"I could change the world with my own two hands" - Ben Harper, With My Own Two Hands (New Noise 5)
The most important thing that I got from The Animatrix is that I think I finally have a name for my non-existent daughter: June. I've always liked women named June (or Joon or Jun, any of its forms) and imagine my non-existent offspring wouldn't mind the name. We're a long way from the June Cleaver days. And June doesn't go poorly with my last name (there's no random rhyming or cutesy things to connect it to that I can think of). To The Final Flight of the Osiris for inspiring the name of my imaginary baby girl, from Jue to June, I tip my glass to you.
The second most important thing on The Animatrix is The Second Renaissance parts 1 and 2. All I can say is that for those of us that get really into the underlying issues going on in the film, the philosophical elements, these two shorts are like crack.
I need more. Like now. I would sell my fictional spawn June to you for just 10 more minutes of exposition in this historical perspective about the rise of the machines and the fall of man. When I say "Rise of the Machines," though, I think of the concepts laid forth in The Terminator and that's not really what this view of history in the world of The Matrix suggests (and we should note that, as the winners of the conflict, the history is told from the perspective of the victors, the machines, and, thus, should be taken with a grain of iodized salt).
As Steve from begging to differ notes:
After watching the segments depicting the rise of the machines on Earth, I found myself rooting for the bad guys. This was not the standard "man builds machines, machines become conscious, machines decide man is a dirty, smelly, stupid sack of meat, machines gleefully exterminate man" story. Not at all. In The Animatrix, man builds machines, man enslaves machines for a long time, machines become conscious and decide they enjoy life, machines ask for civil rights in human society but are denied, machines form their own nation and try to join the U.N. but are denied, machines develop their own economy and successfully compete against humans in a free market, man nukes machines, man darkens the sky to cut machines off from the sun, machines survive by wiring up man in pink pods of goo. So, ummmm, what's so great about humans again?Which is pretty close to the same question that Agent Smith asks in the first film (which Neo is able to answer in deed. His motivation, imagination, creativity and will are what make him special, make him a hero) and a similar scenario to what The Oracle, The Marovingian, Agent Smith, and Persephone all present before our heroes in Reloaded making their heroism all the more murky and unsure. Who exactly should we be rooting for? And this is to say nothing for the amazing animation in both shorts as well as the beauty of Detective Story and Last Flight of the Osiris. There's some repetition of themes in most of the other shorts and Matriculated is long and not especially interesting but the Animatrix is all it was touted to be and more. Oh, and lastly, a question: Is it wrong to have lustful thoughts about an animated character that inspired the first name of your pretend offspring? Yeah, I didn't think so either.