The Animatrix

Of the four films that came with the Matrix DVD package I bought at Target, the only one I hadn't yet seen was The Animatrix, a mostly straight-to-video collection of nine short stories covering various topics in the Matrix universe, all of which were directed by different animation producers. Thus, it's not entirely fair to call The Animatrix a film, but I did sit down and watch all nine episodes over the course of two or three days, trying to take it all in more or less at once.

Overall, the entertainment value of each of the nine short stories covers a fairly wide range...there were some I really liked (like The Second Renaissance, seen above) and there were some I didn't care for, largely because they seemed too disjointed from the films. So, I wouldn't really recommend checking out The Animatrix unless you're a diehard Matrix fan, but it might be interesting to check out the two backstory episodes (the first of which is seen above and the second can be found here).