Thursday, February 06, 2003

The Animatrix: The 2nd Renaissance Part 1

Originally Posted On: 6th Feb 2003

What do you do to when your fans impatiently wait for the next 2 installments of your wildly successful movie?

You tell stories. Short stories. Make them animated. Explain the details of the mumbos and the jumbos, or what happened and will happen. Draw inspiration from the source of your movies.

So the Wachowski Brothers present, in anime (Japanese Animation), short animated stories, a total of 9 of them, showcasing the world of the Matrix as we know it, or do we?

The first installment of The Animatrix is out. Titled The 2nd Renaissance Part 1, it offers a glimpse as to the beginnings of the conflict between man and machine, and possibly give us a peek into how the Matrix was created.

Will not spoil the clip for you by recounting the 9 minute narrative, but some interesting points to take note and discuss:

1. The Zion Archives look like some kind of Zen-Buddha like inspired circuitry. Wonder if we will get to see this in the movie sequels
2. Area of conflict again is middle east, where 01 is formed by the machines and becomes an economic powerhouse. Middle East these days are too close for comfort.
3. There was one scene where a robot stood in front of a tank. Reminiscene of Tiananmen.
4. Violence. No doubt it's animated, but it's violent. Check out the scene where a woman's head gets smashed by a robot gone berserk, and another which looked like a rape scene, but turned out to be a destruction of a "female" robot in progress.

I sat a little uneasy watching the way the robot rebellion was crushed by the humans. Perhaps it's because i was watching these events unfold at hindsight, that these robots will one day stage a successful uprising and make Duracells out of humans :D And in a way, you kinda feel for the bots to teach us humans a lesson.

That having said, at times the short film looked like your usual humans vs others (robots, as in Terminator movies, or mutants, as in X-Men movies).

But let us not judge these series too soon, as the other episodes are yet to be released. There will be more gems revealed, that I'm sure.

Looking forward to Part 2 of Renaissance where we just might see the creation of The Matrix.

P.S. This review has only showed you the door, you have to walk through it yourself.

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