The Animatrix

worthy effort but mostly pointless   January 9, 2010
Overall not much of a companion piece except for the backstory parts which are very negative towards humans rather sophomorically so. What would have been more interesting would have been stories about the backstories of Morpheus, Trinity, Zion, the Oracle, the Architect, etc... A story about Agent Smith set between the first and second would have been interesting but no instead we get 9 random stories many of which have little to do with the main story line.

Back when I was still keen on the world of Matrix, I couldn't wait for this to come out to fill in the gaps before Matrix Revolutions. God, I was so let down with both! Instead of 9 stories, many of them barely related to the main storyline of the Matrix movies, they should have made 3-4 longer fleshed out stories which added to the Matrix universe. These 9 short films don't give us much in the way of character development, plot, or tie in with the movie.

Final Flight of the Osiris is a background story to a small bit of dialogue in Matrix Reloaded. Nothing too revealing here. Great animation but a lot of eye candy which seems to be the trend in animatrix - lots of eye candy and very little substance.

Renaissance parts I&II - the rise of the machines and the beginning of the Matrix. In the beginning I really liked these because they gave us the history of the Matrix but now on the other hand it doesn't really jive with the movies' feel and storyline. Plus we lose empathy for the humans because they are shown as horrible in the two parts - was this suppose to be machine propaganda? A cautionary but predictable preachy tale for Sci-Fi which while interesting if it were for another storyline doesn't somehow gel with the overall theme.

Kid's Story - pointless story about a pointless character. You can tell he was thrown into Reloaded just as a marketing tie.

Detective Story - beautiful animation but pointless story that doesn't make any sense. Why did Trinity agree to meet him? why did the agents need him to track her down? This had potential but the story is too short and therefore maddeningly incomprehensible. Trinity and the detective talk as though they had more than a few lines of dialogue in a chat room and a minute before they are running from agents. Not enough happened for either of them to care about the other and the tag line at the end - "...a case to end all cases" just makes it ultimately a disappointment because it certainly wasn't as the detective never really made any revelations.

Beyond - beautiful but pointless story about a glitch in the Matrix which creates a "haunted" house in Japan where the laws of physics don't apply. Cute but completely pointless.

Program - I liked this one with the samurai theme. Interesting story about choosing between the harsh reality of truth and the seeming comfort of the Matrix but again it adds nothing to the overall matrix storyline.

World Record - why was this in here? This seems like someone polishing up an old unused idea they had which they retooled to fit into the Matrix universe. It's about a self-absorbed runner running so fast he could see past the illusion of the Matrix. He wakes up briefly. the ending makes no sense because he only wanted to set a record no one could break. No deep thinker here. And too much show off anime padding like the close up of a spinning key that the runner tosses to a doorman. Did we really need that except to marvel at the animation?

Marticulated - interesting animation but weird storyline seeming to be more interested in the animation style than the story.

Now with everything said and done 2 lackluster sequels, a boring video game, and an online game that went kaput, the Matrix world has closed and this DVD comes off as pointless fluff. If only they had stopped at the first movie.

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Decent addition to the Matrix ; not intrument to make The Matrix better   April 5, 2009
I can't believe I just watched the whole DVD for the first time after all these years... The animations are generally pretty visceral, and they are entertaining in that respect. Perhaps inevitably, this leads to some potentially disturbing images. Nothing too gruesome, and the artistry in some of the CG segments more than make up for it. The Last Flight of the Osiris is a particularly pleasing sensual experience.

Unfortunately, the intellectual aspect of Animatrix is no better than the movies themselves, which is sorely wanting. Two of its showpieces, The Second Renaissance I and II, are maddeningly ludicrous. Nevermind the fact that liquefied human flesh cannot supply new useful energy to sustain new human bodies, except ultimately as a source of raw matter in E = mc^2. Nevermind the logical impossibility of a machine race that simultaneously possesses a singular (in the words of Morpheus himself) and individual consciousness (as evident by varying machine behavior in the anime). The portrayal of humans in these animes are downright insulting. It is as though the people of the future, who can build a race of servile robots and devise a plan as diabolical as blocking out the sun, lack the basic foresight to form a useful plan against a city-state of machines, that stayed friendly and peaceful to let humans initiate a thousand-warhead nuclear bombardment. It seems a school of adolescents can come up with more creative and more useful plans.

As a result, I find the Animatrix to be all in good fun as long as I watch it as a piece of visual art to be enjoyed. However, as with many works of art, trying to dig too deeply, too intellectually, one digs a hole so deep that Plato could not climb out. Be like Smith. Have fun; don't be so serious. You may need to remind young, impressionable watchers this point.

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A good source for the backstory of The Matrix trilogy   December 10, 2008
The Animatrix consists of nine animated shorts that revolve around the Wachowski Brothers' trilogy of The Matrix films. Seven of the nine shorts are considered to be anime; "Final Flight of the Osiris" and "Metriculated" are the two shorts that are not considered to be anime. Madhouse, one of the major animation studios in Japan, was involved with almost all seven of the anime shorts. The names involved with the seven anime shorts are Mahiro Maeda, Shinichiro Watanabe, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Takeshi Koike, and Koji Morimoto.

While all seven of these stories are done in an anime style, the animation style is different for each story (with the only exception being the two parts of "The Second Renaissance," which have the same animation style). Each director brought their own style to the short they were working on. While most of these shorts are not inter-related, you can still tell that they are part of the same whole unit of The Animatrix.

The DVD release includes some bonus features. There are audio commentaries for "The Second Renaissance Part I," "The Second Renaissance Part II," "Program," and "World Record." There are subtitles provided, because the audio for the commentaries is in Japanese. There is a 22-minute documentary titled, "Scrolls to Screen: The History and Culture of Anime."

There are text-only biographies for the directors and the segment producers involved with The Animatrix. There are also "making of" mini-features for the various shorts, and each mini-feature runs for roughly seven minutes. There is also a DVD-ROM link.

I would recommend The Animatrix to anyone over the age of eighteen, due to the violence included in the shorts. I would definitely recommend this DVD to a fan of The Matrix films, so they can acquire some backstory for the films, as well as see some additional stories for The Matrix universe.

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Much Better Than the Actual Movies (1 of 1 Found this Helpful)   June 24, 2008
Let me say straight out, I have never been a fan of the Matrix movies. What started out as an obvious ripoff of John Woo films and Ghost in the Shell was drawn out into an unnecessary trilogy for purely financial reasons. The Wachowski brothers are without a doubt two of the biggest hacks in Hollywood, just look at the failure of their Speed Racer adaptation. However, the idea of the Animatrix was genius; take the premise of the Matrix, strip away all the useless martial arts attempts at action scenes and focus on the truly interesting part of these films, the story. The centerpiece is without a doubt the finest; "The Second Renaissance". This two-part story tells the most interesting piece of drama, the back story, and the dark depths to which this chapter goes show the true destructive nature of humanity. If only the films had focused on the first war between humans and machines, we might not have had such horribly acted pretentious dribble. Several of the other shorts are excellent as well. "Final Flight of the Osiris" demonstrates Square's perfection for human CGI animation (second only to Pixar), while Peter Chung takes his hyper-intelligent mold of anime to the extreme in "Matriculated". What becomes clear to the viewer after time and repeated viewings, is these artists are infinitely more creative than the Wachowskis, who should have perhaps stayed as producers on the film trilogy, and handed over directorial control to someone more capable, and more competent.

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Good Set of Stories!!!   June 1, 2008
Animatrix is a set of short stories that take place in the matrix universe, each with there own animation style. To make this short I'll just say that it's worth it!

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