Matriculated

This is the seventh part of 'The Animatrix', a collection of animated short movies that tell us a little more about the world of 'The Matrix'. In this one a group of people catch a machine and want to let him fight on the side of men. They want the machine to do that out of free will with a specially designed program.

The animation is colorful and very alive and that also makes it a little strange. Still very nice.

Somehow the Animatrix shorts with the most interesting premises have the worst outcome. Matriculated is the worst of the bunch (although it's a close call with Program), as it takes a great idea (showing the machines the beauty of mankind by plugging them in) and turns it into the worst experience of the 9.

As I said, the story begins promising and interesting, but ends with a long, long, long sequence of 'weird' images, a cross between the famous scenes from 2001 and VGA-rain (who can remember it), but not as interesting as neither of them.

Too bad as the Animatrix wasn't great to begin with. Add the fact that Revolutions as well as Reloaded were a huge disappointment... who knew it would end this way 5 years ago when we were all in awe of The Matrix... don't you hate sad endings? 3/10.

In this rather depressing Animatrix short, from Aeon Flux director Peter Chung, a group of humans living on the Earth's ravaged surface experiment with robots. The capture a 'living' sentinel and plug into the Matrix where they proceed to trick it into believing that it is human through a series of bizarre scenes and imagery.

The look of the animation is very much in the style of Aeon Flux, so fans of that show will get a kick out of it. The humans don't have much character though, which helps focus on the 'de-robotizing' theme on the captured sentinel. It's an interesting concept that I wish could have been explored a bit more with a follow-up. I guess it will have to live in ambiguity.

This short film has an interesting twist on the Matrix universe, which is that of converting a machine by putting it into its own matrix. There are a lot of surreal and pretty sights in this world. I liked the weird designs of the robots as well.

I'm stunned by the previous review. I thought the CG animations at the end were exquisite. My favorite of the 9 by far (well, 'Beyond' was also beautiful). Sophisticated, breathtaking and very trippy. And all on top really deep concepts:

Scientist: "How do they know that the real world isn't just another simulation? How do you?"

Alexa: "I know I'm not dreaming now because I know what it's like being in a dream."

Scientist: "So dreaming lets you know that reality exists."

Alexa: "No - only that my mind exists. I'm not sure about anything else."