

Released at the height of the anime craze in the West, The Animatrix was a fun, detailed expansion of The Matrix universe (along with the game Enter the Matrix), and watching it first adds information and explanations to the first film, even if a few of its vignettes take place afterwards. (The stories World Record, Program and Matriculate are set in an indiscernible moment, in contrast to the feature films). The Animatrix is essentially split into three parts - occurring before The Matrix, we get The Second Renaissance Pts I & II and A Detective Story happening after the original film is The Kid's Story and Final Flight of the Osiris and occurring after the third film is Beyond.

As an allegory on humanity and technology, rebirth, and an ahead-of-its-time look at the transgender experience (both directors have transitioned since the creation of the first film), The Matrix and its sequels ask incredibly thought-provoking questions alongside wacky gun-fu and enough machine gun fire to make any teenage boy salivate. One way or another, humans are ruled over by "The Agents" here, a race of super-powered machines that can practically do and be anything within The Matrix simulation, and who dominate any kind of break against conformity with ice-cold violence.įor a series that defined a decade, its wildly diminishing returns have done nothing to water down its original movie's coolness. Skipping between two worlds - the one that we recognize of skyscrapers and dull, mundane office jobs, where we aren't destined to ever achieve anything of greatness and then the one outside The Matrix, bleak and empty, and made up of survivors who managed to escape that world.
