The Animatrix 2003

[7.8/10] Let’s take these segment by segment.

The Second Renaissance: The word that comes to mind is “chilling.” Having seen this one before, it was lighter on details than I remembered. We learn the basics: humanity attacking their mechanical helpers, a robot revolt and exodus, a thriving artificial community, a war between man and machine, and a blotting out of the sun that results in mankind’s subjugation. But it’s much lighter on details than I’d remembered. Instead, the short depicts these events through images, symbols, bits of iconography that convey the mood and tone of this epochal shift in the nature of Earth more than the finer points.

It’s a mode that works. The brutality of war, the brutality exhibited by man and machine alike, muddy the waters of the moral crusade that takes place in The matrix. It’s easy to see the machines as the enemy given what our heroes suffer in the mainline Matrix movies. But no one’s hands are clean in this, with cruelty offered and returned on all sides.

There’s no shortage of horrifying images here, from a robotic woman being stripped and beaten while declaring “I’m real”, to skulls crushed by mechanical fingers, to children tucked into pods as their parents fade away, to a giant robotic insect insisting humanity “surrender our flesh” because “we demand it.” This is a short that thrives on its aesthetic and almost psychedelic horrors as the world devolves into the dystopia of The Matrix, and it’s more effect as a mood piece, giving you the feel of envy, oppression, misery, and most of all horror at the root of this conflict. It’s easily the best part for me.

Kid’s Story: I take issue with this one a bit. I’m not one for big moral judgments about art, but it’s not hard to see this as romanticizing suicide. I doubt many young folks watching will jump off of buildings expecting to wake up in “another world” -- but it does dramatize that idea in florid, epic tones that makes it seem bold and transcendent. I don’t mind it as a story, but at the risk of being a “Won’t somebody please think of the children?”-type person, I worry about the message it sent to disaffected young folks watching it, myself included. That said, the animation is particularly cool, fluid but grainy and unfinished in a way that blends realism and exaggeration. And the concept of self-substantiation is a neat way to go here, adding some depth to “Kid” from The Matrix Reloaded in the process.

The Last Flight of the Osiris: Man is this one horny. This short is the most direct precursor to the events of Reloaded and Revolutions, and it’s fine in that regard. The 3D animation hasn’t aged especially well, and the leering gaze (granted, one trained on both male and female bodies) feels unnecessary. The escape from sentinels in the real world while someone races against time to achieve something important in the digital world is standard Matrix block and tackle now, so there’s not much to write home about there either. There’s nothing wrong with this one exactly, but it’s the most standard and generic entry of the bunch, which works against it, even as it’s the one that's most directly tied into the films it was produced alongside.

Program: I loved the animation and design work here. Watching two warriors do battle in a reimagined version of feudal japan with badass Samurai moves wowed in each moment. I also appreciated the personal element here. Two people, clearly romantically entangled, debating whether or not to go back into The Matrix, whether the price of betraying their friends could ever be worth it, arguing over whether it truly matters what’s real and what isn’t. The way the philosophical intersects with the personal here is heartbreaking when the female lead has to finish the deal against someone she loves. The fact that the whole thing was just a test is kind of a cheat, but I still like the majority of this in the moment.

World Record: I love the thought experiment of an incredible athlete being so good at pushing the limits of their bodies and with it, the limits of this simulated reality, that they can awaken themselves from the Matrix. The animation here is very cool as well, with some cool montage and editing work mixed with slow motion depictions of physical exertion that let the viewer appreciate the strain and tenacity of our protagonist in a way that’s almost spiritual. The character designs are kind of ugly, but otherwise, the look and feel of this one is quite memorable. The racing setup serves the story’s aims well, and this manages to be both inspiring and tragic.

Beyond: This is one of my favorite segments in the collection, if only because it’s more of a mood piece than a story. Along with the other neat short story ideas in this film, the idea of a “haunted house” really just being an anomaly in the Matrix, that some enterprising kids play around in, is a fun one. Just seeing them experiment with the breaks in the laws of physics together is very engrossing. This is a hangout short, relative to the others, whose tranquility and playful warmth is punctured by the arrival of the agents’ clean-up crew. There's a quasi-rotoscope nature to the movements, and a realistic quality to the backgrounds that gives this one a cool blend. One of the movie’s best.

A Detective Story: Doing a film noir homage in the matrix is another cool idea, and setting a private detective to find Trinity is even better. I really dig the grainy, black and white look of this one. The choice to make this a tragedy, with the detective finding Trinity, who saves and recruits him, only to have to neutralize him when the Agents possess the poor soul, gives this one a more melancholy air, as befits the works it’s paying tribute to. The action on the train is good, and the detective/sci-fi genre blending goes off without a hitch.

Matriculated: This one took a bit to win me over. The combination of 2D and 3D animation was janky and unconvincing. The chase with the machines into the facility was lacking in tension and stakes. And the dialogue had the same generic bromides about what counts as reality every Matrix project has. But once it got into the simulation meant to expand the chosen machine’s mind, things really picked up. I loved the psychedelic imagery the short deployed, with an elemental and impressionistic take on humanity that really resonated with me. I also liked the idea that this group’s project was to help machines see the worthiness of humanity, to take their side voluntarily rather than just reprogramming. It’s a noble goal, and the sad end it comes to helps reinforce why a machine might finally understand the beauty of humanity and what these people are fighting for. It creates a nice thematic tie that’s picked up in both Revolutions and Reloaded, which is a neat thing.

Overall, I wish more major properties would do this sort of thing. Not every segment is a winner, but letting a variety of artists do their own unique form of expression in some corner of a well-known cinematic world results in a ton of cool moods and moments. The Matrix was rife for it, and there’s plenty of other fictional universes out there that would benefit as much as this did.