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.

Although it was the longest part, this was the weakest part in my opinion. I got bored while watching it. Maybe it was a very good episode, I don't get it. I do not know. It was very boring to me.

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."

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.

The ninth and final Animatrix short, as well as the longest, running at about 16 minutes. This is the most surreal of them all, with downright psychedelic images. The animation is amazing, well-done 2D Animé with well-integrated and utterly stunning 3D CGI elements. One can tell that this was done by Peter Chung(directed as well as written), the man who brought the world Aeon Flux(the television series, *not* the movie). With a brief philosophical debate making up nearly all of the dialog in this, this also has food for thought, including some in the basic idea of it, in which there is great irony. The sound and visuals are impeccably well-done. I could imagine many not enjoying this on account of how weird it is(not to say that anyone who doesn't care for this has that particular reason for it), it definitely is not for everyone. There is a making of on this, as with all the others(albeit in a couple of cases, two share one), on the DVD, and it is an interesting watch at almost seven minutes. There are various disturbing things here, and it will be up to the individual viewer to decide what is and what isn't, really. I recommend this to fans of the Matrix universe, trippy, off-beat and imaginative efforts and/or science fiction. 7/10