though, they’re detached at the top, not the bottom. This is huge because it gives her sparse, angular appearance a bold aggressive nature, while also signaling femininity.

7. The agents

All Agents of the artificial universe wear the same pair of rimless glasses with rectangular lenses. They also have steel arms. Specifically, they’re Blinde “Cube” 136005s, but those typically have wire arms so they were subtly customized. They’re actually the first kind of shades you see in the film, during the scene where they pursue Trinity. These are pretty solid — anonymous enough that they work with every face shape and immediately distinguishable from the other characters because of their straighter lines.

6. Bugs

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The first time you see Bugs’ glasses, they’re on Morpheus and they look … pretty ridiculous. It was a bit of a joke, I suppose. They look much better when they are retracted on Jessica Henwick. These are the most “Matrix-y” of the new film’s glasses. They’ve got a horizontal crossbar bisecting the circular blue lenses in a completely functionless flourish, but something about them really works. According to the actress, they were chosen.

“The only thing which I got to be involved in was the choice of sunglasses,” Henwick tells Polygon. “I pushed for sunglasses so hard. I think it’s integral to the very fabric of The Matrix. I was given about 50 pairs of sunglasses to choose from. Although we were all on the same page right away, one thing I found out was that I have one of the highest ears. This is because nearly every pair of sunglasses I received sat in a crooked position on my face. So we had we had to get it custom made so that it could counteract my misshapen face.”

5. Modal Morpheus

Warner Bros.

The casting of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II to replace Laurence Fishburne in the new movie definitely raised some hackles, but it’s pretty cool how ResurrectionsIt is possible to make deals. New Morpheus’s eyewear also has a facelift. The circular black lenses are still available, but they have been made more useful with gold frames. They look great, but they’re definitely not as striking as the originals.

4. Agent Smith

Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. Pictures

The coolest thing about the original trilogy’s first three-parter is the fact that Agent Smith is unaffected by Neo’s programming and his eyes change after he meets him. Each corner is beveled, transforming them into rectangle octagons. It’s just enough to distinguish him visually from the rest of the agents, a great bit of visual storytelling that shows how thoughtful every aspect of these movies can be.

3. Neo

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The Chosen One doesn’t don his trademark shades until pretty late in the first movie, but they’re solid: rimless oval lenses and a wire frame that’s bent inwards at a steep angle. The glasses changed a little bit in between the first movie and the sequels, adding a T joint where the arms and the lenses meet, but it’s pretty minor. These don’t look terribly comfortable to wear but they really complete Keanu’s look.

2. Seraph

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Collin Chou is the sentient programme that protects the Oracle. It has some of our favorite fight scenes in both sequels. His glasses are perfectly tuned to his aesthetic, resembling the classic circle-framed ’60s style worn by John Lennon, with steel bars connecting to the wire arms. They’re among the more conventional-looking pairs in the movie, which works with Seraph’s whole vibe.

1. Morpheus

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There’s really no debate here. The tiny nose-clinging shades sported by Morpheus became a visual shorthand for the cyberpunk world, despite — or perhaps because of — their absurdity. Sure, armless glasses have been a thing for a while, but they’re typically the provenance of 18th century misers or frontier grannies. The ones in the film had to be held on with adhesive, so they’re not terribly practical, but they’re absolutely iconic.