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The Matrix 2: Animatrix | Part #1

Posted by Psychopath - January 10th, 2015


I'll admit, I was expecting good things from this one. I had heard through the cynical grape vine that out of all four Matrix movies, this one easily qualified as the best. I, for the most part, hate the Matrix trilogy, most notably the first one. When I looked at the front cover of it, I could infer that it wasn't just an animated feature length film but rather a series of short stories that perhaps could wrap up the loose ends I had to endure from the first movie. Originally, I wanted to review this one last, but because there are apparently characters present in Matrix Reloaded who's presence in the film have no context unless I watch Animatrix first, I'm inclined to do so. Fair enough. Still, I have to critique the fact that Animatrix was released a whole month after Reloaded, so if you were an active fan of the Matrix movies at the time, you'd be confused going into Reloaded as Animatrix didn't come out until after Reloaded and there are plot elements in Animatrix that are present in Reloaded but unless you saw Animatrix first, which would have been impossible, you wouldn't have a fucking clue as to what's going on in Reloaded during specific segments. They couldn't hold off a the release of Reloaded by a month to let people get acquainted with Animatrix first? Whatever. Since these shorts are fragmented apart and don't follow each other in an episodic format, I'm going to review each segment individually as I did with my review of Alert. As of the time this was written is the first time I've ever screened Animatrix before, so the experience is new and fresh to me as is the clean pair of underwear that I've snagged from the dryer. With that being said, let's begin.

Title: Final Flight of the Osiris

Summary:

Oh won't you look at this, it's a crappy Japanese CG movie that actually looks better than the actual Matrix movies, how lovely. The short begins with a black guy and an Asian chick sparring with Katanas in a dojo simulated by the Construct. A large portion of this segment is just that of these two playing strip samurai where they remove the clothes off of one another and peek at each other's naughty bits. Fantastic, not only is the Matrix a confused and poorly structured mythology to begin with, but instead of using this time to tie up loose ends from the first movie it decided to be lots and lots of fan service. You know what would make for way better fan service? Explaining why getting killed in the Matrix kills you in real life when you're not linked into it through an incubator pod. Follow that up by explaining why they don't just infect the Matrix with lots and lots of malware and fuck it up and fuck it up hard.

They're woken up from their weird and potentially dangerous strip tease to be greeted with an entire fleet of sentinels. They note that the thousand machine swarm happening above them doesn't seem possible, even despite the fact that the machine empire has dominated the planet's surface and there are lots and lots of these things. A few of the sentinels then puncture the surface of the ground and find their way to the Osiris, the ship that this particular crew are piloting. The Osiris manages to outpace the sentinels by punching through a hole in the ground and reaching the surface. On their way there, they shoot at the sentinels tailing them with, what else, bullets. I'm sorry, were you expecting the Zeus cannon from the first movie to be the weapon that they mounted onto their ships as turrets? You're not the only one disappointed by that fact, from what I understand, that's their strongest weapon against the sentinels, why they wouldn't employ that as their exterior weapon, I have no idea. Once they reach the surface they note that the surface world is only a little more than planetary graveyard and they stumble upon an army of sentinels swarming a specific area. They see that the place they're swarming is a big drill located four kilometers above Zion and it doesn't take them long to be noticed. So, get this, instead of nose diving the Osiris into the swarm, shutting off the engine core and activating the electromagnetic pulse wave to disarm both the sentinel army and the big Earth fucking drill thus effectively ending the problem from the get-go, they decide to run away and chaotically and aimlessly shoot at all whom follow. They then decide that someone has to enter the Matrix to deliver a warning to the rest of Zion that the sentinels are on their way and the Asian chick volunteers and no I don't know her name and I don't give a shit to learn it. As it turns out, the Asian chick and the black guy are an item and they both wish each other good luck. Short and sweet, the entire crew gets wasted, but not before the Asian chick succeeds. How does it hold up?

Well, despite those three big grips of mine about the fan service, the outdated weaponry and the poor tactical decisions, it was well paced and balanced, something of which the first Matrix movie lacked; it had always felt as though it was rushed, not the budget but the story. Unlike in the first Matrix movie, I could feel the gravity of this segment despite how vaguely we know the characters because unlike in the first Matrix movie, we knew that Neo was gonna survive to the end regardless of the circumstances and he did, no question about it. There never was any gravity to the situation and whether you like it or not, it was just another run of the mill action shitfest where despite being a full two hours and thirty minutes long, the story still felt rushed. Unlike the first Matrix movie, this segment actually existed for the purpose of telling a story, where as the first Matrix movie existed to be a popular. I actually have more sympathy for these two characters than I ever did for Trinity and Neo and I don't even know their fucking names, mainly because there's a good chance that they'll die, unlike Neo and Trinity who are too popular to be killed. It's amazing how this ten minute animated segment where 30% of it was pure fan service had succeeded where a two and a half hour film failed.

Title: The Second Renaissance

Summary:

I'm including both parts into this segment of the review. The Second Renaissance is the back story of the machines and where they started from. During the period in which the A.I. was first created, an android killed it's owner for reasons I'm unsure of, it's implied that the android in question was going to be killed so he struck first. Wait a minute, I thought the matter of who pulled the trigger first was unknown and this information is apparently being shown to us through Zion's mainframe computer, doesn't that contradict what Morpheus said in the first movie about how nobody knows who first antagonized the situation?

In any case, this one event causes an upheaval in android vs. humanity activism and terrorism. I'm sorry guys but this kind of thing is what happens when something is given independent thought, some of them go crazy like that and they start killing other things. You'd think that sentience and free will would be the last thing you'd want to give to a fucking slave, this shit suffers from the same problem as Blade Runner. Eventually both the machines and humans are divided into two entire societies, the android city Zero-One and everywhere else. I suppose cyborgs have no place in either, or they're welcome in both. Either way, I have no idea, the concept is never touched upon. So, get this, the self sufficient, self sustaining androids whom have no need for economic trade start manufacturing human tools such as cars and can openers and selling them to the humans. I realize that these things were programmed to think they're people as exampled by the robo-hooker getting slugged in the face with a railroad hammer and proclaiming to 'her' victimizers "I'm real!", but don't you think that they'd be smart enough to know that they don't need food or external resources to survive? Why would they even get involved in the global economy? They're self sustaining, meaning that they recycle their own materials whenever they need something fixed and regardless of whatever kind of bullshit excuse I know you're gonna try and rationalize this with, if they really are at the mercy of the world in such a way that they need to get involved in the global economy, consider this; where did they get the materials to make their products with? I'm pretty sure that most countries by this point would not shell out materials to them on the prospect that the big bad robo-menace would grow and expand to eventually try and kill all humans, especially when factories operated by people and machines without independent thought exist outside of Zero-One and have been well established and applied for years at a time. So surely that means they must have their own resource for all the components that go into making a machine from scratch, which means that yes, they are indeed self sustaining and could be applying the machinery that they're creating to expand their territory and become a more formidable threat to discourage small operation terrorist attacks or outright war. This is fucking stupid, so much in fact that the economy of every other country starts to fall and devalue their money so instead of merely not buying Zero-One's shit and going back to manufacturing their own materials and stimulating their own economies, they decide to go to war with Zero-One and bomb them with, not just one nuke, but hundreds. Yeah, enjoy that hyper nuclear winter fuckheads, you do realize there are many other ways of generating an EMP blast without nuclear explosions right? I mean, we did after all fucking invent those methods as a means to avoid use of nuclear weaponry because of the severe repercussions of using a nuclear bomb, such as nuclear fucking winter. But then, why should I expect anything else from a society of people who decided to outright dump every mechanical husk of all the androids they killed at the bottom of the ocean when doing such a thing could pollute the living Hell out of it? No wait, let me rephrase that; why should I expect anything else from a group of writers stupid enough to not think that writing that in merely for the purpose of dramatic effect wouldn't backfire when the action meant to convey that drama makes no fucking sense?

As it turns out, the machines somehow survived that million sun bomb drop and initiate a third World War. When the machines gain the upper hand the humans eventually decide that since the androids with 400+ I.Q. levels couldn't possibly survive without solar energy even though there are dozens of ways to generate electricity without sunlight, they'll totally block out the sun. Yeah, that's a great idea, let's totally block out the sun and destroy all plant life on Earth and create massive ecological upheaval leading up to a second ice age, no that couldn't possibly end up biting us in the ass and give the machines a massive advantage over us. No sir, not at all. This is your beloved franchise folks, it's so rock stupid that it actually stole it's driving plot device from fucking Highlander 2: The Quickening, only at least in that movie, they needed to block out the sun because if they didn't, everyone would burst into flames and die. Here, they do it as a war tactic. Oh yeah, I just said that Highlander 2 was smarter than the fucking Matrix. When you're movie is so rock fucking stupid that Highlander 2 is smarter than you are, your franchise is broken beyond repair and it needs to go in the fucking garbage. This is the kind of thing that makes up a fucking Simpsons episode, not an epic science fiction thriller. And again, that goes without mentioning the catastrophic nuclear winter that should have ushered from the excessive use of nuclear warfare already blocking out the sun thus making this tactic entirely pointless. But then again, why should I be surprised by this bullshit? The people who wrote this were retarded enough to not know that both the heat and radiation WOULD have killed every single android in the area considering how the heat from the core of a nuclear blast generates a temperature of one million degrees Celsius and nothing can survive that, but if they somehow did survive that, the fallout from the blast would've destroyed their circuitry. At least in the first Matrix movie it's implied that what blocked out the sun was the nuclear warfare itself, here, they intentionally block it out by putting smoke into the stratosphere which considering how solar energy works eight times as well in outerspace than it does on Earth, is a very stupid idea. Yet somehow they survive both circumstances in the series of God killing nuclear strikes despite all the ways doing such a thing would end the fucking world. Oh and fuck the historical references too, if the writers weren't smart enough to know that dropping only one nuke would backfire very horribly for the people who used it, then I couldn't care less for the pseudo-social commentary. I'll stick to my copy of Metropolis, thank you. Besides, many of these historical references don't even make fucking sense, like the Egyptian empire reference when robots were made to carry a large brick in mass when anyone with even a brick for brains would know that having twenty robots drag a metal container by collectively pulling on a series of ropes on foot pales in comparison for convenience and efficiency when you consider the prospect of using, you know, trucks and shit like that, maybe something with the actual power necessary to carry such a thing up such a steep hill. I'm sorry but, historical references have to make sense in context first before I could ever even consider them to be deep.

This short basically explains all the reasons why the Matrix is fucking retarded, not through explanation but by mere demonstration. It's nice to get to see the past first hand to give the present greater context, but it just goes to show off all the reasons why I don't like the Matrix. If you're interested in a social commentary that depicts the effects of mass immigration and racial inequality through robots and humans, I'd recommend a movie that came out two years prior to Animatrix called "Metropolis"; it's an infinitely better movie and it's probably where this movie got it's "inspiration" from.

Although, this does wrap up a major plothole from the first Matrix movie where agent Smith goes on a tangent where he outright says that he hates the Matrix and wants to leave despite the former implications that he and the other agents were part of a hive mind with no form of independent thought; if there's one thing that this segment explains, it's that the machine empire have a major respect for individuality as theirs was stifled for years at a time and they understand what it's like to be intellectually oppressed and even though they hate humanity, they'd never go as far as to rob them of their sense of self awareness. But that still doesn't really explain why they built the Matrix; according to Smith, the Matrix was designed as a pleasure cruise the machine empire made for the human species that everyone collectively rejected as being too unreal to even be enjoyed. Furthermore, the androids that have that respect for human identity are not the same ones as the ones who occupy the machine empire today, it's exposited that they advanced their A.I. to new heights, which implies that they've risen above giving a shit about hypocrisy and that they're logically driven, not emotionally. Although this does explain why someone like Smith has independent thought well enough that he wants to escape his fate as a prison guard, it still doesn't explain why his existence is even necessitated by the Matrix due to the fact that nothing necessitates the Matrix's existence. According to this segment, the Matrix wasn't created until after the war, so it makes even less sense that such a thing exists now than it did before because before it was implied that the Matrix already existed for other purposes before it was implemented for the use of sedation and they were just reconfiguring the way it was used, here they expect you to believe that it's reason for existing has always been for the purpose of sedating people. So yeah, this thing actually sucks sensibility out of one thing to give sensibility to another. Who'd knew that the Matrix had such a moronic sense of balance?

Title: Kid's Story

Summary:

So far, "Kid's Story" is the best I've seen yet, this segment is more focused on action and philosophy rather than articulating it's historical and scientific structure, it keeps the two aspects that constitute the strong suits of the Matrix and it ditches the two aspects that the Matrix fails at horribly. The story surrounds a kid named Michael Karl Popper who types on a random server he found that he feels as though is dreams are more real than reality, he receives a response noting that there are fictions in his reality and there are truths in his fiction. He goes to school, receives a call from Morpheus that the agents are aware that he knows that his reality is a false one and they're coming to take him away. What follows is an extended chase scene of the kid escaping via skateboard, climbing up to the roof and jumping off of it causing him to wake up inside his incubator to be saved by Neo and Trinity. That's pretty much it.

You know, it's really sad that the parts that don't convey plot elements are the only really good parts of your science fiction series, but then again, there is a plothole here that I'll get to in my review of Matrix Reloaded, but I can't conclude on anything just yet, I've only looked at less than half of the shorts on this DVD, so let's continue.

Title: Program

Summary:

Wow, these keep getting better and better. No, I'm serious, I actually liked this one better than "Kid's Story". This one is about a new recruit being put through a simulation where she's made to believe she's in love with a guy who doesn't exist whom of which wants to be put back into the Matrix and for her to come with him. That's it and surprisingly, that's all it needed to be. This one has the best animation, stylization and story of all of them so far. I could easily bill this as my favorite. This is what the original Matrix movie should have been, it's focus is on character development which is one of the things that the first Matrix movie lacked severely, the person who had the most development was Cypher and he was a side character who only absorbed 20% of the movie, with that being said, even if the plot elements of that movie weren't self contradictorial and confused, it would only receive the absolute coldest of approval from me on the grounds that I really just do not give a shit about Neo or Trinity. Neo was basically a blank slate with no real identity for himself all throughout and when I say "identity", I don't mean his name. Trinity was a background character up until the very end where she confesses her love for Neo and she becomes a foreground character. Fuck them both, again, the two characters from this seven minute segment are more sympathetic than both Neo and Trinity and I don't even know their fucking names, furthermore, one of them is a simulation. Next segment please.

Title: World Record

Summary:

This one is not quite as good as "Program", but still pretty damn good. The animation is stellar as it was animated by Madhouse studios. The artwork is fucking terrifying, everyone's skin is pale and pudgy and their body parts morph in proportion and length beyond that of man as they move, this is what I imagine people in Hell look like, I kinda like it. The character development isn't as powerful as it was in the last one, but even then it's still more impactful than the first Matrix movie. This one more or less articulates the scientific structure of the Matrix where it explains that it takes a particular type of human being to realize what the Matrix really is and to break free from it, which in and of itself is a rare occasion. Even more rare is when someone breaks out of the Matrix not through realization but through pure determination, forcing themselves free by accident. This is one of the few aspects of the Matrix mythology that's actually thought provoking and works well, which is attributed by the fact that this is based around Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

The story surrounds a track runner named Dan Davis who's determined to break his world record top speed. When he makes his attempt his muscles explode during the track race, but through sheer determination he forces himself forward and starts subconsciously manipulating the Matrix, which then allows him to segway into breaking free from the Matrix itself by pure accident. This segment I particularly like because unlike with Neo, the machine that's monitoring the incubators sedates the track runner, reinjects him into the Matrix and erases his memory of ever having left. His legs are broken, prohibiting him from ever walking or running ever again, meaning that he'll never be able to push himself far enough as to accidentally manipulate the Matrix ever again. Although, one wonders as to whether or not Dan Davis does break free from the Matrix and become Link in Reloaded and Revolutions, he almost does overcome his limitations again when he stands up out of his wheelchair, causing the agent watching over him to panic and yell at him to sit down. Think about it, certain characters in Animatrix are relevant to Reloaded's plot and some of them, such as Kid, make an appearance and both Link and Dan Davis wear their hair the same way. I've read on the Matrix Wiki that they're two separate characters but from what I've observed in Reloaded and in Animatrix, it's debatable; the pair of kids he's related to refer to him as uncle Link, which is said, in the Matrix Wiki and not in the film mind you, that it's because Cas is Link's sister, but they never specify that they're biologically related in the film, only that she was married to Dozer, so it's possible that she's not biologically related to Link at all but is only regarded as family because she was married to the man who was the brother of the woman married to link, so as a family member Link could qualify as an extended brother in law to Caz which would qualify him as an uncle in law to Caz's children. If you're going to tell me that Caz is biologically related to Link because of a cheek-kiss they share, my rebuttal would be that the people of Zion kinda have a hippie love thing goin' on, especially during the rave scene. Besides beyond the one kiss, their relationship seems somewhat casual. I can never tell if Link has any outlets or not because he has his hair covering up a good portion of his back and he always wears a sweater. Needless to say, it's up for debate.

Title: Beyond

Summary:

This is an interesting one in the fact that this one actually explains that supernatural phenomena such as haunted houses or the Bermuda triangle are actually glitches in the system, areas filled with corrupt code that are susceptible to human influence. The story surrounds a teenage girl looking for her cat, when she stumbles onto some preteen kids on her search they point her into the direction of their hangout, an abandoned and dilapidated building said to be haunted where reality is bendable to the human will. They fucker around the area for the majority of the segment just before a group of agents get wind of the corrupted area and they reformat it and use the empty space to build a parking lot.

Although this does build on the mythology of the Matrix, I'm disappointed that it, just like "World Record", doesn't contribute anything to the main plot. Near the end, I was half expecting for the Oracle to show up and adopt them; remember the "potentials" from the first movie when the Oracle is visited by Neo, remember the kid with the spoon? I was expecting them to be the same kids as these, but apparently this set of kids are inconsequential to the main plot, which is disappointing. I kinda liked that frog faced kid who's face is the thing that nightmares are made out of. I'm not kidding, up until the end credits, I was following this short like a cat following a laser pointer scanning the wall, it's just that I was expecting it to have some kind of a point, instead, what I get is the protagonist cutting her finger on a tin can and letting the blood drip on the pavement. Yeah, this is actually starting to remind me of Alert, how it builds momentum and falls flat on it's ass. Next segment.

Title: A Detective Story

Summary:

Don't ask. This one is even more pointless than the last one, the reason being is because it's basically a regurgitation of the first act of Neo's story arc, only imagine Neo failing as opposed to succeeding prior to the point in which he's given the choice between a red and blue pill. Also, imagine Neo as a detective, those two aspects are the only difference. This detective is sent after Trinity by the agents, he does, the bug in his eye is pulled out just like the one from Neo's gut and before he can meet Morpheus and down the red pill, he's possessed by an agent and Trinity kills him. You know, they really need a contingency plan for when this happens, like a yellow neutralizer pill to reverse the effects of-- I'm investing way too much thought into this. This one isn't even worth watching and it never peaks my interest while I watch it and for whatever reason it's set in the 20's even though the Matrix is set in 1999. There's also a random slew of Alice in Wonderland references because this movie is derp-- DEEP!! I meant "deep"... wait, no I didn't.


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