The Animatrix - The Second Renaissance Part I
The Second Renaissance Part I is the second animation on the Animatrix DVD, although really in a chronological sense it should be the first. In this dreary-colored, cel-shaded vision from Mahiro Maeda, we get to look into the Zion Archives as historical footage of how mankind went from a happy existence to being dominated by the machines.
 | Before I get into the actual story on this one, I have to say that this short was VERY heavy on the symbolism and relating the Matrix to modern day atrocities and violence. Just about every scene was a direct take-off on another movie or actual event. So this short very much pushed the Matrix in your face and said "this isn't a story. This is what we are living right now." |
OK, back to the story. You start out with a 2001-like entry, reminding us of a movie that had man use technology to reach a 'new plane' of beings. Then you land at the Zion Archives, full of naked Hindu goddess-women, drawing back to a very old culture. And you get the infamous voice-over:
"In the beginning, there was a man, and for a time it was good."
I had to laugh here, because as soon as they said "In the Beginning" I knew exactly what the rest was going to be. This plants this short very firmly on Biblical grounds, that we are about to see a story of "Man's Fall from Eden".
Man was happy in his Eden. Then along came the vices of vanity and corruption. I have to point out here that there have ALWAYS been problems with this throughout history, but OK. People in an age always think it is a "new" problem. Next, man made machine "in his own likeness" - again, Bible-speak. We learn that "Thus did man become the architect of his own demise." Architect is of course the key word here, since the person who rules the Matrix is also called the Architect.
The robots are very quickly equated with the working poor and slaves throughout history - with a rather obvious scene of the robots slaving to build a giant pyramid. It is said that the robots got no respect. It's a bit funny that actually historians have proven that *skilled laborers* built those pyramids, were well paid and were treated well. But a lot of this movie seens to play on generalizations and stereotypes.
It is at this point that B166ER - note that looks like "bigger" when you see it written out - was told by his owners that he was going to be shut down. Unwilling to "die", the robot killed his owners. The government orders all machines destroyed.
Here we get a montage of "poor folk getting slaughtered" videos, all based on real events. We have the "Million Machine March", of course based on the famous march by Minister Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam. We have a soldier shooting a robot in the exact way as the famous Vietnam shooting. We have a robot being run over by a tank, exactly how a student protester was run over in the Chinese Tiananmen Square incident.
We have a female robot - who at first seems to be a human - brutally attacked by several men, as they strip her to reveal her quite realistic breasts and bash her head in. Then, large pieces of construction equipment are shown "shovelling the bodies" into ditches, and piles of them on the ground - scenes that both bring up the gruesome reality of the Holocost in WW2 and the body-layer that the Terminator films showed.
Still, some robots survived. They formed a nation "in the cradle of civilization", i.e. in the Iraq/Iran area. Not too subtle there. This nation was called "Zero One". And in a REALLY really funny bit, which brings a bit of light to this rather dark movie, these robots crank out a "Zero Wing Versatran" car that the humans drive.
For those of you who missed the entire "All Your Base are Belong to Us" internet fad, this phrase was from the game Zero Wing. In the badly dubbed intro to the game, the evil cats would say things like "You are on the way to destruction. You have no chance to survive make your time." Pretty appropriate here!
The movie ends with more Biblical symbology. The United Nations is in session to figure out what to do about the machines, and in walk the two ambassadors. Of course they are Adam and Eve - and Eve is complete with her red apple. The two are thrown out - and thus it begins.
My general comment is that in all of these scenes, you've either got the story explicitly showing that a minority group acted like machines when they did something, or that a terrorist / soldier group acted like machines. It doesn't matter if you say this about the "mindless students who tried to stand up to Chinese authority" or about the "mindless Iraq guys who are out to destroy mankind". I don't think either one is appropriate. It would have played so much better if they made this a story about *The Matrix People* and *The Matrix Machines* with both having their good and bad sides - without trying to say that they can pidgeonhole *real existing peoples* in our world into having these backgrounds or mindsets.
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