After a busy Valentines Day of playing Unreal Tournament 2004 and seeing Return of the King again, I sat down to watch the Animatrix. I’m not quite sure why, but I’ve realized a couple things.
First of all, they should make more Animatrixes (or Animatrices?), provided they could keep the quality up like these. These are some of the best cartoon/anime/whatever shorts I’ve ever seen. I am totally going to go out and buy this DVD. God knows I won’t spend the money on the Matrix Reloaded or Revolutions DVDs.
Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to my second realization. Given the high quality of these shorts, it is very obvious that it was possible to create two sequels to The Matrix that didn’t completely suck, and retroactively decrease my interest in the first one. For those of you who haven’t seen them, I really wouldn’t advise it. Rather than sticking with what I felt were the strong points of the first movie, those being it’s simple, yet engaging storyline, the use, but not total reliance on amazing CG for special effects, and very subdued philosophical undertones, they decided to up the undertones of philosophy and make those the center of the final two movies, as well as using computers to create the majority of any action sequences. There was a hamfisted attempt at a story in them, but it was smothered by the overdone, over the top, and ridiculously sophmoric “philosophic/religious/spiritual” message contained within. Basically, shitty movies, with terrible acting and overdone special effects.
The shorts are quite incredible, using many similar camera techniques as the first movie. It creates a total sigh-fest for me, because I really wanted those sequels to not suck. But no amount of hoping can ever change the reality of the situation. The Matrix, as far as I can tell, was never meant to have sequels. Unlike the first Star Wars movie, it was planned without a trilogy in mind, and it shows.
Anyways, I just thought I’d share my thoughts on some very trivial things that are no longer talked about in any circles, geek or not.
justinª