There’s been plenty of hype around the Matrix in the Year of the Architect, 2003. While “The Animatrix” was mainly a marketing gig targeted to increase the hype fans, some of its parts are bright and magnificent examples of animation. Brian McKay said in his review, “Unfortunately, like the average music CD, for every great track there's usually a "filler" song.”
This isn’t going to be a review, but nine individual reviews with the verdict being hinted at towards the end. Without anymore digressing….
1. Final Flight of the Osiris: The absolute best of the segments. The characters, even though they are short, are interesting (and beautiful – especially Jue, voiced by Pamela Adlon, who also did the voice of Bobby Hill on "King of the Hill," Ashley in "Recess," Sam in the "Pajama Sam" PC games, Moose on "Pepper Ann," Otto Osworth on "Time Squad," Derek Generic on "Bobby's World" and Rusty on "The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot"). The action scenes are as exciting as anything in the chapters, and the animation is close to flawless. Several moments look complete lifelike. This one almost makes the film worth buying on Blu-Ray. Strange that it’s the first chapter in this film. You would think that they would make this last since it’s the best.
2. Second Renaissance Part 1: Visually, it doesn’t hold a candle to the universe of “The Matrix” in any way. However, it is a breathtaking part of animation with a fairly thoughtful and, sometimes, instinctively disturbing story. You may feel a type of chill go down your back as a bunch of humans destroy a female robot to death, when she is screaming, “Please, I’m real!” (Think of “Short Circuit,” did you?), and McKay said, “The ‘Schindler's List’ holocaust theme of humans persecuting millions of sentient machines is handled very well.”
3. Second Renaissance Part 2: The conclusion that shows us how man eventually was the reason for his own mistake by making machines more powerful than them. Not quite as fascinating as part 1, and McKay admitted, “some of the music video battle sequences were a little over the top and reminded me of the campy animation style of Heavy Metal.” Still, it’s an interesting follow up.
4. Program: A standard Samurai-theme training simulation goes completely haywire, and a soldier of Zion, voiced by Hedy Burress (who also voiced Yuna in Final Fantasy X and X-2), has both her ability and her loyalty put to the ultimate test. Again, the visual style doesn’t quite fit together, and the result is a bit of a way around. Not bad, but pretty forgettable.
5. World Record: An athlete, voiced by Victor Williams, pushes himself too far, and begins to see beyond the mask of the Matrix when his adrenaline reaches the maximum levels. Interesting idea, but not well executed, and while most of these segments can be blamed of having a visual style that doesn’t really fit the Matrix universe, this one brightly fights with it. McKay mentions, “Too many hard lines and square features make the characters look unappealing, the athlete's Slim Shady wannabe sidekick, voiced by Alex Fernandez, is annoying, and what is up with the agents in this one?” The way they dress and wear their hair, they look more like the Joker’s minions from a mediocre Batman cartoon. This is one you can pass.
6. Beyond: Taken place in an unnamed city that McKay describes, “looks like a hybrid of Tokyo and Los Angeles,” a teenage girl named Yoko, voiced by Hedy Burress, loss her cat. A trio of neighborhood kids, voiced by Jack and Julie Fletcher, Dwight Schultz (Captain H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock from "The A-Team) and Jill Talley, think they saw it wandering into the neighborhood “haunted house” – which, unbeknownst to them, is a faulting segment of the Matrix. Once inside, they can bend the laws of gravity and physics, and program failures clear themselves as strange and indistinct visions. A pretty cool idea, with some cute characters, but it does drag in places. Not a bad segment.
7. Kid’s story: McKay said, “Why the tagalong kid in Matrix Reloaded got as much screen time as he did is a mystery to me. Not only was the kid annoying, but his character made no sense to viewers because his back story hadn't even been released yet.” Surprisingly, though, “Kid’s Story” is a pretty decent animated cartoon. When a teenager, played by Clayton Watson, begins to sense that his “real world” may not be so real after all, he begins to hunt chat rooms looking for the answer. However, when he gets a phone call from Neo, voiced by Keanu Reeves, in the middle of class, and suddenly finds his school surrounded by agents, voiced by James Arnold Taylor – well, what can he do but make some kind of escape on his skateboard? While the story isn’t really interesting, the animation is mesmerizing – especially the skateboarding parts with lots of unclear lines to emphasize motion and speed.
8. Detective Story: Apparently, part of the Matrix is an anachronistic world of 1940s clothing styles and architecture, combined with computers and hacking. When a private detective (James Arnold Taylor) is hired to track down a hacker named “Trinity” (Carrie-Anne Moss), his investigation takes him all over the city trying to pick up “his” trail. “A case to end all cases,” he calls it. Don’t try to over-exaggerate this. Again, we have an interesting story, and watching a fedora-wearing detective meet Trinity in her attire of black leather is kind of cool. McKay pointed out, “Also, the scenes of a snowy New York City with towering skyscrapers that look more like something out of Metropolis is a nice touch. But the story just didn't quite convince me, the ending was a bit flat, and all the anachronisms just didn't quite fit.” This gets credit for trying something different, but in the end you can say this was a “nice try.”
9. Matriculated: Since they put the best part on the movie first, it makes sense that they put the worst last. McKay said, “I couldn't even tell you what the story is really about, as convoluted as it was. From what I could gather, some people from Zion capture a machine and jack into a simulation program with it, hoping to convert it to their human way of thinking.” This plan backfires, but who really cares? Again, the animation doesn’t really look anything like from “The Matrix,” and while it is evidently busy and eye-candy, it can’t hide the fact that the story is boring and clumsily told. McKay asks, “And what is up with these new "sentinels" that chirp and walk around with big antennae and look about as menacing as a cybernetic Jiminy Cricket?” Once you get through the eighth segment, you can turn the movie off.
1. Final Flight of the Osiris: The absolute best of the segments. The characters, even though they are short, are interesting (and beautiful – especially Jue, voiced by Pamela Adlon, who also did the voice of Bobby Hill on "King of the Hill," Ashley in "Recess," Sam in the "Pajama Sam" PC games, Moose on "Pepper Ann," Otto Osworth on "Time Squad," Derek Generic on "Bobby's World" and Rusty on "The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot"). The action scenes are as exciting as anything in the chapters, and the animation is close to flawless. Several moments look complete lifelike. This one almost makes the film worth buying on Blu-Ray. Strange that it’s the first chapter in this film. You would think that they would make this last since it’s the best.
2. Second Renaissance Part 1: Visually, it doesn’t hold a candle to the universe of “The Matrix” in any way. However, it is a breathtaking part of animation with a fairly thoughtful and, sometimes, instinctively disturbing story. You may feel a type of chill go down your back as a bunch of humans destroy a female robot to death, when she is screaming, “Please, I’m real!” (Think of “Short Circuit,” did you?), and McKay said, “The ‘Schindler's List’ holocaust theme of humans persecuting millions of sentient machines is handled very well.”
3. Second Renaissance Part 2: The conclusion that shows us how man eventually was the reason for his own mistake by making machines more powerful than them. Not quite as fascinating as part 1, and McKay admitted, “some of the music video battle sequences were a little over the top and reminded me of the campy animation style of Heavy Metal.” Still, it’s an interesting follow up.
4. Program: A standard Samurai-theme training simulation goes completely haywire, and a soldier of Zion, voiced by Hedy Burress (who also voiced Yuna in Final Fantasy X and X-2), has both her ability and her loyalty put to the ultimate test. Again, the visual style doesn’t quite fit together, and the result is a bit of a way around. Not bad, but pretty forgettable.
5. World Record: An athlete, voiced by Victor Williams, pushes himself too far, and begins to see beyond the mask of the Matrix when his adrenaline reaches the maximum levels. Interesting idea, but not well executed, and while most of these segments can be blamed of having a visual style that doesn’t really fit the Matrix universe, this one brightly fights with it. McKay mentions, “Too many hard lines and square features make the characters look unappealing, the athlete's Slim Shady wannabe sidekick, voiced by Alex Fernandez, is annoying, and what is up with the agents in this one?” The way they dress and wear their hair, they look more like the Joker’s minions from a mediocre Batman cartoon. This is one you can pass.
6. Beyond: Taken place in an unnamed city that McKay describes, “looks like a hybrid of Tokyo and Los Angeles,” a teenage girl named Yoko, voiced by Hedy Burress, loss her cat. A trio of neighborhood kids, voiced by Jack and Julie Fletcher, Dwight Schultz (Captain H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock from "The A-Team) and Jill Talley, think they saw it wandering into the neighborhood “haunted house” – which, unbeknownst to them, is a faulting segment of the Matrix. Once inside, they can bend the laws of gravity and physics, and program failures clear themselves as strange and indistinct visions. A pretty cool idea, with some cute characters, but it does drag in places. Not a bad segment.
7. Kid’s story: McKay said, “Why the tagalong kid in Matrix Reloaded got as much screen time as he did is a mystery to me. Not only was the kid annoying, but his character made no sense to viewers because his back story hadn't even been released yet.” Surprisingly, though, “Kid’s Story” is a pretty decent animated cartoon. When a teenager, played by Clayton Watson, begins to sense that his “real world” may not be so real after all, he begins to hunt chat rooms looking for the answer. However, when he gets a phone call from Neo, voiced by Keanu Reeves, in the middle of class, and suddenly finds his school surrounded by agents, voiced by James Arnold Taylor – well, what can he do but make some kind of escape on his skateboard? While the story isn’t really interesting, the animation is mesmerizing – especially the skateboarding parts with lots of unclear lines to emphasize motion and speed.
8. Detective Story: Apparently, part of the Matrix is an anachronistic world of 1940s clothing styles and architecture, combined with computers and hacking. When a private detective (James Arnold Taylor) is hired to track down a hacker named “Trinity” (Carrie-Anne Moss), his investigation takes him all over the city trying to pick up “his” trail. “A case to end all cases,” he calls it. Don’t try to over-exaggerate this. Again, we have an interesting story, and watching a fedora-wearing detective meet Trinity in her attire of black leather is kind of cool. McKay pointed out, “Also, the scenes of a snowy New York City with towering skyscrapers that look more like something out of Metropolis is a nice touch. But the story just didn't quite convince me, the ending was a bit flat, and all the anachronisms just didn't quite fit.” This gets credit for trying something different, but in the end you can say this was a “nice try.”
9. Matriculated: Since they put the best part on the movie first, it makes sense that they put the worst last. McKay said, “I couldn't even tell you what the story is really about, as convoluted as it was. From what I could gather, some people from Zion capture a machine and jack into a simulation program with it, hoping to convert it to their human way of thinking.” This plan backfires, but who really cares? Again, the animation doesn’t really look anything like from “The Matrix,” and while it is evidently busy and eye-candy, it can’t hide the fact that the story is boring and clumsily told. McKay asks, “And what is up with these new "sentinels" that chirp and walk around with big antennae and look about as menacing as a cybernetic Jiminy Cricket?” Once you get through the eighth segment, you can turn the movie off.
In the end, when you really look at it, this is a nicely solid anthology, with some strong ideas and excellent animation, and they transferred even the weakest stories. “The Animatrix” is pretty average. You can see this movie, and if you would like, you can copy the good segments onto your files, then return it. I saw this movie about 3-4 years ago when my brother rented it from the library, and I thought it was nice and I'm glad I saw it.
Now hold on to your vomit bags everyone because next week we will be finishing off “The Matrix Month” with the absolute worst in the series.
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