The Animatrix

At the most recent movie night Kochk and I finished watching the 9 short films which made up the Animatrix. Lemat had gone home, or possibly to Casualty to get some anti-depressants after we had watched "Alien Apocalypse".

This means that in the last few weeks we have managed to finish off not only this DVD but the complete series of "Crime Traveller" and "Galactica 1980"

Anyway - back to the Animatrix - this was a straight to DVD spin off from the Matrix trilogy (a) and was meant to tell us more about the world of the Matrix itself.

All 9 of the mini films has names and - so far as I could tell - were unrelated to each other save for the theme of the Matrix.

The Matrix, we know from the original film, is a virtual reality that all of humanity (b) is trapped in letting them believe that the are living in a normal world whereas in fact they are all in pods in a post apocalyptic machine world where human bodies are supposed to be used by the machines as a power source. People don't struggle because they don't realise they are trapped. A sort of docile "battery farm" (d) if you will.

Like anything Windows based the Matrix appears to be vulnerable to various breakdowns and problems. One of the films featured a haunted house within the matrix which was in fact a manifestation of the representation of the world breaking down because the surroundings appeared to pixellate and gravity was behaving incorrectly. Another featured an athlete who was able to walk again after his muscles apparently exploded whilst he was running in some sort of international sprinting race. The Matrix is not perfect in other words - just like real life.

If you liked the Matrix you MIGHT like this but it is by no means guaranteed - indeed you probably need to understand most of the Matrix back story to have any chance of following what these films are all about.

Of course the films pose several questions for us but the most haunting question of all is whether we can know the true nature of reality or whether in fact what we see is only a shadow of some other reality. Maybe life is but a dream!

Heckler

(a) Just as with the original Star Wars (ANH) the original Matrix film is a stand alone movie although it left the path open for sequels (or even prequels). Many hold the first Matrix film as the best even though in may ways the sequels are superior in most respects (eg depth of plot, action and effects). Maybe it is the heart in the original Matrix or just the fact that it was unique at the time which made it such a success. "Bullet time" filming techniques were invented for the making of this film.
(b) Well bar the likes of Laurence Fishburne's character who live in the last human city of Zion(c), and possibly Free France which as we all know is in the South Pacific. Zion by the way is way way down underground, it looks a fair bit like the wierd subterranean world inhabited by old Heckler & Kochk Cleopatra 2525.
(c) Which we remembered when we sat down - (copyright) Boney-M "By the Rivers of Babylon"
(d) Boom! Boom!