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OK, got the DVD out from the library and watched it this evening in the order on the disc, namely 'Final Flight of the Osiris', 'Second Renaissance', 'Kid's Story', 'Program', 'World Record', 'Beyond', 'A Detective Story' and 'Matriculated'. This was precisely the wrong order to put them in, as you proceed the stories get worse and worse.
I quite liked 'Final Flight', yes the fight scene is just porn, but they should have shown that in cinemas a month or two back as the trailer to the film. And helps to expand the idea of the resistance being more than just Morpheus' crew with more grace than being dumped into it 5 minutes into 'The Matrix Reloaded'. 'Second Renaissance' was interesting, the early bits of it and the style of the robots consistent with the comic that (I think it was) Darrow drew for the website around the first film. It was interesting how Zion's records seem to indicate it was humans at fault for the circumstances that led to their imprisonment in the Matrix. Based on what Morpheus told Neo in the first film that historical record was sketchy it seems more likely that Morpheus never bothered to learn their history and no-one told him about Zion's data.
'Kid's Story'. Dull. And the Kid seemed able to leave the Matrix without an exit, which thus far it seems even Neo couldn't do (well, we don't know that he can't, just that we haven't seen him do it). Yet, in the film Kid is treated like an annoying fanboy, you would of thought someone might have said "Maybe the Kid is special in someway?"
I liked the look of 'Program', it's what 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' would have looked like if they'd had a big budget and done fancy computer graphics. It's a bit disappointing that 'wanting to return to the Matrix' wasn't treated as a genuine desire, again, that once out everyone loves taking their turn shovelling the shit below decks.
'World Record'. About the only thing in it's favour is the highly impressionistic graphics, almost like Kevin Mills' 'Marshall Law' stuff brought to 'life'. Some dodgy colouring decisions and a story that was utterly shit. Why didn't an agent just jump into the runner's body itself? (Or the Kid in 'Kids Story' now I come to think of it, or Neo's body at the start of the Matrix)
I've only watched three or four anime films and have alwasy been unnerved by the way they're quite happy to stop the plot for fifteen or twenty minutes to just play around with an idea, the 'hallucination with toys' scene in the middle of Akira or the way the bad kid just keeps growing bigger and bigger at the end. I think that, growing up in a culture where every second of screen-time has to be justified or is cut, something about that languidness unsettles me. So the fact that the plot of 'Beyond' only takes about 1 minute and the other 9 minutes of the thing is spent dicking around, on the theme of playing with the errors in the Matrix... very dull.
'Detective Story' brightened my day, though is it set pre-Matrix, pre-Matrix Reloaded? The overt stylisation of the city to make it appropriately noir do interfere with placing it smoothly within the context of the film, but it is a nice little story.
'Matriculated'. While it's nice to see the world when the humans were still living above ground the story was toss. So, you kidnap robots and make them think they're half human and then you shag them and that wins them over to your side? Utter crap. The only nice thing was the consistency of design with 'Renaissance' and the less sophisticated look of the sentinals to show they had made some improvements over that time period and the time of the films.
So, a mixed batch, as with any compilation, of variable quality. Worth watching, but perhaps not necessarily worth buying. |
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