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The Animatrix (2003) Is Very Bleak (Part One)
50 Plays8 months ago
Trigger Warnings for more or less the whole span of this episode, the shorts we cover in this episode deal heavily with the concepts of genocide, suicide, and contains lots of graphic imagery.
Ella and Hope begin the quest to talk about all the peripheral media released in 2003 for The Matrix sequels! They cover The Final Flight of the Osiris, The Second Renaissance Parts 1 & 2, and Kid's Story.
@MatrixQueerPod on IG/Twitter
Ella Cesari is
https://twitter.com/drawnwithoutref
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Hope Lichtner is
@HopeLichtner on IG/Tumblr/AO3. good luck!
The Matrix music, clips and dialogue are all copyright Warner Brothers and we own NONE of it.
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Transcript
Introduction and Listener Engagement
00:00:00
Speaker
Question. Does it have any gun swords? I watch a lot of anime and, trust me, you're gonna want some gun swords. What's an anime? We have much to discuss. I'd like to share a revelation with our fans. Let me tell you why you're here. I'm gonna let you in a little secret.
00:00:29
Speaker
You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain. How do you feel it? Being the one is just like being in love. All I'm offering is the truth. Nothing. No one can tell you you're in love. Just know it. Do and do. All is the moment. Hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.
Content Warning: Heavy Topics
00:01:02
Speaker
Hey y'all, just to give a content warning ahead of time, this episode is going to be talking about some pretty heavy subjects, including genocide, social issues like that, obviously a war certainly, suicide, what else? Hope.
00:01:20
Speaker
I have three. It was the genocide. Graphic imagery was the third one that I wanted to throw out there, because we're going to be talking we're going to be talking some graphic imagery in some parts of this episode. Yeah, it's not pretty to look at. So, yes. Well, you've been warned.
Banter and Audio Quality Check
00:01:39
Speaker
Welcome. As I yeah, just gulp directly into Mike. That's something. Yeah, that's the best part. Yeah, that's why people listen for the golfing.
00:01:48
Speaker
What is it you say on Mystery Shack? Look back. It's like for like the audio cleanup is sucking up our spit. Oh, yeah. Sucking out the spit. Yeah. Oh, man. God, that that's every time you guys say that I say, guys, that's the wrong word for it. There's my filly. No, God. But, yeah, no, every time the two of you say or any anybody says that phrase, my whole body recoil. People do. A lot of people say that.
00:02:15
Speaker
I I don't know. I hope you don't encounter that phrase more than you do. You already do on our podcast. No, yeah, it's pretty much limited there. Good. All right. Excellent audio check. Hi, Ella. Hi, Hope. You were looking rather animated today. I have to I have to tell you.
00:02:38
Speaker
Oh, well, you're very kind to point that out. I've been feeling very animated lately, especially in terms of the jiggle physics department, but that's a whole other trans issue that we can talk about later off mic. And cut. Good. All right. Now let's get back to that jokey energy we had a few minutes ago. Yeah! Woo!
Exploring The Animatrix and Its Context
00:03:06
Speaker
was, Ella, if I could say your character model is on point these days. Oh, thank you. You know, I really made sure to really get my veins and sweat beads in there. Oh, yeah. Oh, God, I'm so mad at you for invoking that imagery immediately. Oh, it's the first segment. So it's appropriate. Anyway, we're talking about today. We are talking about the film. We're talking about that. OK.
00:03:37
Speaker
Today we are talking about the Animatrix. Now what is the Animatrix? It's not an anime dominatrix though that would be awesome. It's a film. It came out in the same year as the Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions came out in between the two or did it come out before?
00:03:58
Speaker
I want to say it actually was, you called this a film which I immediately had like a gut reaction to because I only ever knew this as a direct to DVD like bonus feature for absolute nerds.
00:04:14
Speaker
Yeah. So like, so, uh, if I'm getting my timeline correct, uh, matrix reloaded was released, uh, May 15th, I want to say 2003. And this dropped on DVD June 3rd, 2003. So just a couple of weeks after the general, just like two weeks after the release, I didn't know that this didn't get a theatrical release.
00:04:40
Speaker
Yeah, I thought it did. Wow. OK, I think I would have noticed that personally. Yeah. Now that I'm looking into it, I'm not seeing any production companies, Warner Home Video Village Roadshow and NPV Entertainment doesn't have a link on Wikipedia. I don't know. It feels like the kind of.
00:05:00
Speaker
point in time, at least in terms of Hollywood and whatnot, where you just kind of could get a theatrical release. Thank you for the absolutely perfect segue into how I wanted to start talking about this this fucking weird ass movie. Okay, so this cycle happens every single month. I've probably mentioned it before.
00:05:24
Speaker
But it's like I spend three weeks thinking to myself, I don't think I have anything to say about X subject we landed on. In this case, the animatrix. I don't know if I have much to say. And then three days before we record, I just lose my mind. It's like I have everything to say about this. The architect is telling you about this cycle that you are. Exactly. Yeah, this cycle. Yeah.
00:05:49
Speaker
I don't feel particularly against breaking this cycle because I'm delighted every single time. But so comes out a few weeks after the matrix reloaded. I get a hold of a DVD copy. I forget how or where through or whatever. Yeah, I watched the damn thing. But.
00:06:17
Speaker
The problem was part of it had already been released, like I had gotten a taste of it. To quote the Wikipedia, it says four of the films were originally released on the series official website, which is a fascinating way for something to drop in 2003. Imagine trying to watch this shit in 240p.
00:06:39
Speaker
Like, yeah, you finish the new female and then you open the... Holy shit. You literally described something I did regularly in junior year of high school. Holy shit. But we actually need to go... One of these films did get a theatrical release. You want to talk about that?
00:07:03
Speaker
I do want it. In fact, we're going to spend a whole episode talking about this experience. I'm pretty sure. But for context, I guess I should say the animatrix, it is it is an anthology. It is a collection of of nine, is it? It's nine. It's technically seven because one is a two parter, but no.
00:07:26
Speaker
Or would that be eight? Wow. I do math for a living. Jesus God. All right. Keep going. I would call it nine. It's a collection of nine segments. It's a collection of nine segments. They're all animated by different Japanese studios, all dealing with the world and lore of The Matrix. And yes, one of these segments was released theatrically.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yes, in the most unfortunate context possible.
Memorable Experiences with Dreamcatcher
00:07:54
Speaker
Let's cut to the weekend of March 21st, 2003. I am on an incredibly awkward first date. I am 17, I am a hapla, I have, you know, I'm gonna be in the closet for another 18 years, and then I, my PTSD won't be diagnosed for another 15 years. I do not have my shit together. And- As far as mine, it was good.
00:08:21
Speaker
It wasn't, though. It wasn't. That was a lie. It was a lie. But this girl that I'm taking on a date wants to see a horror movie. I don't like horror movies because of the aforementioned undiagnosed PTSD. But that's okay, because we're not going to see a horror movie. We're going to see a goddamn cartoon. It's called Dreamcatcher, based on the book by Stephen King, and it's the most fucked up nonsense forever.
00:08:48
Speaker
Directed by the writer of Empire Return of the Jedi. Directed by, yep. Screenplay by William Goldman. The guy who wrote The Princess Bride. Stephen King. It's got ladies in it.
00:09:04
Speaker
Yes, Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Timothy Oliphant, Tom Sizemore, and a Wahlberg, not the one you'd want it to be, or even not that. Why would you? I wouldn't want it to be any of them, to be quite honest. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Get out of here. But that movie, just to paint it real brief, is about shit monsters from outer space. Like, you're like reverse alien. That's what most Stephen King books are.
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's not a chest burrister. It's an ass burrister. And there's a single there's a single sentence on the very bottom of the Wikipedia article on this film, Dreamcatcher from 2003 that says at the time of its release, Stephen King stated, this is one of the very, very good adaptations of my work. That is the most disturbing, the most disturbing thing forever. He hates the Shining, right? He hates the film, The Shining.
00:09:57
Speaker
Yeah, because it took a completely different approach from the book. Right, and then he did his own version as a miniseries. Oh, Christ, okay, okay. Before we fall down a Stephen King rabbit hole, let's just say, we've talked about it, bonus episode, bonus episode, yeah. That's gonna be a whole thing. So I'm seeing this, and I'm kind of geared up to see whatever this is. I certainly don't know what's gonna be about shit weasels.
00:10:28
Speaker
But then before the show starts, you get the final flight of the Osiris. And as soon as that Matrix text code started falling down from the screen, my little nerd brain started lighting up. So for about seven minutes that night, I was having the best time.
00:10:48
Speaker
except for where it got really awkward about a minute into that short because I was on an awkward first date. Yeah, we'll talk about that too. Yeah, it was rough. I also, not to, we will, I promise I'll save the rest for the bonus episode. I just would be remiss not to say. In the summer on Wikipedia.
00:11:06
Speaker
I'm reading about Dreamcatcher. It says, as children, the characters acquire telepathic powers, which they call the line. Stephen King, you know you're allowed to just call it telepathy, you fucking loser. Oh, no, it's the line. Oh, no, no, no, it's the shining. Oh, no, it's the power. You're allowed to call a thing what it is. That's a stupid name for it.
00:11:31
Speaker
I hate that, thank you for sharing. Full disclosure, I have not seen that movie since that date in 2003. So I'm gonna have a real good time watching that.
The Animatrix on Streaming Platforms
00:11:46
Speaker
Anyway.
00:11:47
Speaker
So what we actually watched for this episode, that's right, is the first technically half, I guess, depending on the order. I was just going off weird. Yeah, the DVD seems to mix up the order. It looks like some of the segments are shuffled around, but the overall the overall structure is the same.
00:12:09
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not sure why. So just because it's confusingly laid out on Wikipedia, I'm going to read off the credits to each of the segments we covered all at once up top. Just kind of get that out of the way. Fair enough. We did look it up. I'm pretty sure you can watch this on Amazon Prime streaming. Why would you? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I have
00:12:35
Speaker
I have the Blu-ray from the big Ultimate Matrix Blu-ray release about 10 years back or something. I thought DVD was somebody I knew was moving and was giving a bunch of stuff away. I was like, oh, shoot, it's the Animatrix. You know what? I feel like that's the correct way to find the Animatrix. Yeah, no. And I was talking. It's like porn in the woods.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, yes, I was telling my girlfriend, I was like, oh, have you have you watched this movie? Because we're I was about to watch it. And she was like, I probably did when I was really little and probably shouldn't have been watching it. And I'm like, I think that's probably the best way to watch this. My cat is slamming into my microphone, so I apologize if there's any audio issues. No, that's the correct way. Ando is our special guest for today. Yeah, she's a little domestic terrorist. Yeah, I'm trying to have my cat put on the no fly list.
00:13:23
Speaker
Yeah. And she. Hey, speaking of speaking, hey, speaking of flying, what if there was something that flew for the final time, such as the Osiris in the first segment, the one so in the front of Dreamcatcher, the final flight of the final flight of the Osiris directed by Andy Jones.
00:13:46
Speaker
The writers were the Wachowskis. Heard of them. What? Heard of them? What was the computer animation design and production done by Square USA, Inc.? The video game company that makes video games about spiky haired protagonists? It was. Apparently so. And it is also edited by Christopher S. Kapp. Thanks, Chris. Thanks. Editing's an undersung job.
00:14:11
Speaker
The final fight of the Osiris, from my understanding, it is the direct prequel to the Matrix Reloaded, and also the direct prequel to Enter the Matrix, the video game. I was gonna say, it's actually the direct... Actually, I'm gonna push my glasses back up my nose. Actually, it's the direct prequel to Enter the Matrix. The video game came out in 2003. But I think Enter the Matrix takes place during Reloaded, right? Okay.
00:14:41
Speaker
I don't remember much about enter the matrix, the video game, because I did not own a PS2 and could only play it at a friend's house, but the whole plot of final flight of the Osiris is to put a letter into a mailbox.
Thematic and Production Insights of Animatrix
00:14:59
Speaker
Right, which is the, it is the, it is the Intel that they established at the beginning of Reloaded that the, uh, the machines in. Well, we'll get, we'll get to that in a moment, but the first, but my point is the first level of enter the matrix is to, as either Naomi or ghost walk very slowly and calmly to a PO box in a public post office.
00:15:28
Speaker
thrilling. Video games. This is what made the Wachowskis decide like, maybe we should just throw in a giant monster in the next game.
00:15:40
Speaker
Yeah, I've got urban physiognomy. Is that was that it? Physiology of whatever. Anyway, but then, of course, one of the first scenes in Reloaded is talking about that letter that Naomi slash ghost. Right. Which is so you tell the intel that the machines, the squities are all banding together and building a giant drill to drill directly in design and kill everybody. That's yes. Surprising discovery. We see that discovery being made by the crew of the Osiris, the ship.
00:16:09
Speaker
Yes, yes. I just wanted to lay track for the absolute motherfuck multimedia bonanza that was the summer of 2003 because I'm trying to figure out emulators right now. Like I got to download a GameCube emulator because I want to play this game.
00:16:28
Speaker
I have played a little bit of it on an emulator on my own and although I have a Mac so I'm not sure if it would translate the emulator itself at any rate yeah I think 2003 in matrix terms to me feels like if you took the entire MCU and tried and crammed it into a single year we're like oh to understand this you have to watch this series of short films and also play this video game
00:17:01
Speaker
Which is which is the one thing that I that I don't like about The Matrix, even though I do in a dumb way love this about The Matrix, even though I hate this exact same thing in Star Wars.
00:17:15
Speaker
It's that I don't need to watch seven seasons of a TV show to develop feelings for a movie I watched 10 years ago. Can we have on the record that this time I did not bring up Star Wars to get home? That was no. No. Can we have that? Can the stenographer make the record show? Let the record show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:17:38
Speaker
Hope got mad about Star Wars. Drink. Yeah, I'm sure we'll get into that in the phone, but not because of Ella. Put the glass down. It's Ella, stop twisting my arm behind my back. Ah, ah. I don't think that would be physically possible.
00:17:58
Speaker
I am fairly tall. Well, thank you. I try. It was bicep day, flexes into the microphone. Speaking of buff people, the flight of one of my pirates begins with perhaps the steamiest image you could have on an awkward 17-year-old first date seeing Dreamcatcher.
00:18:19
Speaker
I'm sure I'm sure you sound so much smarter than me on these records just given how much of a stoner I am. But yes, continue. My God, this imagery in the first chunk of this.
00:18:31
Speaker
Yeah, so it takes place. The beginning is set in the construct, right, which is it's a very similar training dojo to what we see Morpheus and Neo in in the first film. But this time generic wooden dojo. Yeah. Kamo. This time it's a sword fight and it's like off the bat. It really shows you can really tell how this this film came to be, which is mainly that the Wachowskis are giant fucking weaves.
00:19:03
Speaker
Basically, the Wachowskis were touring to promote The Matrix, then they went to Japan, visited a lot of their studios that made their favorite ship. It's just that it was directly responsible for them making The Matrix. Then they were like,
00:19:22
Speaker
Like we're big enough now to like work with these people. Can we do that, please? And I'm sure it's purely because The Matrix was the first million selling DVD that Warner Brothers or AOL Time Warner was more than happy to write the checks for this nonsense. I'm sure. Yeah, I think the Wachowskis probably knew that. I think that's probably when they visited, they were like, hey,
00:19:50
Speaker
So we can do whatever we want right now. Yeah. Let's do it's almost like they had a blank check. Yeah. Whoa, that. Whoa. What an idea for a. What an amazing idea. There should be a podcast about that gets into a great name. Oh, no. Name right there. Oh, no. They have so much cooler guests. Oh, no. I do find it interesting how I don't know if it's often, but I hear.
00:20:15
Speaker
It's one of those like if I had a nickel weird that it happened twice things or like I hear like stories of sequels or follow ups that come to be because the creators were touring the world or doing something related to that from the success of the first film. You know what I mean?
00:20:31
Speaker
Like you could apply that to the first and second half of the career of the Beatles before and after George went to India, I think, but OK, that's and I would other than I would. Yeah, I mean, I would highlight examples I've learned from from Pixar because I was a big influence on on me, of course. And the.
00:20:52
Speaker
One is that for Toy Story 2, originally the Pizza Planet aliens, the ones that go that car, they weren't supposed to be in the film at all. And then the Pixar guys, they went to Japan to promote Toy Story and they realized how huge those characters are, you know, in other countries. And they're like, okay, well, we have to, we have to include him in this movie. And so that's, they put them in there because of that. Oh, that's terrific.
00:21:20
Speaker
Another example, you know, take it or leave it, I guess, is that the director of Cars slash ousted sexual harasser John Lasseter went on a world tour promoting the first Cars film. And he said, quote, I kept imagining Mater in these scenarios in all these different countries. And that's what inspired Cars 2, where Mater is an international spy.
00:21:44
Speaker
You know what's really frustrating? Cars 2 is the only one I've seen because when I worked at Sam's Club, it was on about half the TVs in constant rotation. Oh my God. Just all synced up or like, or like one is like slightly offset. Oh no, they were all synced up. I was, I was good at my job. God damn it. Okay. You know what? Fair enough. Fair enough. I just feel like whatever I go to like, whenever I go to the TV aisle, one is always like slightly odd.
00:22:13
Speaker
Well, it's it's it was when James Cameron's Avatar got released on Blu-ray that I truly begun to lose my mind because that movie was on literally every television every single day over and over again for about nine months. And of course, you have a passion for physical media. You were surrounded by physical media at this job.
00:22:36
Speaker
Yes. Oh, yes. Very much so. It was it was kind of wonderful for me, but I had to watch fucking Blue White Savior. Fuck boy. Save the day a billionth time. I absolutely loathe James Cameron's Avatar. Different. That's a different podcast. But yeah, I think I think the opening being like, you know, there there there is just this very
00:23:02
Speaker
Dramatic and sexually charged sword fight kind of oh my god. Yeah, you know animated by square of Final Fantasy fame, you know, really yeah, this is was this around the time of their movie spirits within I Have no idea. Let's see You know, I think I really think I think Kingdom Hearts should have visited the Matrix 2001 okay, so right around when this would have been in production and
00:23:30
Speaker
Do you think, do you think Sora and Donald and Goofy should have visited the Matrix? That would have been the best, actually, I think. I think I actually would have played the game. I mean, I could, no, but here's the thing. The villain monologues in Kingdom Hearts. Smith could say that and you would, I would believe that it was Smith dialogue.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, wow. I'm gonna look like Sephiroth quotes like only death awaits you all, but do not fear. Fate is not to be taken lightly, Cloud. Can you not see your future? Can you bear to see the planet suffer, Cloud? It's incredibly frustrating how well that works.
00:24:19
Speaker
I know, right? That's what I'm saying. Yeah, no, that's really friggin' good. Holy shit. I guess on the note of that opening as well, I wanted to point out, I don't know if this is on the Blu-ray.
00:24:32
Speaker
But I wanted to make note that the DVD begins with a parental warning. It says, parental warning not intended for younger viewers. This animated program is based on the R-rated motion picture of The Matrix. It contains violent images of mature themes that parents may not find suitable
00:24:52
Speaker
for viewers under the age of 17, and that may be particularly disturbing to younger viewers, including intense and graphic images of violence, brief adult language, themes and images of an apparent teen suicide, parental discretion strongly advised.
Mature Themes in Animatrix
00:25:05
Speaker
And like, yeah, no, it makes sense. I mean, that makes perfect sense, popular mainstream film. And also this being animated, I feel like a lot of parents might be like, oh, you know,
00:25:16
Speaker
Well, especially in like, especially in 2003, like it's, it's not as far as I know on the Blu-ray at all. Like the Blu-ray just starts up. And I think even, uh, I want to say this Blu-ray edition was released in like 2011, 12, something like that. But like in 2003.
00:25:36
Speaker
The concept of cartoons could be for not kids was still very foreign to American audiences. And I think that that connects to a question that I have, which will probably be a central question that guides us through this episode. And the next one, which is, is this the darkest matrix movie?
00:25:57
Speaker
which and and on that note is the is this opening of Osiris because I think I'm pretty sure this was always meant to go first considering it's the one that they it's the one that's most directly connected to the films. Number one, it's the one that's fully like CG animated in a way that was very. Oh, yeah, this is like full Final Fantasy spirits within like, you know, what a photo reel. Yeah, it looks great when it's still and then when it moves, you're like, OK, it's two thousand three. Hi.
00:26:30
Speaker
And with that, I have to do with just like the rigging of the character models at the time. Yeah, I think I yeah, I do think they they probably don't have like, you know.
00:26:41
Speaker
They probably have 1,000th amounts of controls that a rig nowadays would have. There's probably more points of control in the average animated character's eyeball nowadays than the entire bodies.
00:26:59
Speaker
It's it's the joke about like the cell phone that you use to look up cats and porn that fits in your pocket is a billion times stronger than what put people on the moon. Yeah. Sort of. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But no rooms. They were the size of rooms. That's true. They had a door. You could just walk on the. Yeah. Joke on the Simpsons like computers in the future will be thousand times larger and only the three richest kings of the world will own them.
00:27:30
Speaker
But now is this like nudity laden sword fight opening of Osiris is it? intentionally placed because it I'm gonna be real hasn't Very little bearing on the rest of the plot of this film or the rest of the themes of this film Yeah, it really has nothing to do with readily. It is incredibly gratuitous Which matrix does best but is it there specifically to make a point of?
00:27:53
Speaker
like being edgy like this ain't your baby animated shit this is violent this is sexy look at her butt look at her boobs you know like I think
00:28:04
Speaker
I think they were trying to show off the technology. And I mean, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I watch it for the plot. Yeah. Right. Exactly. I read it for the articles. They were trying to show off the tech. I think Square Enix, if I'm right in remembering, they were trying to be able to license out the quote unquote actress that.
00:28:28
Speaker
quote unquote, plays the lead character in the film. Yeah, I think she got like a a Maxim cover shoot or some shit like not the voice actress. The actual 3D character model could be leased out for other movies.
00:28:45
Speaker
to have her just. Yeah, so which is just insane. And I think like the wet dream of George Lucas, Shakespeare's guy. Yeah, I brought it up again. Her peeking under the blindfold. Yeah, you did bring it up again. Her peeking under the blindfold is also pretty front and center on like the DVD cover and the posters and whatnot. It really is. It's just a full view of this. Have we even said what we're talking about? It's just this gratuitous shot. OK, I my brain blinked and I'm like,
00:29:14
Speaker
Have we mentioned it's a butt? Oh, it is a butt. Yeah, there is. It is. But you know what? I think the idea of it being a tech demo now that you mention it, that does hold water because I mean, cloth is is difficult for CG rendering. I think that's why the I think that's why the the geese, if I'm right and remembering, they're not wearing pants one, but the geese are incredibly short. And I think that's a combination.
00:29:39
Speaker
Yeah, no, go on. Well, I think it's a combination of two things, which is, one, it's still very difficult to animate flowing fabric in 2003. And this short is incredibly complex for the limitations of CG in 2003. Really, again, pushing the same envelope that they try to push in the burly brawl and stuff like that.
00:30:06
Speaker
And like a girl with a short gi and a long katana. Fucking love it. And two, we I did go back and re listen to our reloaded episode and we do make a point reloaded is incredibly horny. I think they're just letting themselves be incredibly horny. I think you're right. I do. But I just think.
00:30:34
Speaker
No, the tech demo aspect does make it does give it more plausible than I ability cuz I think the fact that the it's it's like they're doing like strip poker but with a sword fight almost where like they're They're lopping off parts of each other's clothes, which I do think is a fun. It's it's
00:30:49
Speaker
It's like the one scene in Resurrections when they're trying to just spitball what people like about The Matrix and it's bullet time. Yeah, deep psychological, deep philosophical conversations. I do like that it is like it's implied that it's like this is just they're this kinky. Like this is sex to them. Yeah. Because they make that exchange later where Thaddeus the guy is like, you know, I peaked and and you is like, yeah, I did too.
00:31:19
Speaker
That is cute. That is pretty cute. And it fits in the world. I think it's specifically though, it is the fact that it is the first scene of the first segment of this animated compilation that makes me think that it's there deliberately to kind of shake you out of any
00:31:39
Speaker
What's the word I'm looking for? Like a misconception you would have going into it being animated. And on the one hand, that kind of frustrates me because it feels like it's going out of its way to be edgy. But on the other hand, the whole film is like that. So I can't really fault this one particular scene for being that. And it's not as well. Yeah, sorry.
00:31:59
Speaker
Now, I just think it is pretty cool that what is possibly the darkest Matrix film in the entire series and franchise is the one that's completely animated. I think that is
Voice Actors and Anthology Format Appeal
00:32:09
Speaker
really cool. And I think clearly the Wachowskis have a respect for the medium and and they know what it's capable of. And then this is a great demonstration. Oh, absolutely.
00:32:18
Speaker
They do stuff in The Animatrix that they'd never be able to do in a live-action, $200 million production. I think this is the only horny segment in the entire film, right? I'm looking over the episode list.
00:32:40
Speaker
Second Renaissance. Not much sexy about that. Well, it depends what you get off to. Gross. I don't want that to be sexy. Kids story. Not that one. I meant second. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But like this is the most explicitly horny section of the. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Right up the top. Yeah, that's true. Um.
00:33:00
Speaker
And then we get, uh, well, Thaddeus, of course, the, the, the main guy in this is a voice by your friend and mine, Kevin Michael Richardson. I do love having Michael Richardson. I'm not highly underrated voice actor in my opinion. I mean, we, uh, I've talked at length about how great he is on, uh, Mr. Shaq look back the gravity falls podcast. I go to check that out, et cetera. Look it up on pipe dream podcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Kevin Michael Richardson also voices the deus ex machina in revolutions.
00:33:30
Speaker
So he does. He's my favorite giant baby face made out of thousands of little tiny robots. I did want to call attention to because like it.
00:33:41
Speaker
This is just me being a trans girl all over the internet on main, but there is a character credited as Crew Woman, who is apparently voiced by Tara Strong. Oh, well, that sucks. Yeah, no, I know, I know, I'm sorry. But she's on screen for all of like 20 seconds. If it's any help, she's the first character in the film that gets gotten stabbed.
00:34:08
Speaker
directly through the chest, but she has hilariously Lara Croft esque disproportionate tits and they have and you can tell where they focus their animation on her character because she has too much jiggle physics. Yeah, it was stupid. Yeah. So there's just them being horny on main again. I love you.
00:34:32
Speaker
So Jue, the girl in this, you know, I guess, well, she is the main character overall, is voiced by Pamela Adlin, better known as Bobby Hill on King of the Hill. Oh, shit. I didn't know that. I mean, we're talking, of course, we're talking about the English voices, obviously. Yes, yes, yes. Japanese voice actors as well. So Japanese American co-production released in both languages.
00:34:58
Speaker
We also have Crewman, John DiMaggio, of course, Bender, and Jake the Dog. And then my favorite voice cameo, which I spotted instantly, and I was like, there's no way that's him, was the operator of the Osiris being Tom Kenny. Tom fucking Kenny. Oh my God. Where he's like, they don't like happen to see us.
00:35:23
Speaker
That's... We've got squiddies! Squiddies on our tail! Hi, Squidward! Oh, I... I didn't know you had a SpongeBob. Holy shit.
00:35:40
Speaker
friggin terrifying friggin uh wow okay uh real quick to just to just round out the cast list uh rick gomez do we know rick gomez for anything
00:35:55
Speaker
Well, I believe they're all Or at least At least everyone No, no, never mind Yeah, well just real quick I got curious and the old woman at the end of the film is voiced by somebody named Betty Ford Just real fast a retired American actress and model turned professional bullfighter. Oh What I know This this little daughter from Pennsylvania
00:36:25
Speaker
Oh shit County. What? Incredible. Apparently she's still kicking. I'm not seeing an end date on her passport or Wikipedia.
00:36:42
Speaker
This is incredible. I love I feel like she's got to just be someone that the Wojcicki's just know. Yeah. Yeah. I super hope. Wow. Gosh, I hope she's not problematic because she's my hero, right? Well, I mean, I mean, she's she kills bulls professionally. That's pretty problem. I mean, yeah, I should probably know that because I said the words with my human mouth. Yeah, it's not. It's not great. But, you know,
00:37:10
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Well, she did go from bullfighting to acting, so. Right, right. Maybe, you know, maybe. Yeah, I do love that. I do love the old lady at the end. I do love that I was in my own little world, which is about as subtle as you're like my savior man, my own personal Jesus Christ.
00:37:29
Speaker
But this this this short swings rapidly from sexy sword fighting to holy shit. That's a lot of sentinels. Yeah, we should warn him kickstart the next big movie of the summer. Oh, yeah, big movie. Yeah. All right.
00:37:54
Speaker
Yeah, to a dual narrative where you're following the Osiris in its final flight, trying to shoot as many squids as possible and everybody dying, and also Jue doing what looks to be the most insane parkour through a power plant in tight leather pants where there's a lot of inexplicable crotch shots.
00:38:20
Speaker
and ends with a couple of seconds of comedy with a daughtering little old lady.
00:38:26
Speaker
And I forgot how this one ended and how, like, I remembered that the, that Juey dies, uh, but I didn't remember how. And I thought there's a shot where she turns her back to the old woman and then they kind of spin the camera so that she's the old woman's on, you know, screen left behind her head. Then she moves behind the head and then she's appears on screen, right. And I thought when they panned over, I thought she was going to be an agent. Like she was going to have turned into an agent and shoot her dead.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Because you also had the sunglasses, didn't you? I she had some sort of dark glasses. Yeah. Yeah. I just assumed it was they couldn't convincingly animate little old lady eyes in 2003. Probably because they had a hard enough time with like sexy. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You want to fuck this CGI character, don't you?
00:39:23
Speaker
Exactly. You're horny for this now. Pixels. Anyway, it is kind of like the rogue one of Matrix properties, I guess, because everybody dies and it ends trying to send a letter to the larger resistance. Yeah, and it's also it's like, hey, you know that thing you never wondered about? Here's how that happened.
00:39:51
Speaker
yeah this is why i hate prequels this is the movie about this is the movie about all the bovins who died giving us this information oh christ okay
00:40:07
Speaker
Bex and I were watching Rogue One and they like, well, these are the boffins, right? I'm like, ah, no, absolutely not. Boffins are weird dog-like people. Boffins have yet to appear anywhere in the main Star Wars franchise. Right, on the Death Star. On the Death Star II, that was the- Yes, yes, exactly. My inner eight-year-old just came out with a vengeance. I was so mad at myself. Gross human behavior.
00:40:38
Speaker
resume. Okay. I think we're good. I will say before we move on as we move, you know, maybe move into the next segment, but, uh, I, I love an anthology, you know, like not everybody shares this opinion, but I love an anthology. I love a tree house of horror. I love like, obviously the, the anthology episodes of, uh,
00:41:04
Speaker
Well, the, the anthology episodes of a gravity falls are just like bottomless pit. Yeah. You're right. You're right. Grunkle Stan wins the football bowl. I just like, you know, I love being able to experiment more and being able to explore stuff. You couldn't in a longer form thing and take more risks. You know, I think it's really powerful. Oh, absolutely. Even shows like the Twilight zone, you know, like a longer form anthology. I love stuff like that.
00:41:31
Speaker
It's, oh God, I do like the Twilight Zone. But it always has inspired me, you know, since I was very, very young, watch the Twilight Zone, like every New Year's sci-fi would have a marathon, and I would watch it, and you know.
Second Renaissance: Lore and Allegory
00:41:45
Speaker
Well, I can't disagree with you as we head into the second part, I guess second and third part of the anthology, which is the second Renaissance, parts one and two.
00:41:59
Speaker
Yes, which is the most lore heavy thing ever made about the matrix. Yeah, it's it's just a giant lore dump and it fucking rules. It's also. Just grin as fuck. Oh, my God. Yeah. But here's and here's my oh, sorry.
00:42:21
Speaker
No, I was going to go down the credits if you have a greater point to make before we do that. Let's do credits first. Let's do credits first. Well, it was directed by Majiro Meida, written by the same stories by the Wachowskis. I hope so. And it was made by Studio Four Degrees Celsius, which does not have a clippable link on Wikipedia.
00:42:43
Speaker
So I don't know what's up with them. But they did produce a couple of segments here, so it's quite possible that they were just to do with. The animatrix in general and shut down afterwards, that's conjecture, but fair enough. Yeah, all right. You had a point to make. I was just going to say that
00:43:14
Speaker
Oh, my sort of thesis question for these two segments, I have that question I posed about the animatrix at large about is it the darkest film, but I also think for second Renaissance itself, I always go back to the question of does second Renaissance ruin the allegory of the matrix? Because the matrix, at least the first film, but also the
00:43:38
Speaker
franchise at large is about the rage against the machine you know like the machine being capital T capital M the societal forces and systems and and organizations that keep us down represented by literal machines that are that are not human they're not feeling they are
00:44:02
Speaker
coldly logical, they don't love, etc. And then we get Second Renaissance, which shows us not the machine, but machines, as in robots and androids, and tools that were created by humans to serve humans, and they are sympathetic.
00:44:28
Speaker
And in this, it's reframed sort of as an uprising against oppression that just goes off the deep end, you know? But it is them acting in self-defense. Oh, it's far and away, yes. But it is entirely framed as the machines acting in self-defense and
00:44:49
Speaker
Well, you're an out if it's never said it's if it's machine propaganda, you know, or in other words, AI generated. But I'm sure because I was paying attention this time to like the framing where we get that this really groovy like all these like sort of fractal images. Then we get this this like groovy lady saying she's the what is the storyteller?
00:45:14
Speaker
Oh, yes, I should pull up that chunk of the Wikipedia and that she is showing you a historical file from the Zion archives, i.e. the humans archives. But even Morpheus said the humans themselves, they weren't sure of the parts of this history, like who they said they weren't sure who fired the first shot, et cetera. And I just I think is
00:45:39
Speaker
I boggles my mind a little bit to think about this. I mean, this is the unreliable narrator of it. You know, if you had asked me at any point and we'll get into more details about this a little later in this episode. But if you had asked me at any point in the past 21 years, what my favorite segment of the animatrix was, I would have said this, the second Renaissance, which was
00:46:03
Speaker
made by studio four degrees Celsius, which was founded in 1986, 36, 38 years ago, and is still going strong. Good for them. I was wrong. Um, because almost purely because I cannot tell you, maybe it's a fault of my Wikipedia on my end, but, um, could not begin to tell you, but.
00:46:25
Speaker
The reason for that is almost purely because this is just so fucking lore dense. And I am personally in love with robot uprising stories. I love it. I just wonder how it, you know, colors your view of the original films, you know, that is that that's true.
00:46:58
Speaker
It's tough for me to say because part of what I love about The Matrix in general, and this gets into what I might have gotten into a little bit with Ramachandra on our revolutions episode, but you do kind of realize that the machines themselves are not
00:47:20
Speaker
all cold, logical, they're not unanimous. They do. Well, they do have emotions, you know, whether however they come by them, if not chemical, then by by by evolutions of pro and complexities of programming or whatever. But like Ramakandra was able to love, as is shown in this segment of the animatrix.
00:47:45
Speaker
The machines can learn to hate and hate and torture with no purpose and Jesus fucking Christ. It's going to say the word a lot for this episode. Bleak. It is bleak.
00:48:04
Speaker
It assumes, I think, the worst out of both humanity and the machines. I just think it's still telling a very compelling story about these two very deeply flawed factions. It's not the same story that the first Matrix was telling about.
00:48:31
Speaker
about resisting your own oppression. And that's fair. I think I do like when stories develop nuances as they go on. I think what weirds it out for me the most is
00:48:48
Speaker
just how awful humanity is to the robots, you know, initially. Dear Christ, and the way they frame it within this short, which is a double short, they use so much of imagery that we are already too familiar with. Right. As a society watching
00:49:12
Speaker
horrific acts in real time. I mean, just like a lot of war imagery that that is probably ripped from from real footage, I would imagine. I mean, I remember like thinking, you know, 20 years ago, 21 years ago when I saw this movie, it's like I thought they were using a lot of stuff from like the Vietnam War in particular. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. To the point where I love the quote on like one of the news broadcasts about the The Million Machine March, as it was called, I think.
00:49:40
Speaker
where the initial Android sort of uprising where it says Android and liberal sympathizers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was like Fox News like Pundit talking about these damn robots. They're they're they're massing in the square. I also I do love how, you know, simplistic and almost cartoonish the the original Android designs are.
00:50:08
Speaker
Especially, especially when they're compared to the very complex monstrous machines that we see later on. Like, like the, the initial robot who kind of kick starts this whole thing, B one six, six ER. Who gets his own comic in the matrix comics compilation. That's again, part of the multimedia.
00:50:34
Speaker
Yeah, like I just you know, he sounds like c3po. Yeah, exactly I I had the same thought looks like we need to communicate in under three seconds that this is c3po it won't look exactly like But get it he is mr. Belvedere robot like he
00:50:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And part of what does fascinate me about robot media is like the different ways that we portray and treat robots effectively.
00:51:10
Speaker
We're going to do a whole episode about it, but Isaac Asimov had a whole thing going. But just in terms of robot apocalypse is Terminator Battlestar Galactica. This you could count Dune is. Unfortunately.
00:51:26
Speaker
I don't know anything about Metropolis. The film from 1927? Great question. I've never actually seen it. I'd be down to cover that since it counts as the earliest form of motion picture robot media, I think. That might be a fun bonus episode. Obviously, I mean, I guess it's not really, it's not exactly a revolution or upheaval, but 2001, certainly, you know, malevolent rogue AI sort of story. AI, certainly, absolutely. And then- Wait, you mean artificial intelligence?
00:51:56
Speaker
Oh, there it is. Perfect. Yep, yep, drink. But then again, you also have stuff like Star Wars, where for 99.99% of the franchise, they just conveniently ignore that there is an entire slave race. Yeah, they don't get served in bars. Yeah, it is.
00:52:24
Speaker
That's a whole other episode, honestly. But this takes getting back to the animatrix. This this is an absolute like worst case scenario. Everything that could go wrong in a civil rights battle goes wrong in the worst way possible. It is what makes me kind of like do this like fan theory ask like speculation of like maybe this is
00:52:53
Speaker
some in some part machine propaganda because the humans really are just cartoonishly pardon the pun evil you know about the robots um but yes i think i think the elephant in the room should be addressed being
00:53:11
Speaker
possibly the most haunting image ever put to film, at least in my opinion, which is a scene in which a female android who has synthetic skin and hair and all that sort of stuff gets beaten, her clothes are torn off, then her
00:53:29
Speaker
face and skin are torn off. She's like continually beaten and then shot, I believe. Yeah. And the final words as you hear her, you know, about to get shot, she's screaming for her life. Yeah. Yeah. She's screaming. Her jaw can't move. I assume the servos are broken, but her voice box still works and she is screaming. I'm real.
00:53:53
Speaker
I'm real and I'm like, oh, that hit me harder than it's ever hit. Yeah, no. Oh, Jesus Christ. So, yeah, but even even aside from the obvious connection to real life transphobic violence where we have to convince people of our legitimacy and our reality. Yeah, it's just fucking haunting like it's. But it's absolutely miserable, especially haunting knowing that it was
00:54:23
Speaker
being, you know, written by two closeted trans women. Yeah, and again, that's well, I mean, we'll get to a little later, but you see all of this imagery and script writing that can so easily like, oh, yeah, no, yeah, they were trans the whole time. Holy shit.
00:54:53
Speaker
But you do wonder about that timeline. Was that image included because for shock value, based on pre-existing footage of horrifying things happening, or is it just a result of them being so deeply closeted? Again, I'd love to pick their brains about their trans timeline, but again, don't want to do it because that'd be rude.
00:55:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's my fandom brain versus my human brain. I respect that they are very private people, you know. Yes, exactly. And although I believe you just signed up for a new project, I'm excited about that. Yes. But yes, a lot of awful stuff.
00:55:38
Speaker
Yeah, what is, is it not the storyteller? Who is that character telling the? The narrator of the piece? Yeah. The instructor is how it is credited on Wikipedia, voiced by Julia Fletcher. Looks like she did a lot of work for Square Enix, weirdly enough. That makes sense. Yep, there you go. Yeah, the instructor is,
00:56:05
Speaker
not the narrator, but rather, I guess, the presenter of these historical documents referred to as files, which, speaking of which, that reminds me to go back to the DVD. This menu goes so fucking hard. And I know I said that about the Matrix 1 DVD, but this one, everything is, everything is themed. Like, is the button to go to, like, the chapter selection is, like, files one through nine. Like, it's literally, like, it's written like it's code, and it's, like,
00:56:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's just so cool. I'm so jealous that's not on the Blu-ray. I gotta send you footage over there. The movie starts just as soon as you put the disc in the player. It's one of those autoplay fuckers. Damn. Oh, I'm so jealous. Disney TV was enhanced with Disney's fast play. God damn it. But no, and then the- Disney does have the most gratuitous bullshit on their physical media, but that's a different story.
00:57:00
Speaker
Uh, the, there was actually, I was looking at a clip of the I'm real sequence, um, just to sort of, you know, gauge other people's insight on it. And I saw a YouTube comment I wanted directly quote from two years ago by, uh, aborted, aborted orphan 5, 9, 8, 5.
00:57:18
Speaker
Oh, username, but we have no choice but to stand. I guess not. And I said, when the Robo Girl stand out of the way, but the comment says when the Robo Girl says I'm real, I can't help but think of Morpheus in the first movie when he was making Neo question what is real, which is a pretty good insight, pretty good connection, I would say, because it brings to mind, like,
00:57:45
Speaker
All things being socially constructed, residual self-image as connected to transness and gender. This robot is stripped down of everything down to her robot skeleton, but Morpheus would probably ask, what is it about her that is less real than anything else?
00:58:10
Speaker
Uh, and I would argue the same. It's, uh, I know when I first saw it, uh, uh, in 2003, I was confused. And then as soon as like part of her, uh, her skin came off and like, Oh, Oh, okay.
00:58:25
Speaker
And I think the most daunting thing about it is the shot of her lying dead where part of her skin is still on and it's like her breast, like her bare breast is showing, which is like this. Oh, yeah. It's like you get the mechanical like skull face and then you get this inarguably like human, you know, feminine body part, just like in the same frame there. It's such a fucking good image. It is not good, it's effective.
00:58:54
Speaker
Oh, no. Yeah, I did have to. I sat down to watch these block of shorts and I realized as I was hitting play, none of these have happy endings. Oh, no. I can't go to bed straight after watching this. Oh, no. That's true. I guess to sort of give the gist of of part one is that the one six six ER
00:59:20
Speaker
kills his owner, stating that he did not want to die, which, you know, creates a question of like, oh, is that we thought these were property? Are they capable of sentience, et cetera? And then it's let me see if I can pull up the quote. But yes.
00:59:45
Speaker
Does he have a full sent chance? Yeah. And it eventually leading to the banishment slash foundation of a of a robot nation called zero one in which they they kick the human economy's ass, which is really funny. They do because they're literally all automated. And I love what's so funny to me is the robot car commercial.
01:00:10
Speaker
Because it's like are they at like the robots made the car. Well, the most haunting part of that car commercial is they're saying instead of like Mazda, Zoom, Zoom or whatever the fuck. Oh, yeah. It's the only choice. Right. OK. It is a choice that drives us. The problem is choice.
01:00:32
Speaker
The problem is choice. I think that was the architect's first job. Before he was the architect, when he was just like a low level program, he was making that car. That's my new head cannon. That's my new head cannon. He was a used car salesman in 01. That's fucking accepted and incredible. Come on down. He pitched. He had this crazy idea about hooking humans up to a power source and nobody thought it would get anywhere.
01:00:59
Speaker
Christ alive. So I love that they capture a human's idea of what a car commercial is, which is like they seem to want to fornicate with their automobiles. Let's capture that in this video. Not to mention the haunting dialogue, which is like the ability to sustain flight, even in the case of extreme multi-engine catastrophic failure. Yeah. Like, OK, so they felt the need to add that into the commercial. So therefore it happens often enough. Yeah.
01:01:29
Speaker
I think it is a bit of a fool's game to try and go over the entire plot of the second Renaissance.
Human-Machine Conflict and Historical Echoes
01:01:35
Speaker
No, it is. I was mainly giving the broad strokes to lead us into part two.
01:01:40
Speaker
Yes, but I would like to, just in light of all of this horrific graphic imagery, this amazing quote by Terry Pratchett, who has nothing to do with The Matrix, but Sin, young man, that's the quote, I'm not trying to like put anybody on anything. Sin, young man, is when you treat people like things, including yourself. That's what Sin is.
01:02:04
Speaker
And this starts with the dehumanization, for want of a better word, of the artificial intelligent community. They get banished to their own city.
01:02:20
Speaker
They make things better than we do. It crashes the economy. We nuke the shit out of that city. They're fine because they're not worried about nukes. And then they proceed to kill fucking everybody. Right. We scorched the sky. I mean, that's getting into part two, though.
01:02:39
Speaker
Well, yes, yes. And I do think it's, I, I, I thought that the division was arbitrary at first. And now that I've rewatched, I do kind of. Oh, you mean arbitrary dividing of a single story that, that was put out in 2003 by the. Second Renaissance part one ends with B one six six ER and some guy upside down on a bed.
01:03:04
Speaker
Oh man, I mean, speaking of graphic imagery though, I'd be remiss not to mention V166ER tearing someone's face, like, skull apart, leaving only the tongue and brain. Yeah, it kind of pops dramatically like a water balloon filled with spaghetti.
01:03:24
Speaker
Right, which is what we all really are. That's true. No bones in there. It's just we're all- No bones involved in bones. What is a man? A featherless biped? A miserable pile of secrets? A miserable pile of secrets? No, it's a water balloon. A filled with spaghetti.
01:03:42
Speaker
But yeah, I think part one is, I think it's intentional and I think it leans something into my idea of like, is this machine propaganda? Is it not? I think maybe part one is and part two isn't because they are viewed as separate, like historical document files, according to the instructor.
01:04:04
Speaker
And part one is focusing on stuff that had been wiped, that had no way of being recorded otherwise at this point. To Morpheus and the gang, they would have no way of knowing all of this.
01:04:21
Speaker
So it could be fudged. Part one is about the initial events, the social unrest. Part two is really just war. It's just the initial war between humanity and the machines. They nukes the shit out of the machines. And then they scorched the sky, which is something that Morpheus knows, something Morpheus verifies. It was us who scorched the sky.
01:04:47
Speaker
Yes, they knew that much. So I think that's the stuff that we can take as reliable. And part one is maybe less reliable.
01:05:00
Speaker
Um, yeah, that means a lot. I've never thought about that before. That's just me trying to rationalize the fact that we are supposed to root for humanity in the Matrix films, you know? And granted, it's not the same, it's not the same humanity. Obviously these are people who lived in the Matrix for their lives. These aren't, they are innocents, but it's also
01:05:25
Speaker
You want like, you know, parts two and three hinge on you wanting humanity to survive, not just I or not just Morpheus or Trinity, you know. Yeah. Well, you're so well if you want Neo and Trinity to survive, but.
01:05:42
Speaker
Not in the very long scope of things, but as far as like, for a good 18 year stretch. I mean, yeah, that's true. Revolutions only has a happy ending if you care about humanity at large more than Neo and Trinity, which I don't think any viewer does. Yeah, yeah, kind of a- And I don't think Second Renaissance helps in that regard, you know? No, no, I think, hmm.
01:06:09
Speaker
It is a very bleak outlook in certain ways, especially from just the point of view of the animatrix. Sure.
01:06:21
Speaker
I think that I really want to know more about this instructor character, you know, like she it's quite possible created by Zion, I guess. The the the loosest head cannon that I can come up with in relatively short notice is that she is just another program that was assigned to catalog all of this information together. And it's quite possible. Yeah.
01:06:49
Speaker
And it's quite possible, like the Oracle or a bunch of other programs became sympathetic to the human cause as time goes on. I could also see the idea that, I mean, this is obviously, this is huge, like fansplaininess, because they hadn't obviously written this yet. But, you know, to give a tiny little bit of spoilers for resurrections,
01:07:13
Speaker
At that era of humanity and machine relations, there are machines and programs who just straight up work with the humans directly. Like they're not in the matrix anymore. They're on their side fully. Yeah, which... So I think this might be one of those programs as well.
01:07:32
Speaker
It's quite possible. I mean, as you said, in the Million Machine March, they were liberal, Wow, liberal sympathizers. I got there. And so there have always been.
01:07:47
Speaker
people that just wanted to work together regardless if fleshy or medley. The one brief glimpse of the Zion mainframe that we get in Reloaded does kind of feel reminiscent of the settings we see in Second Renaissance of all those weird patterns and groovy shapes, you know? Yeah, yeah.
01:08:11
Speaker
It's that stark white. It's also it does also rely a lot on like the imagery of like fractals and the concept of infinite complexity. So. Yeah, it's it does stand out to me. Oh, sorry. Oh, no, it's it's it's good. Keep going, please.
01:08:33
Speaker
It did stand out to me, this rewatch that scorching the sky is referred to in this as a final solution. No. Oh, God damn it. That's right. That's right. And I also noticed, again, I really want to know more about this instructor character because
01:08:54
Speaker
They seem to take, I'm not a centrist point of view, but a nuanced point of view in that may there be mercy on man and machine for their sins, you know, as we get these images of their brutality, of their war. And one of the last lines is bless all forms of intelligence, which kind of reads as like, oh, I just want an end to the fighting. You know, I just want peace, man. You know, but it's also like,
01:09:24
Speaker
It also does kind of point to the nuances that are introduced in reloaded and revolutions and so on. The machines harvesting humans for power, when that is finally revealed, when they finally come up with the idea to plug them into the matrix, use them as a power source because they got no sun, that is claimed to be, they say, this is the very essence of the second Renaissance.
01:09:51
Speaker
So the second Renaissance is not the robot uprising. It is not the humans turning war on them. The second Renaissance is specifically the moment when the machines put the humans into the matrix. I mean, because it's when it comes full circle, right? It's when the humans become the tools. Yeah, yeah.
01:10:15
Speaker
Christ alive. And I think that's what leads me to believe that this is the part that is true. Or at least truly true. That is fully believable. I had never really thought about that before, so thank you for that. Someone probably has a much more detailed explanation that completely blows this one out of the water and disappears entirely.
01:10:38
Speaker
That's mine. It wouldn't surprise me if, given the fullness of time, we revisit the second Renaissance, especially in its own special episode. Not any time soon. Definitely. It will certainly come up in future episodes, not the least of which being matrix resurrections. Right. And also machine uprisings in media at large. Nothing.
01:11:03
Speaker
doing on matrix.fandom.com under the instructor. Just telling you things we already know. Female computer program who acted as a main narrator for the Zion archive. God in heaven, yeah. Oh, sorry.
01:11:21
Speaker
Oh no, I'm just, now I'm getting lost down Wikipedia. Zion, our cup. It's fine, we're good. What? The other thing I wanted to bring up is before we move out of the second Renaissance, if that's where you were going. Yep. I wanted to say that, so this segment got an entire episode dedicated to parodying it in the Cartoon Network show, Codename Kids Next Door. What?
01:11:49
Speaker
Yes, the episode is titled Operation Archive. Archive being an acronym for ancient recorded children's history is very enlightening. Every title of that show is like an acronym because it's a show about, if you're unfamiliar, it's a show about a secret agency of children fighting against the tyranny of adults. It's very much from a kid's perspective. But their tech and their
01:12:14
Speaker
Systems are like very real. Like it's not imagined. They're like really secret agents. It's very, very interesting. What's real and what's not, but that was a little after my time. I was vaguely aware of it, but that's amazing. All right. They did a parody episode.
01:12:32
Speaker
of fucking the second Renaissance. And it's essentially about what it's about relations between adults and children and how things got to where they are now. It is a historical database file narrated by the character number one. And that is essentially in the beginning earth where kids ruled it was only there were only kids and then kids got bored and they created adults. And then
01:12:58
Speaker
On the Kids Next Door fandom wiki, it lists specific references being Mr. Wigglesee and the adult who was the first Spanka child is a reference to B166ER.
01:13:13
Speaker
That's terrible. I love it. There is a child land, which is sort of their zero one. Coffee is to the adults what solar energy is to the machines. So they cut off their power source of the adults being coffee.
01:13:33
Speaker
And the plot twist is that it is all a a school oral report in class that he is giving. But of course, it's it's it's all true in their lore. That's incredible. Oh, my God. Of all the fucking things, this what? And it's got the tone of it as well is perfect. It gets very like.
01:14:01
Speaker
Obviously the tone, the content is light, but the tone gets very dark, you know. I was going to say, I hope there's no spaghetti
Kid's Story and Animation Style
01:14:11
Speaker
meat bag water balloons in it. No, there might be literal. There might be literal spaghetti water balloons. That would be terrific. I'm going to have to I'm going to have to watch that. Holy shit. Yeah, no, please do. Please. Oh, absolutely. I'm sure it's streaming nowhere because it's a Warner Brothers.
01:14:28
Speaker
Oh, fucking Warner Brothers. All right. Well, moving on to another Warner Brothers project. A glorious parent company, Warner Brothers. So is this the final segment we're going to be doing this evening, I think? Yes. I think, you know, it's funny that I would mention Kids Next Door because the next one is all about a kid, specifically kid. You remember kid, right?
01:14:58
Speaker
when the title card comes up it feels like it's telling me fuck you like kids story all right I would have preferred mouse's story oh dear what about Maggie's story I'm sure you would have preferred Maggie's story oh fuck yeah tell me her story all night
01:15:17
Speaker
Directed by, I apologize in advance for my pronunciation of this, Shinichiro Watanabe, written by the same story by the Wachowskis. I would take a stab. It would be Shinichiro Watanabe.
01:15:37
Speaker
All right. That, that, that tracks good. All right. Uh, and studio by studio four degrees. Studio by studio is just how it's listed on Wikipedia. Uh, that was the studio that did second Renaissance as well.
01:15:51
Speaker
I'm pretty sure we did, yes, because I felt bad for making assumptions about their longevity as a company. But kids story, I'm actually really glad we're ending on kids story tonight. It is arguably the one that has a happy ending. It has a happy ending because kid kills himself and then I'm happy. Yes. I don't like that character very much hope I can.
01:16:21
Speaker
So the character of kid has been previously maligned on this show, played by some sort of slander. Well, well, implies it's untrue. OK, this is going to be our first first antagonistic episode of Matrix Reclamations. But just as real quick background information,
01:16:46
Speaker
Uh, he is played by in, uh, this and Reloaded Revolutions, uh, uh, Clayton Watson, who was born in 1977. He is presently 46 years old, which means he was 25?
01:17:07
Speaker
The character does not work live action, I think, at all, as played by, unfortunately, Clayton, no shame to you. You did your best as a fresh face, like, gosh, golly, gee, Willickers. The performance is fine. Yeah, the performance is fine. It's just the casting and the writing of the character.
01:17:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's he does not read as 15. That just reads as a shaved man. I'm so sorry. Which they all are in the in the Matrix pods.
01:17:40
Speaker
I mean yes but still not this matrix pod but I always dread kids story whenever it comes up honestly it got to me this time I honestly think kids story might be my favorite
01:18:00
Speaker
Whoa, OK. I'm coming out hot. You were texting me earlier. You were texting me earlier. Like, I don't think I'm going to have shit to say about world record. I'm like, well, what if you say world records, my new favorite, you know? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I'm like, this made me even more excited to rewatch the rest of these. It's like, oh, shit, am I going to turn around on all of these 21 years later? But yeah, kids story. It features Clayton Watson, Keanu Reeves, Karian Moss, Kevin Michael Richardson.
01:18:30
Speaker
Uh, John Demara and the only one that features Neo. Yes. Uh, which ties directly into James R. R. Taylor ties directly into dialogue, uh, spoken by just these two characters in the matrix reloaded. Like you saved yourself kid. Uh, which is kind of cute. Okay. Neo named kid. That's, uh,
01:18:58
Speaker
I guess, because Kid is, you know, he's this wide- and reloaded we meet him as this wide-eyed, you know, Neo fanboy, as a lot of people in Zion have become. I just think it's silly. But make no mistake, he is the widest-eyed Neo fanboy. His name is Kid because Neo just called him Kid. That's... I know. I know. I know. I can't tell if that's the right kind of stupid or not. It's... Sometimes I say things are stupid as a compliment.
01:19:27
Speaker
I'm gonna come to my loose defense here in the future if it turns out that I go back to hating Kid and his story, but maybe it's because I was grasping at straws for just some sense of hopefulness in this watching experience. Yeah, that's fair. It's definitely important to have, but it's also, it's not without its
01:19:49
Speaker
you know, weight either. It's not just a, it's not exactly. I think it, I think it, uh, this is the correct way to approach kid as a character because you're able to draw him at the age of 15 in high school. And he comes across as 15 in high school. This is definitely one of the ones that stands out to me the most. It's got this really loose.
01:20:13
Speaker
you know, bumpy, scratchy kind of style. I do think it, I wonder if it's partly rotoscoped. I do feel like part of it is, but then part of it really just kind of goes off the rails and does all these really dynamic stretching kind of movements. Oh, and it's absolutely fabulous. I think the rotoscoping really helped, you know, I feel like some people will deride rotoscoping, which for those who don't know, it's when you take live action footage, trace every frame, and then you effectively create this
01:20:39
Speaker
almost uncanny kind of looking animation and some people kind of get on that as as like a cheating or a shortcut but i don't think it's either of those things i think it has its own unique effect and its own unique place among uh animation as it adds to like
01:20:55
Speaker
the otherworldliness of what should be just a normal high school misadventure. Exactly. And that on that note, I love the exploration of a school setting is another instance of authoritarian oppression, because we didn't get that with adult, you know, quote unquote, Tom Anderson at his job, we didn't really, we didn't see a school setting in the matrix at any point.
01:21:15
Speaker
Exactly. And I feel like I should mention, just because I did click on his name just now, uh, the director is best known for directing the critically acclaimed and commercially successful anime series, Cowboy Bebop. So there's, there's that right there. It's like, okay. Um, I see it. His, uh, kid keeps getting referred to by the teacher, uh, as Mr. Popper. And I kept thinking about Mr. Popper's penguins. That has nothing. Just made me think of it.
01:21:42
Speaker
Um, but we should mention like just a bit, right? If we haven't already, this is the segment that includes a depiction of teen suicide. That's correct. Specifically in that kid, you know, he's going through kind of the teen angst.
01:21:59
Speaker
period of his life he feels isolated, but specifically he feels that splinter in his mind. He feels that something is inherently off about the world that he's in, and he can kind of sense that he's in the Matrix without necessarily being able to put it to words. So he goes to the computer, kind of like Neo, has a conversation through the computer, again much like we saw with Neo.
01:22:22
Speaker
then gets the call, the call to adventure from Morpheus on his cell phone in the middle of class and gets in trouble, nearly has to outrun some agents and yeah, then plummets off the roof of the school.
01:22:39
Speaker
Uh, yes. Uh, he does have, uh, that he has a, uh, on screen conversation with Neo on his computer. Uh, the fucking phone call. I love that that it's Neil on the phone. Is it? Well, I thought it was Morpheus.
01:22:56
Speaker
Uh, you know what? I had this experience 21 years ago, had it again this time. When you remove the visuals of Keanu Reeves from Keanu Reeves, Keanu Reeves does not sound like Keanu Reeves. It's, uh, it's a little, because he never, he never says whoa or anything. That's our Keanu Reeves calibration. It's hard to tell when it's Neo, when he's not constantly asking questions.
01:23:22
Speaker
It is odd to hear Neo as a source of authority because, yeah, I mean, it does tie into the last scene of the first movie where he is he now he's the one confidently talking through the phone of like, I know you're out there. We're going to get you. We're going to, you know, very true, very true. But it is legitimately Keanu Reeves and Carrie and Moss returning as their characters, which is nice. And they comment on the fact that they didn't. What is itself?
01:23:50
Speaker
They have some matrixy term for it. Oh, that's great. Hang on. I've found the transcript. Self-substantiation. Uh, wherein, you know, just by committing suicide in the matrix, by jumping off the roof, he has, kid has jolted his body out of the matrix pod and into the real world. Whereas Neo, you know, needed the pill to identify where his body was so that the, uh, yeah, the, the, the ship could pull him out.
01:24:20
Speaker
Yes, it is something I want to talk about in a future episode that's going to have a whole other kind of trigger warning attached to it. But this return to the imagery of jumping off a building.
01:24:38
Speaker
that the Wachowskis do keep drawing back to for various reasons that they have spoken about. It is interesting to see this in 2000, like thinking about it, them making this in 2003, and then returning to the concept of leaping off a building.
01:24:59
Speaker
in 2021 in in resurrection. Yeah, I do think in resurrection specifically, I think it was Lana who was who talked specifically about yes, it is Lana's story of of of standing on a subway platform and just kind of, you know, having those kinds of thoughts. I'm not obviously not going to get into the details. It's.
01:25:22
Speaker
Public information from interviews. Yeah, that is that is her story to tell. Yeah. But just within the context of this as their creation and for them to keep returning to that. I think it's it's worth bringing that up. Yeah.
01:25:37
Speaker
and have different results almost every time in the jump program in the first matrix. Neo just, you know, loony tunes it into the concrete. Yeah. You don't actually see a kid make contact with the ground here. Trinity, you get really catching her.
01:25:56
Speaker
Oh, yeah, no, 100 percent.
Matrix Themes: Identity and Rebirth
01:25:59
Speaker
Trinity, you see getting rescued by Neo. And then, of course, obviously in resurrections, the most triumphant sequence of all time happens and it's the best. I mean, right. Well, yeah, I mean, resurrections has a lot of that, which I don't want to. Oh, yeah. Oh, God, that's that's.
01:26:17
Speaker
Oh boy, we'll get to that after we finish with two thousand and three. Yeah, well, yeah. The no, but, you know, aside from even the the sort of suicide imagery, the the lore implications of the self substantiation really interests me because there's something that will come up again in our in the next episode where we talk about the rest of the animatrix, the idea that
01:26:41
Speaker
You can push your body to places that the machines are not expecting it to go and it will just jolt you out of their system. You know, you can you can break the you can hack your own body essentially to get it out of to glitch it out of the system. Yeah, because again, the matrix being a computer is the perfect allegory for societal oppression and rules and how to break them because computers can be hacked.
01:27:08
Speaker
Uh, exactly. Um, I do want to call a little bit of attention because it is fascinating because this, this does deal with like teen depression and teen suicide. And we know as the audience better, because we know that these fuckers are all in the matrix, but you're hearing two men talk at
01:27:30
Speaker
Kids funeral I think by the way kid because you do get given his dead name That imagery of the tombstone with his dead name really is really impactful Absolutely If I'm I think it's from a
01:27:55
Speaker
Is it Sandman? And also, well, it's that, but it's also the beloved son epithet, right? Yes. Even though I don't believe we meet his parents at all. Well, no, but it's the gendering on the tombstone, you know? Yeah. Oh, you're right. Wow. God damn. You can tell I've spent the majority of my life loving the Matrix and not knowing I was trans. Wow. Fair enough. Showing my aspect. If you're fair, so did the Wachowski.
01:28:22
Speaker
Yeah, there you go. But it's very reminiscent of, yeah, we don't know. It is very reminiscent of that page from, I believe, Sandman by Neil Gaiman, where a woman writes a trans woman's true name over her dead name on her tombstone in lipstick. It's, yeah, it is powerful shit.
01:28:47
Speaker
Another gender moment we got here. Oh, sorry, finished. No, sorry. I just love this conversation that these people are having, you know, not knowing the reality of the situation. Yeah, where it's like, oh, you know, some people just can't handle the real world. Well, he's in another world now, you know.
01:29:05
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. It's, what is it? Man one. Well, man two. We get unbalanced kids like that all the time. Man one. Reality can be a pretty scary thing for some people. The world must have been a cold and alien place for a boy like that.
01:29:24
Speaker
Man, too, it's called denying reality. It's, you know, just a self-defense mechanism for those types of kids. Well, he's in another world now. Make no mistake about that. Yeah, they rationalize it with this therapy speak, which is what again, something that will come up later in the resurrections. Exactly, exactly. And bastardizing psychology, essentially. Right. And it's another it's more of that subtle, unsubtle stuff like the I was in my own little world thing from Flight of the Osiris.
01:29:55
Speaker
Another gender moment we get in there is during kids escape from the agents through the halls of the school. He busts into the girls bathroom and they all kind of shriek. You know, it's that typical gag. Right. Yeah. You know, there's that's an undeniably gendered moment feeling like an invader in a quote unquote woman's space. And I know they don't say this dialogue, but there were no subtitles for this part. And I swear as they're screaming, I swear one of the girls says, you are sis.
01:30:24
Speaker
And I know that can't be true, but it would be really funny. Oh my gosh, that's incredible, okay. It would be really funny. I also know we're gonna get a character named Sis in a later segment, but we'll get to that next episode. Oh shit, it's hysterical. But that kind of like bastardization of psychology and denying a person their own
01:30:50
Speaker
agency by claiming that they were just deluded or whatever. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Now that you say it like that, I mean, that gets weaponized against trans people all the fucking time. All the fucking time. Exactly. But it.
01:31:04
Speaker
I had forgotten this and this right here is why I think I love kids' story so much suddenly because the final image of the short is his onscreen text conversation with Neo where he types out, who are you? Am I alone? And it's in that sci-fi green matrix font. And you see Neo's response, which just
01:31:34
Speaker
Just reading this as a trans person, knowing all I know about this series today, Neo's words to the kid are, you are not alone. I do like that a lot. That is, I think, something I've had to cling on to a lot. That worked my heart in a way that, in a way where I forgave it for like, the message of this is a little, no, not even for featuring kid, but I forgave it for the overall messaging of like,
01:32:04
Speaker
This isn't pro suicide, is it? It's hard not to read it that way in that. Yeah. himself in the matrix is what allows it. But, you know, it's. I do think there is a line, a delineation between a.
01:32:22
Speaker
a suicidal leap and a I'm going to call it leap of faith. Leap of faith. Yeah, we can definitely. You do have to start reading metaphor into this. I agree. Yeah, it's especially within not only just the film The Matrix, but in the literal matrix, you know, nothing is literal. It's you could just exactly about like you do kind of have to be reborn, you know, as a trans person, you're reborn. You are right. Come in, you know.
01:32:48
Speaker
In the real world of like flesh bodies, we can question. Right. In this in the spaghetti verse, spaghetti. There, as we all know, there's no spaghetti in the matrix. Yeah, that's that's why here in reality, we have spaghetti. The Olive Garden is anyway inventing the most insane head and your family.
01:33:18
Speaker
just like me there are unlimited breadsticks unlimited breadsticks unlimited breadsmiths but like in in reality uh we can lead ourselves to question rules that we never thought to question rules like the gender binary in the matrix we can question rules like gravity
01:33:43
Speaker
And this I would implore our audience to definitely not ever question gravity, please. Yeah, gravity's gravity is kind of here to stay. It's one of them all. It's well.
01:33:57
Speaker
Well.
Anime Tropes and Podcast Promotion
01:33:59
Speaker
MrShackLookback on Pipetream Podcast.com. One thing that does, unfortunately, crack me up in the most tense moment of this segment is this fisheye lens shot of Kid's Head where his eyeballs are just bulging out in two different directions. And I know it's a commonly used shot in anime. I don't really know what it's called.
01:34:26
Speaker
Uh, where it's like that super hyper, like fish eye land is on like the middle of the forehead. There's like a meme of like, uh, the camera angle in an anime when a character is about to go insane and it is that exact like shock. It's like from their forehead and their eyes are just bulging outward. I wonder if that has a trope name. I don't know is the thing. Like if it did, I would be able to just identify it.
01:34:51
Speaker
That would be nice if anybody knows the trope name of that face you make in an anime when you're about to go insane Matrix queer pod on a on Instagram. Yep Matrix or reclamations at gmail.com. I think is the email. All right, we think
01:35:16
Speaker
But yeah, that final shot, considering all of the context, and the past 21 years of having all of this context build up around me, it's been a long time since I've rewatched Kids Story. This is probably the first time I've watched Kids Story. It is matriccircumationsatgmail.com. But yeah, no, it's- Okay, good. Yeah. It's not one of the ones that I would want to rewatch, you know, on a whim.
01:35:42
Speaker
But but this time around, considering recent queer history, it felt incredibly powerful to be reminded you are not alone. Yeah. Yeah, it's it hit me. It hit me harder than I thought it would. I mean, similar to I feel like the thing in Second Renaissance always kind of hit me because I watched it.
01:36:08
Speaker
after I had come out. Whereas, you know, long before. But I think at that point, though, the you are not alone didn't hit me as much as as because I think I was just too absorbed in the kit of it all. Like I can't again. I can't blame you. You know, Neo does too. You know, Neo does too. But he also acknowledges like, look, he's the annoying kid in like your GSA club. Like you just got to like he's he's part of your community. You know, like you got it.
01:36:38
Speaker
Right. It's both. But yeah, that is do we have anything more we wanted to say about this half of the animatrix? I think we're I think we got a nice chunky chunky chunk episode right here. We do have a nice fine episode there. We do have a lot of more interesting stuff coming down the pipe as well. After mentioned emulators. Right. We're going to be into the video games that came out this year with the matrix and
01:37:07
Speaker
Maybe I don't know. We could try to get to the matrix online. So I don't know how, or we could just, uh, well, scenes, I guess. Right. Well, I think that's going to be a lot of reading off Wikipedia, but there's also the video game. Yeah. I mean, to the matrix and path of Neo for sure. But, uh, more pressingly, obviously stay tuned for.
01:37:30
Speaker
our second episode about the Animatrix where we will cover program, world record, beyond a detective story, and matriculated. Any of you particularly excited to revisit in those? I'm excited to give a- World record for sure. I think I want to do what I want. I'm really excited to talk about world record because I think it intrigues me, and I think you said you might not have anything to talk about, so hopefully I'll be able to- I don't have any particularly fond memories of
01:37:58
Speaker
world record, but now that you're so amped about world record, I'm kind of excited to rewatch. Yeah. Yeah. That about settles it for me then. I think credits.
Closing Remarks and Social Media
01:38:13
Speaker
Yes.
01:38:13
Speaker
Uh, I have been Hope Lickner, uh, at Hope Lickner on most forms of social media. Uh, I've got another podcast, uh, with my good, good friend, Bex, where are we talk about, uh, cartoons, specifically DuckTales 2017. We just started season two.
01:38:31
Speaker
Ella's been on it. Go listen to that episode. And that's all I got going on. Well, I've been Ella Jezory at Drama Without Ref on all the things.
01:38:45
Speaker
Got some exciting things going on. Maybe it'll be announced by the time this episode's out. Maybe they won't. Okay. We'll keep me posted, certainly. Absolutely. I got the other podcast I've done, Mystery Shack Lookback with my good friends, Charlie Marlow, Shelby Sessler. We've had a bunch of great guests from Gravity Falls, including show creator Alex Hirsch, voice a dipper, Jason Ritter, a Wrestleman strong bad, a producer and creator of My Life as a Teenage Robot, Robert Zetti, a creative director, Mike Rihanna. I think I'm getting all those credits right.
01:39:13
Speaker
I keep I keep stepping on these names you've dropped. Oh my gosh. Oh, you know So, you know me and me and Regis we were just talking, you know filming and That's very charismatic wants to be a millionaire host Okay, if you knew Regis would would you not pull it? Oh
01:39:40
Speaker
I probably was just so I could obnoxiously say the word Regis all the time. And that's the, and that's the question we want to pose to you, our listeners. If you knew Regis Philbin, would you not name drop him all the time? RIP. Yeah, I probably would. Um, so you can find us, uh, at matrix queer pod on the social medias, make sure it's reclamations at gmail.com. Listen on Zen caster or wherever you get your dang podcasts and, uh,
01:40:08
Speaker
Maybe I'll try to keep up with the social medias and actually post about these, but who knows what I'll be up to, you know? I don't know anything about being terrible with social media. Shame on you. I haven't forgotten to update the High On Cartoons social media in ChexWatch a while. I feel like this is the, you know, with Mystery Check Lookback, it was another story, but this is the kind of podcast where like,
01:40:30
Speaker
the people who are gonna listen will already be listening. You know what I mean? Like, it's so niche. We're so niche. We're so niche. And I love it. I wouldn't have any other way. I wouldn't have any other way. A hundred percent. A hundred billion percent. All of you, Hope. This has been a delight as always. And to you, thank you once again. And thank you. Love is the genesis of all things, right? I believe it is. And this time it's animated.
01:41:03
Speaker
Goodbye.