The Matrix film saga set off a wave of armchair philosophers who saw in it a tale of almost mystical depths, a metaphysics renewed with the motifs of postmodernity. The matrix of Matrix is indeed metaphysical, but it is neither new nor does it engage with the heights of ontology, Western or Eastern. These films basically copy the structure of Gnostic mythology; only the historical context is different. From the first centuries of Christianity we move to a non-time of the future in which the machines turn upon themselves and stop serving us, only to enslave us instead. The reasons behind this cosmic tragedy are as obscure as the face of any divinity. Let us turn now to Wikipedia:
Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός gnōstikós, “having knowledge”) is a collection of religious ideas and systems that originated in the late first century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasised personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions.
That brief account will do; anyone wanting more has tons of studies at their disposal. What follows is a rough, general sketch of the soteriological plot of those ancient Gnosticisms:
The true God lies far beyond materiality; he is the immaculate spiritual absolute and the container of all that is possible. Through a series of inexplicable events — which the Gnostics explain by means of an extravagantly Baroque mythology of divine beings succeeding one another — there has emerged a certain Yahweh who is, of course, not the supreme God but a sly demiurge who claims to be such: the villain of the story, who fashions the material world to his own taste. He cannot prevent, however, a spark of supreme spirituality from surviving in this rubbish-heap of bodies that are born and die. Human beings, as the apex of mundane creation, are the bearers of that spark. Within them lies the possibility of returning to the bosom of the true divinity, but to do so they must wake up and walk the path that will carry them from their gross materiality up to the sublime spirituality that will reunite them with the One (we recognise here the Neoplatonic topos of the great chain of being). The one who wakes up is the Gnostic, a privileged subject set apart from the rabble who understand nothing and go on sleeping — or watching the shadows in the cave, the original virtual realities. The Gnostic knows, but not rationally or logically: existentially, if we may be allowed the anachronism. His is the knowledge of the illumined one who has glimpsed the absolute truth, and who will see it because he knows the path of return (it appears that experiences of ecstasy, in which the mystical ascent was rehearsed, were not infrequent among these sects). And who is Jesus Christ? Not the son of Yahweh, but an emissary of the supreme God sent to wake up human beings — or as many of them as he can. So much for the Gnostic delirium, with which the Matrix delirium is so conveniently equated. Let us see: who is the supreme God? Humanity. Who is the perverse demiurge? The machines. What is the world of gross materiality? The false world of technologically constructed reality. Who is that little band of insurgents flying their hovercraft? The Gnostics, the awakened ones. Who is the Christ-emissary? Neo, the chosen one.
The narrative of Matrix is, of course, propped up by the lavish engineering of Hollywood, by its obligatory pinch of romance, by the typical existential doubts of its protagonists (lending it its varnish of depth), by its pop-culture-memorable gags (the coloured pills), and by its endless, far-fetched action sequences. Strip all that away — what is left? Old-school Gnosticism. (There is also Gnosticism revisited, of course, as with everything.)
And, by the way, to call Matrix a philosophical story is to say very little, since every story contains its philosophies, its ways of seeing the world and its speculations, more or less wild.