The Animatrix -The Second Renaissance Part II



With further Biblical references, The Second Renaissance Part II tells the rest of the pre-history of the Matrix, and how mankind fell fully into the control of the machines.

To hammer the point home, the short begins with "And Man said, Let There Be Light". That was of course God's line, from Genesis.


Mankind thinks up a "Final Soluton", which is what Hitler called it when he planned on killing all Jewish people. And next we get an image almost exactly like that the rebels used before their Death Star assault in Star Wars, for the "Dark Storm"! All the themes collide.



We are then bashed over the head with the thought that religious people turn to violence, as we see all religions - Buddhist, Christian and Muslim - preparing for this battle.



The humans cover the sky with clouds, to block out the sun's energy for the machines. And then for many, many long minutes, you get a gigantic, gory, blasting battle scene. Lots of gratuitous violence to show how nasty this was. Lots of flag imagery. Both the above image and the below one reminded me of the famous Iwo Jima photo, sort of a 'before' and 'after'.



Finally it's over, and mankind has lost. There are stacks of bodies, and lots of wounded in hospitals being experimented on with lots of tubes. The machines begin to put the bodies into the battery system. And there you see a robot hand holding the apple. Eden has been lost.

Next, you're in the UN building, with the robot giving a final message to the remaining human leaders. The robot holds the apple in one hand, the stick in the other one. A variation on the 'carrot and stick' a la Teddy Roosevelt. But instead of the humans choosing one, the robots blow up the UN building and indeed all of New York.

To demonstrate the final fall of man, you get a cute scene with a little kid enjoying a snowfall. He is snagged and put into a pod. Outside, the 'sad' narrator Hindu goddess apparently sits by him. Pulling out, you see the massive size of pod-land, and have a 2001 tunnel exit to an old tv-style shutdown. The machines have won.

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Lisa Shea Author


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