Mankind's quest for enlightenment/salvation. The movie follows one man as he realizes this quest in accordance with what eastern philosophies and western religions have to say about the subject. Our central character, like everyone else, is trapped in the world. He is then pulled out and shown the true nature of the world that he's been living in. Having seen that world for what it really is, he is no longer controlled by it. He's then free to move in and out of it with full knowlege and mastery over it. He even takes on the task of bringing others to the same realization. It's a retelling of the story of Buddha, Jesus and other such figures.
That's a pretty cogent stab at describing the theme, and certainly one of the better attempts I've seen at it. If it's original, I applaud you on it.
However, one can read the Jesus theme into tons of storiesm including Tron, if one thinks about it for a half second (the user who walks amongst us, then sacrifices himself and ascends). When I saw The Matrix I was struck by how it almost added up to something, how it got near to talking about something of substance, but in the end it didn't, focused as it was on its bad-assery. Even when Neo has his final revelation and knows he's the One, instead of some transcendent moment he takes the time to tear apart a what is, after all, a computer program: Agent Smith. The lesson of his transcendence is he can kick the phony world's ass?
I'm not say mine's the only reading of it, but that's what I walked away from it with the one and only time I sat through it.
