Animatrix

[Brocerius]

So, a friend of mine forced me to start watching the Animatrix recently. I say a friend, though I'm starting to re-evaluate that position.

As far as I can see, the sole purpose of the Animatrix is to systematically detail and expand upon every single flaw with the Matrix. Before I watched the Animatrix I enjoyed the Matrix. I considered it a fairly inoffensive classic-style awesome-beat-'em-up film. Of course, I didn't pay too much attention to the glaring and consistent fallacies. That would ruin it. I just watched Neo break faces, and enjoyed myself.

But the Animatrix... sweet Jesus. It starts off with the most ridiculous detailing of the fall of mankind I ever imagined possible - and I've read some pretty god-awful Sci-Fi in my time - followed by a ridiculous war. If the rather massive mistakes it makes in its presumptions about humanity aren't enough, the person who wrote it doesn't seem to have the slightest idea about AI.

The rest of the episodes, from what I've seen, aren't quite as offensive to the basic idea's of human nature than the first two, but they all seem to have the basic tenants in mind;
- make awkward references to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- be as inconsistent with The Matrix as is feasible
- make ridiculous and ungrounded statements about what the misguided idealistic writers (read:hippies) think of the nature of humanity.


If it weren't for the fact that this show claims some kinship to the Matrix films, I may not have been so offended. Though, no doubt I would have laughed out loud at the opening couplet.


Unless of course I've just been massively trolled, and it is in fact a comedy.



Discuss.

[a happy song]

Can you do something like this to the new Battlestar please? I hate goddamn new Battlestar...

[SlappyMcGee]

First of all, atob. WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK? HOLY SHIT, WHAT THE FUCK?

And at Brocerius:

I don't agree with you at all. Not quite as much as I don't agree with atob, but you merit a single WTF. The movie is actually a collection of nine movies, which is to say, nine anime directors take on the universe of the Matrix. (Akin to Gotham Knight). Watching them in sequence is odd, but understandable. In any event, to try and find connective fiber between them is useless, because they weren't produced together. From memory, I can only remember two that reference Alice in Wonderland. The rest of them are interesting artsy stories. In fact, I would say that the problem with your coming into this film was that you enjoyed it for the beat-em up style. The first Matrix is just standard action fare if not for the overlaying philosophy, and the sequels as well as the Animated collection take the philosophy further.

Can you elaborate on what is so funny about the fall of man?

[Brocerius]

As I recall, atob, you are an Iain Banks fan, right? 'Fraid I haven't seen Battlestar though.


And Slappy, I'll have to watch the first two again to give you a full write-up, but off the top of my head;

Admittedly it is all a matter of opinion, but the entire sequence of events that led to the fall of man struck me as utterly ridiculous. Mankind made uncharacteristic mistake after uncharacteristic mistake. It happened as it so often does with people writing dystopian futures (as a general rule of thumb, unless you are George Orwell, it isn't worth your while to bother).

Let me break it down. If you are writing a dystopian future - and more importantly (as the original Matrix simply avoided) detailing how humanity got to that point - you have two states of the world in mind. You have humanity as it is; and humanity as it will be if the series of events that you describe occur. You then have to bridge the gap with a feasible string of events (or one rather large event, such as aliens coming from Mars or everyone on earth going blind or the like). Or at least, that is what you should do.

What the writers of the first two animatrix episodes seem to have done is this; they have their future (the Matrix) but cant seem to find a way to connect it to reality. However, in stead of simply saying "This is a farce - lets start something feasible" they said "Okay, its nigh-on impossible to connect this world with the real world. So lets change the real world."

Instead of writing from reality, through the bridge, and into the dystopian future they wrote from the dystopian future, through the bridge and unfortunately didn't make it back to reality.

As for individual examples of how the presented 'today' does not really relate to today, you will need to wait until I'm in a position to watch it again. And even then, I may be opening up a can of worms in that there is no way for me to prove that I am right - that is, what I will be talking about will be my own interpretation. But I will happily stand by and defend it.

[scythe]

Brocerius Shaw's So Fucking Awesome.

I didn't know the Animatrix was still around? It sounded like a bad idea from the beginning.