Anssi Vartiainen The Animatrix is a collection of short stories tied to the Matrix universe. Most of the stories take place between the first and the second film of the actual trilogy and cover ground from everyday life within the Matrix to the origin story of the whole saga. As a whole they're a mixed package, with some good stories mixed with some really bad ones, most falling to the average category.Final Flight of the Osiris, our first story, was written by the Wachowski siblings and deals most heavily with the main Matrix storyline. It's visually very pleasing, though riddled with overblown sexual innuendo and boyish posturing. Just like the live-action films. That isn't a flaw, don't get me wrong, but it's amusing to compare this film to the other stories. The actual plot in this one isn't terrible interesting, but it has its purpose.The Second Renaissance is the origin story of the Matrix, and its biggest problem is that it's very Terminator-esque. You might as well rename the Matrix Skynet and be done with it. It's visually stunning, however, benefiting from the animation art choice the most, and told with good pacing and style. If only it had been more original, it might have made this collection a lot better.Kid's Story is another story with a good visual style that elevates it above its average storyline. Its animation style is fast and loose, allowing you to see and feel the momentum unlike anything you've seen before. Nothing special, but worth a watch for the visuals.Program is the most anime-looking of the stories. Visually gorgeous with some really cool action sequences, it also suffers from an average story. Like the previous one, it's definitely worth a watch, but the story could have been better.World Record doesn't have much of a story either, but it's so short that the story is just the right size for it. Dealing with glitches in the Matrix, like many of the stories in the collection, it's one of the better ones in the movie.Beyond is probably my favourite in the movie. A girl named Yoko finds an abandoned building in the city where the laws of physics seem to be a bit wonky. A glitch in the Matrix. The whole story is very mellow with a beautiful art style and serves as a good breathing moment in the otherwise pretty hectic movie.A Detective Story has a nice film-noir style, but is otherwise rather bland and clichéd. It's nice to see more of Trinity, but the story simply lacks impact and memorable moments.Matriculated is just weird. It once again has a distinct visual style, but it leans so much towards artsy that it's hard to make heads or tails about the story, which I sense was the purpose, but it still ends the movie on a confused note. Personally I would have ended with Beyond or perhaps Kid's Story.As a whole The Animatrix is a gorgeous film that suffers from a lack of memorable stories. It's a good film to check out if you've liked the other Matrix movies, but as a standalone film it doesn't have that much to offer, though it's by no means a bad film.

lagudafuad The Animatrix is meant to be a bridge between what we don't know about the war between humans and machines and what we know as The Matrix the movie, but in the end I just found it hard to keep awake after the third short film animation in the eight short animation film. By the time of the fourth short animation I was far gone. I woke up rewound the DVD to the fourth and watched it from there down and I just regretted it, because it seemed like God was trying to save me from a mishap and I was stubborn that I want to go through the fire.The Wachowski brothers are anime fans, so they wrote four of the eight episodes in The Animatrix, which served as The Matrix trilogy back story; the remaining four stories are independent. The brothers came up with the stories while promoting the first movie in Japan and the production and release was done to coincide with the release of the last two matrix film (The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions) in the franchise.The stories have a high critical rating, but to me they are over rated, this movie is filled with so many lackluster dialogues and monologues and the whole flesh being put on a bony matrix foundation just seemed to me like a marketing strategy to keep fans watching.To me the sad part about all of this is that the matrix last films (The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions) that it was released along with are just full of effects and no full justification of their purpose. We may desire happy endings and The Matrix Revolutions kind of gave us that, but it came with a price of two tragedies. Here this movie is meant to show the justification of those tragedies, telling us why the human race lost the battle and how the machines even got into the battle in the first place.My final take is that, all you have to do is see the first matrix, it has all that you need to know, let your imaginations fill up the gaps in between because all this other additions are just a waste of your time.The characters Neo, Trinity, and Kid also appear in this 8 animation short film package, with their voices provided by their original actors Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss and Clayton Watson.www.lagsreviews.com

ziga321 If you like the original series, especially the story and premise there is a good chance you will like this one even more.In 'second renaissance', it explains the war between the humans and people. This short is somehow very violent, but beneath all the violence is hidden a message.In 'world record' things become more philosophical. This short ask a question whatever would happen if somebody would break his own body/mental limits. In it we follow the runner, whom runs so fast the he breaks his own 'chains' and wakes up on the other side in one of those "beds", the same one Neo wakes up in the movie. Very good short, with visuals that go well to the short story feel. My favorite.In 'beyond' we follow some young children's who find some old hut with BUGS in the systems. Not that crawling little creatures, but mechanical/system bugs, like time and gravity getting reversed. Very good short. Probably my second favorite.The others, i remember 'detective story and 'kid's story' which are also good.As I said this is simply a must watch for any fan of the original series.

Polaris_DiB I don't remember what happened, but The Animatrix basically got lost in the shuffle for me back in 2003 when it came out. I'm a fan of the Matrix series and have definitely had to defend it from time to time against people who've decided that they don't like so many people agreeing that a movie is smart, so therefore argue that it's not, and after all, the sequels don't really help much on that regard. But all that aside, it's taken me a long time to actually get around to view the stuff that's supposed to branch out the world created by the Wachowskis.I'd say it's something to be proud of. It's really nice when creators who homage something get the honor of being homaged back, and the range and versatility of these animations certainly do them honor--none moreso than the quality. The variety of styles and approaches in the animation make this collection consistently interesting, and in some cases are so good its easy to forget one is watching an animation (and not just for "The Final Flight of the Osiris", either...).The stories range from histories to sub-narratives in the regular Matrix storyline to surrealistic explorations of the world created by The Matrix. They are not necessarily tied to the same worldview and theme, and "The Second Renaissance" definitely gives some empathy to the machines, who have largely been faceless enslavers and murderers in the main storyline. For some reason, there's quite a lot of women walking around in their underwear, which is probably to keep the male non-fanboys interested, and quite a lot of animations feature a moment of epiphany with blood, which gives a sort of abject theme to the mix (I am reminded that one of Neo's first actions upon waking up in the first "Matrix" was to vomit, which ties into that old quote "You need to throw up to realize you're alive").I think The Animatrix is, as a collection, better than both Reloaded and Revolutions. Individually, they range in quality, but most of them are really good. The best thing about all of them are the ways in which the styles of animation play with the surreality inherent in the world that the Wachowskis created.--PolarisDiB