Surely one of the most audacious visions in movie history, and one of the most enjoyable of the past few decades, the ultra cool cyberpunk, manga, anime-influenced Matrix took us places no other live-action film had before. Gun-toting kung fu-fighting computer rebels provided thrilling eye candy, with underpinnings of broad philosophical themes of truth, faith and independence. Nominated for Best Sound, Sound Effects Editing, Best Editing and Visual Effects Academy Awards, it won them all, marking the first time a Star Wars film (Episode I was released the same year) had lost the statue for special effects. We're not sure what year it is, maybe two centuries from now, but the world looks just as it does today because it is all just an elaborate simulation run by sentient machines, with unwitting humans literally plugged into an enormous, diabolical apparatus. Following an Earth-devastating war, the machines require people to think that they are living full lives in the real world in order for their flesh-and-blood brains to generate sufficient electricity to power the mechanized civilization. It sounds pretty creepy, and it is, but it is also more than sufficient motivation for young Neo (Keanu Reeves), wise Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and lovely, tough-as-nails Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) to fight back in every way they can. The memorable moments are many, but the iconic lobby shootout is just one of those scenes that I— and lots of fans— can watch over and over on an endless loop. Almost the last half-hour of the movie in fact is non-stop action, bigger and wilder than audiences had any reason to expect in 1999.

Four years later, both of the sequels arrived, filmed back to back to help rein in all of the exorbitant budgets. If the first film asked and answered "What is The Matrix?" then I would suppose the next two films' central questions were "Who runs it?" and "How will it all end?" Sadly, neither of these topics was ever that particularly compelling, at least not in the way that screen writer/director brothers Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski inevitably chose to explore them. As with Back to the Future, the first movie ended on a high-note that sparked our collective imagination, but the sequels suggested a lack of a well-thought-out master plan for the rest of the series. Too much of the plot of The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions involves a "dead" character returning and then wreaking havoc in both the virtual and real worlds, in ways that make little sense. There's a lot of fanciful talk that rings hollow, and too many scenes that simply do not advance the plot. The 15-minute car chase in Reloaded is pretty boss though, and the 20 solid minutes of man versus machine in Revolutions is mostly exciting. Mostly.

Bridging the tiny gap between the first and second movies was a series of nine brilliant Japanese-style animated shorts, The Animatrix. The cleverly scripted, fast-paced stories expanded upon the mythologies of this future world and its known characters, in addition to introducing new faces who would appear in the sequels We also learned more about the mechanics of The Matrix itself as a technology. Best is the two-part "The Second Renaissance," written by The Wachowskis, which serves explain how we humans ran (or will run…?) afoul of those ruthless machines. Anyone who has a clear memory of the original theatrical presentation of The Matrix, or the first DVD release, will no doubt notice the drastic boost in greens to better unify its look with the more extreme sequels. Detail remains outstanding, particularly in actors' pores during their frequent close-ups, right down to the assorted textures of leather and beyond. There is minimal organic film grain, but many scenes are smoky and so there is at times a bit of unwelcome digital haze, with some artifacting across soft textures and ringing in the Village Roadshow Pictures logo at the beginning. Blacks are deep and colors are preserved amazingly.

The skin tones inside The Matrix are, by design, not quite right, while the real world offers its own less fantastic yet no less stylized look, full of pasty faces and a lot of blues and grays. Occasionally a scene like The Oracle's kitchen commands our attention with its bold colors. The many specifics and distant bits of activity throughout Zion's cavernous landing bay, and most everywhere else this last human city as revealed in Reloaded, make full use of a well-calibrated big-screen, especially since all of these titles are a wide 2.4:1. Zion takes on much warmer hues during the extended firefight of Revolutions, and all three offer outstanding picture quality overall. Unlike the previously released HD DVD of The Ultimate Matrix Collection, this Blu-ray box includes The Animatrix in full high-definition, and it is a wonder to behold. I feel like I'm seeing for the first time the true beauty of "Final Flight of the Osiris", state-of-the computer animation in its day. Each tale has its own distinct color scheme and visual style, some with crisp lines that reproduce magnificently.

Perhaps because The Wachowskis were actually creating their own fully realized world, these movies were designed and mixed with an incredibly immersive 360-degree sound field that embraces us and does not release us until the very end of the closing credits. The Matrix in particular displays outstanding directionality with aggressive multi-channel fades, as well as discrete placement of voices and approaching police sirens, all to help achieved the desired mind-boff. Perhaps the most famous scene, "bullet time" up on the roof of the government building, is a trippy, swirling exploitation of the five loudspeakers and subwoofer, never more so than in this Dolby True HD master. The pinging of brass bullet casings landing all around gives our tweeters a workout, while bass is smartly deployed to underscore the scariness of the real world. Even the absence of all things sound inside loading program is a bracing perfect dose of otherworldliness. The size and scope of the sprawling Zion rave party (remember when I mentioned scenes that don't advance the plot?) in Reloaded are impressively conveyed, and the attack of dozens of identical bad guys is a surround tour de force. Oh, and a lot of stuff goes "Boom!" in Revolutions. The Animatrix is in its own way as big and impressive as its live-action counterparts, with both power and precision in every story. And as a comforting bonus, much of the buzzing or popping we hear across eight hours of movie watching can be attributed to the high-tech nature of the sci-fi environment, with electricity everywhere. The rest of that noise is just a cue to buy new gear.

Not much of the more than 35 hours of bonus content here is new, but it's all very good. The whole Warner Brothers "In-Movie Experience" takes advantage of Blu-ray's Bonus View technology to post pop-up windows of relevant inter-related interviews and behind-the-scenes footage as the movie plays. Excellent attention was paid in matching hours of interviews and clips with the final film, sometimes just a few choice words of wisdom as long as they expand our understanding of the film. Captions are provided to explain who is speaking, plus multilingual subtitles are available. The Matrix Revisited, originally released by itself to assuage the ravenous fan base, delves into the making of the first movie, plus early work on the sequels, for over two hours. "Behind The Matrix" is the umbrella for a large group featurettes. To be honest, some of them do nothing more than recount a single, dubious anecdote, and so I will not go into detail about every one. "Follow the White Rabbit" collects the branching video segments included on the first-ever Matrix DVD. "The Music Revisited" is a playable index of club music against the trademark image of "digital rain." All three movies carry at least a pair of commentaries. Philosophers Dr. Cornel West and Ken Wilber recorded extremely enthusiastic tracks, but while this is a case where we quickly realize that not all people, no matter how smart, are destined to create engaging narration, it's even sadder when they try to find deeper meaning in the disappointing sequels. Fun fact: West appears on screen as a member of the Zion council in Reloaded and Revolutions.

The tracks from film critics Todd McCarthy, John Powers and David Thomson were very unusual in that they all panned The Matrices, and here sometimes they savage the films anew, sometimes they just kind of sit there but surprisingly, sometimes they find a lot to like despite themselves. Exclusive to The Matrix is a cast and crew commentary by Carrie-Anne Moss, film editor Zach Staenberg and visual effects supervisor John Gaeta. This is by far the most interesting overall, as each comes out of his or her own area of expertise to really evaluate the movie from a variety of angles. Also for Matrix only is a track of composer Don Davis' musings interspersed between his isolated score plus orchestral and pop songs, in stereo.

The Matrix Reloaded packs dozens of its own specific featurettes, including nine just about the car chase. One nice surprise is "The MTV Movie Awards Reloaded," an elaborate comedy sketch with Will Ferrell and others. This disc is also where we will find the collected footage shot for the painstakingly planned tie-in videogame, Enter the Matrix, for which several key actors filmed special new scenes, the best of course being Jada Pinkett Smith kissing Monica Bellucci. And non-fans wonder why guys like me enjoy science fiction…. Revolutions goes heavy on the special effects analysis, and also the stunts, props, sound, editing and so on. At some point these vignettes run out of steam, somewhere between meeting the extras and the guys who light the sets. The Animatrix includes commentaries (in Japanese) for four of its chapters and a little "making of" for seven, plus a fantastic 22-minute anime documentary and written background information about the various creators. All of the special features are presented in standard definition. To remove all doubt, Discs 6 and 7, "The Matrix Experience," are DVDs, not Blu-rays. These final two platters carry "The Roots of The Matrix," scholarly discussions of the underlying beliefs within this universe (Return to Source: Philosophy & The Matrix, a.k.a. Brainiac's Revenge) and the technology's plausibility in actual fact (The Hard Problem: The Science Behind the Fiction). The Burly Man Chronicles focuses on key filmmakers of all disciplines, both preproduction and on location around the world. The Zion Archive is a vast still gallery of concept sketches, storyboards and other artwork, while "The Media of The Matrix" brings together trailers, TV commercials and Marilyn Manson and P.O.D. music videos. A digital copy The Matrix only is included in the set, for use with Windows Media and iTunes/iPods.

The good folks who made The Matrix, unsurprisingly, found themselves with a substantial hit on their hands and decided to make two more movies based in the same world back to back. Why not? The Matrix has a wonderful, daring, innovative screenplay, a killer hook and a terrific metaphor. (It also has probably the best tag-line I have ever heard in a movie trailer— Lawrence Fishburne intoning "Unfortunately, I cannot tell you what the Matrix is; you have to experience it for yourself.") Neo is convinced that something is not right with this world. That "something not right" turns out to be (spoiler alert) that the world we know is actually a vast computer simulation, created in order to distract us from the fact that we are actually living in tubs of pink goo and powering the machines that actually rule the world. That's the killer hook. And you know what? I'm going to bet that it turns out that, in reality, the world we know is not actually a vast computer simulation, and that we do not actually live in tubs of pink goo. The Matrix, then, is the ultimate metaphor. The world created in The Matrix is fascinating and well-worth the time spent investigating it all. The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, while not as fluid dramatically as the first movie, are still visually stunning and philosophically complex.

The action sequences are nothing less than absolutely stupefying and the wildly dense intellectual underpinnings are... well... they're dense enough that this viewer has had to watch the movies three times in order to begin to grasp just what the hell some of the characters are even talking about. Even Matrix haters would be truly hard pressed to deny that these films are a visual and aural extravaganza, and each new video format is an excuse to rediscover them. Blu-ready fans should consider the upgrade to this best-yet high-definition edition. UB
 

Warner Brothers Home Entertainment
Science Fiction/Fantasy Film



Keanu Reeves
Laurence Fishburne
Carrie-Anne Moss
Hugo Weaving
Gloria Foster
Joe Pantoliano
Marcus Chong
Julian Arahanga
Matt Doran
Belinda McClory
Anthony Ray Parker
Paul Goddard
Robert Taylor
David Aston
Marc Aden


Audio Commentaries— Featuring effects artists Zach Staenberg and John Gaeta, actress Carrie Anne Moss, and a music only track featuring composer Don Davis. "The Music Revisited"— A collection of every single audio cue from the film. Awesome. "The Matrix Revisited"— An in-depth two hour documentary on the making of the original film. This was also included on the original DVD release of The Matrix. "Take the Red Pill"— "Follow the White Rabbit"— Both of these features were early examples of DVD interactivity that are included for posterity. "Enter the Matrix"— A 42 minute documentary focused on a video game version of the film. "Car Chase"— This is a 55 minute feature on the filming of the legendary freeway chase from the movie. Interesting if a bit long. "Unplugged"— An in depth documentary on the various special effects and fight choreography used in the film. "Teahouse Fight"— More behind the scenes fight choreography... "I'll Handle Them"— And yet more fight and special effects info is presented here. Archive: "Exiles"— You guessed it! More behind the scenes features on secondary characters! "Behind the Matrix"— Believe it or not, here is yet another behind the scenes featurette— this time focusing on the the third film in the series. "Siege"— An in-depth review of the processes behind the large-scale machine attack. "Aftermath"— A 40 minute post production featurette... "Crew"— The titles says it all. "Hel"— a 28 minute Documentary on the goth club scene. "Super Burly Brawl"— More behind the scenes fight info! Archive: "New Blue World"— A pretty succinct (for this set, anyway) wrap up. Perhaps the greatest extra of them all on this massive set is the inclusions of The Animatrix in full 1080p adn Dolby TrueHD sound. This series of animated stories relate directly to the final two films of the Matrix series. The Japanese animation houses used for these shorts have turned in some remarkable work. Frankly, I like The Animatrix better than the last two films of the series. Here's what's included: "Final Flight of the Osiris", "The Second Renaissance Part 1", "The Second Renaissance Part 2.", "Kid's Story", "Program,", "World Record,", "Beyond,", "Detective Story,", "Matriculated,"... Also included with The Animatrix are a good number of extra features including several scene specific commentaries, the outstanding "Scrolls to Screen: The History and Culture of Anime" featurette and the "Execution" behind the scenes documentary.

http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/
 

Bridget Petrella is the Publisher and Editor in Chief of UPBEAT Entertainment News Online. At this point in her life, she's seriously contemplating a complete and unbridled abandonment of typical network television... opting instead for Silver Surfer comic books, novels with wordy titles, Retro TV Land, HBO and Showtime's Original Programming schedule and of course... Nick at Night.
 

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