Animated shorts outdo Matrix

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This article was published 05/06/2003 (8161 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE ANIMATRIX

Produced by Larry and Andy Wachowski

New on video and DVD

HHHH out of 5

IT is a function of a good sequel to expand the universe of the original movie — to add details, expand themes and layer in illuminating sub-plots.

If Matrix Reloaded often failed to do this, with its 10-minute car chases, its chocolate-induced orgasm diversions and its million-man fight scenes, it may be because filmmakers Larry and Andy Wachowski left the task to this offshoot package of nine animated shorts.

Surprise! The Animatrix comes off better, sexier and God knows, more succinct than Matrix Reloaded.

Four of the films were written by the Wachowskis, and these are the ones with the most pertinence to the Matrix Universe, with two films The Second Renaissance Parts I and II, offering up the Matrix backstory: How machines made slaves of men instead of vice-versa. (Interestingly, the victory of the machines is shown to come about in reaction to human folly and brutality, incorporating references to everything from the Holocaust to economic embargoes.)

The events of the first film, The Final Flight of the Osiris, are actually referred to in Matrix Reloaded, with regards to a scouting ship that discovers that machines are headed for the last human city of Zion. Animated in photo-realistic Final Fantasy-style CGI, it opens with a sword duel-striptease combo, and has a finale in a race to a Matrix drop point.

Other films simply add different flavours to Maxtrixland: Shinichiro Watanabe’s A Detective Story is an all-style, no-substance diversion as a dime-store pulp gumshoe searches for Matrix queen Trinity (voiced, yes, by Carrie-Anne Moss herself). A more successful genre variant is Koji Morimoto’s Beyond, a cool haunted house story in which the weird paranormal phenomena are attributable to a glitch in the Matrix system.

Lots of people talked about the influence of anime on The Matrix. The DVD does something about it, and not just by showing how compatible anime is to this sci-fi epic. One of the DVD extras — Scrolls to Screen: The History and Culture of Anime — is a terrific documentary of the origins of anime style, with its roots not just in Astro Boy, but centuries-old Japanese scrolls that functioned as the world’s first comic books.

The video is good enough that it makes one wonder why the Wachowskis chose to release these films piecemeal prior to this video. Some shorts were available on the Internet. Final Flight of the Osiris ran after the putrid horror thriller Dreamcatcher. (Perhaps this was a test to see how much Matrix fans were willing to endure.)

No American studio has released a package of adult-oriented genre animation since Heavy Metal. The Animatrix is certainly better than that.