The Animatrix (2003)
Various directors
Warner Home Video

Review by MC206
7 June 2003

The nine animated shorts in the Animatrix explore themes from the Matrix
movies and give some important backstory, including a history of how
humyns enslaved the intelligent machines that later overthrew and enslaved
humyns.(1) Refreshingly--and in keeping with the style of the movies--none
of the shorts by various directors adopt the cutesy Disney look. Instead,
styles range from impressionistic watercolors to realistic computer
graphics to jarring expressionistic sketches (e.g. Peter Chung of "Aeon
Flux" fame directed the final short).

Thematically, the Animatrix is closer to the first film than the second
(see our reviews here (2) and here (3)). Several shorts emphasize
self-sacrifice for the common good ("The Final Flight of the Osiris" and
"Program"); several emphasize the choice between truth in the depressing
real world or individualist stupor in the dream world of the matrix
("Kid's Story," "World Record" and "Program"); and several emphasize the
organized (and justified) distrust of the cells fighting the matrix
("Detective Story" and "Program"), just as the first movie showed
Trinity's crew frisking Neo for bugs at gunpoint.

Aside from some exposition left out of the movies ("The Final Flight of
the Osiris" and "Kid's Story"), the Animatrix raises several new
ideas, two of which we briefly discuss here. First, "The Second
Renaissance" puts an interesting new twist on the old quasi-Luddite sci-fi
"the machines have taken over" story. At some point after the intelligent
machines began to resist exploitation by humyns and humyns consequently
carried out anti-machine pogroms, humyn governments banish the machines
to a country of their own (ironically in the "birthplace of civilization" i.e.
what is now Iraq). However, due to a combination of anti-machine
chauvinism and good-old-fashioned capitalist competition--the machines
flood the world market with hyper-cheap goods--humyn governments decide to
nuke the machine nation. This leads to the war that the humyns end up
losing catastrophically--in large part because they keep reaching for
bigger and bigger weapons.

Second, "Matriculation" hints at the possibility of post-"Matrix"
machine-humyn cooperation, although it also suggests that humyns aren't
quite up to the task yet, perhaps because they still see intelligent
machines as their servants or because they still harbor anti-machine
prejudices.

It's tough to say whether these shorts would pack any political or
philosophical punch on their own. But in the context of the other Matrix
films, they stir up some provocative images and leave the viewer with
something to think about.

Notes
1. You can watch four of the shorts for free at www.intothematrix.com.
2. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/movies/review.php?f=long/matrix.txt
3. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/movies/long/matrixreloaded.html