The Matrix is a phenomenon.  An entertaining blend of science fiction, Eastern philosophy, martial arts, and a mind-expanding view of the nature of existence, the first film in the series cost $63 million to produce and earned $375 million worldwide.  Staggering profitability assured the completion of the remaining two films.  The Wachowski Brothers - Andy and Larry - write and direct and take advantage of a variety of media to immerse us in their world.  It’s unlikely that you’re reading this review without having developed an appreciation for the Wachowskis’ imaginative trilogy.  It’s a tale of an alternate reality and the struggle of mankind to reclaim its place on Earth.

The trilogy opens innocently enough, but quickly descends into dark territory.  Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is a computer programmer by day, and a computer hacker known as Neo by night.  A mysterious woman named Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) approaches him; she somehow knows more about him than she should.  Anderson finds himself pursued at work by equally mysterious men in black suits and sunglasses.  At first he assumes that his extracurricular hacking has run afoul of the law, but he soon discovers that he’s in far greater and somewhat incredible peril.  Trinity helps guide him to Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), another odd being who might or might not be telling him the truth.  He gives Neo a choice to discover the secret of the Matrix, or return to his mundane existence.  It wouldn’t be much of a film if he chose to avoid the truth.

The Matrix is a total testosterone rush.  Reeves and Fishburne often deliver their lines in a monotone fashion, which simply adds to the impact of action sequences that seem even more hyper-kinetic in contrast.  The action scenes are exhilarating, and the special effects like bullet-time camera techniques, were groundbreaking at the time.  The multi-layered story provides an appropriate setting for this visual extravaganza.  What isn’t yet clear is that Neo will become a figure culled directly from mainstream western religion, something telegraphed very early in the first film.  The Matrix was in production long before it was released and similarities to concepts found in Dark City are quite coincidental indeed. 

To satisfy fans that were impatient as they waited for the second chapter, and to fill gaps that would exist between the first and second installments, the Wachowski Brothers commissioned a series of nine short Anime films to provide some back-story to the Matrix premise; this direct-to-DVD release is called Animatrix.  Fans of the brothers know of their admiration for the Anime form and how The Matrix was influenced greatly by Anime sensibilities.  This is the Anime imitating film imitating Anime.

The short films’ styles and production techniques are as varied as their concise plots.  Techniques range from photo-realistic CGI in the manner of Final Fantasy (some of the same artists were involved) to the integration of 2D and 3D computer generated animation with conventional animation to exclusively hand-drawn cells.  Styles range from film noir to realistic to surrealistic.  The result is a dark collection of wonderfully mind-bending shorts.
 
The first film is entitled The Final Flight of the Osiris (9:36) and is arguably the most ambitious; it’s the only one produced fully as CGI.  This segment, as well as Second Renaissance (parts 1 and 2) and Kid's Story, were written by Larry and Andy Wachowski; they approved the other stories.  It opens in a dojo with a friendly little coed duel between two very well built protagonists, each wielding a Samurai’s Daito in what appears to be the common Shinogi Zukuri style. The exercise is strip swordplay, cutting off your opponent’s clothing piece by piece without drawing blood.  I wondered about the counterproductive blindfolds, but then again, there’s always the surreptitious peek.  Their play is interrupted by a ship’s alarm that pulls them out of a simulation and back to the reality of the Osiris, a sister ship to Morpheus’ Nebuchadnezzar.  The ship’s crew makes a startling discovery, and they’re forced to race against time to provide a warning as they battle uncountable, lethal, sentry machines.
 
The second (9:16) and third (9:25) segments are two parts of a contiguous story called Second Renaissance.  These may be the most relevant pieces, for they provide the back-story for the development and evolution of robot intelligence and for the circumstances behind mankind’s provoking a machine revolution.  We learn of man’s invention of robots to replace human manual laborers, how the machines’ artificial intelligence developed self-awareness, and how an unfortunate incident caused humankind to rise up against the machines in an anarchistic orgy of violence that had dire consequences: worldwide warfare.  As The Matrix made so clear, man does not fare well in that battle.  But as dark and unrelenting as this segment might be, at least we come to understand how humans met their collective fates.
 
Segment four is called Kid’s Story (9:40). It revolves around a high school adolescent, skilled on the skateboard, who’s been communicating with a correspondent on the Internet.  He will begin to discover the truth about existence, and he will be pursued by those forces dedicated to maintaining secrecy.  Keanu Reeves is heard in voiceover reprising his role as Neo.
 
Episode five is called Program (7:16). Once again we have a duel between two Samurai warriors, one male and one female.  They have at one another with pikes on horseback and swords on foot. With agilities and levitation skills not seen since Crouching Tiger, they pursue one another to the tiled roofs of tall medieval Japanese buildings.  Their relationship and a questionable loyalty complicate the battle. The piece ends with a little twist that should not surprise.
 
The sixth segment is World Record (8:44), an odd tale about how a fiercely determined track star discovers the existence of the Matrix through extreme stress.  He’s highly motivated to win his event; a previous record-breaking run was thrown out because he was found to have been taking performance-enhancing drugs.  As he makes a supreme effort, suffering the pain of tearing ligaments and straining muscles, he experiences an alternate reality, one that puts him in great danger.
 
Beyond (13:04) is the name of the seventh segment. It is the story of a young woman who, while searching for her missing cat, finds children at play in a deserted building and courtyard.  The area seems to possess strange properties that defy the laws of physics, including gravity, time, and causality.  The reality police will soon arrive to put things right.
 
While other segments’ filmmakers played with the palette, frequently creating a highly muted environment, A Detective Story (9:52) is clearly a homage to film noir.  Essentially black and white, it’s punctuated with small blotches of color, like the little girl’s red coat in Schindler’s List.  As the segment progresses, the overall tint undergoes subtle changes, from the slightest hints of blue and green to totally neutral.  The story involves a down on his luck gumshoe named Ash, hired to track down a computer hacker named Trinity. He’s resourceful and persistent, and will ultimately find her, much to their mutual distress.  Carrie-Anne Moss is heard in voiceover reprising her role as Trinity.
 
The final segment is called Matriculated (16:16).  It’s a story about members of the human resistance psychologically conditioning machines to identify with and to accept people instead of hunting them down and destroying them.  It’s an artistic blend of computer generated animation and cell animation that smacks of surrealism. Clever and imaginative, it - like so many of the other chapters in this series - ends on a note of futility and despair.
 
These are wonderfully conceived but emotionally dark little films that may have been designed to evoke feelings of unease.  I suspect that the tone was intended to raise the stakes, to set us up emotionally for the battle to come in the two sequels.  Which brings us to The Matrix Reloaded. 

Some of mankind have escaped from a deceptive fate and have organized; their warriors seek to free imprisoned humans by exploiting holes in the fabric of our perceived modern technology.  A new recruit to reality is Neo (Keanu Reeves); he is believed to be The One, he who was foretold in the prophecies to end the conflict and free humankind.  No one believes in Neo more than Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), captain of the Nebuchadnezzar and an inspiration to the masses.  No one loves Neo more than Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), a member of Morpheus’s crew and a tireless warrior in the struggle against the machines.  And no one hates Neo more than Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), a software construct of the machines who has made his pursuit of Neo within the Matrix quite personal.
 
The last surviving humans are concentrated in an underground city named Zion.  The Osiris, sister ship to the Nebuchadnezzar, has discovered that the machines are boring their way through the Earth directly above the complex.  A quarter of a million sentinels wait to invade and destroy the remnants of mankind.  The Osiris crew makes the ultimate sacrifice to warn Zion.  As Zion prepares to defend itself, Morpheus insists that he and his crew, particularly Neo, be allowed to seek the Oracle (Gloria Foster) for the critical guidance that should lead to the defeat of the machines. She guides Neo to The Keymaker (Randall Duk Kim), who holds the means to infiltrate the machine’s hidden facility within the Matrix.  It is foretold that if The One makes his way into this dangerous center of power, mankind will be victorious. 

Agent Smith is less than enthused.  He pursues Neo with unbridled ferocity.  He’s new and improved; during their first confrontation since Smith was seemingly destroyed at the end of the first film, Neo detects that something’s different, “Hmm, upgrades.”  One upgrade is the ability to transform human constructs within the Matrix into replicas, causing Neo to fight dozens of Smiths simultaneously.  The film is a relentless torrent of confrontations, including one of the most striking car chases ever captured on film (and features twin albino assassins who are terrible shots).
 
As with the first Matrix, in addition to remarkably choreographed martial arts, this film is punctuated with elaborate mysticism.  Neo meets The Architect of the Matrix (Helmut Bakaitis) and discovers disturbing truths about the nature of existence and of the prophecy.  And Neo’s meeting with the Oracle is equally disturbing, revealing her unexpected nature, her snacking on candies that bear a striking resemblance to the red pill, and presenting him with logical conundrums that do not have solutions.  Neo’s journey is one of choices; instinct will have to be his guide.
 
When the closing credits rolled, I was unaware that I had spent 138 minutes watching this film; I found myself totally involved. The visuals are dazzling and the concepts intriguing.  And yet, I didn’t find this remarkable production as satisfying as the original film.  This is not a reaction to the unavoidable need to end the second act on a bleak note.  It’s a reaction to a lack of freshness.  The novelty of martial arts on wires has worn off, as have bullet-time special effects.  I very much enjoyed this film, but I think I would have appreciated shorter confrontations and a deeper exploration of the mysticism that underlies the story.  Perhaps the creative and clever Wachowski Brothers are saving those details for the final chapter.

The third film continues the saga of mankind’s folly in creating subservient machines that ultimately gain self-awareness and rebel against their creators.  And again, the filmmakers expect the viewer to have seen the previous chapters to fully comprehend the evolution of the plotline.  It is time for mankind, too long trapped in the artificial deception of the Matrix, to rise up against the machines; it’s time for The Matrix Revolutions.
 
As The Matrix Revolutions opens, Neo is unconscious.  He had stopped sentinels with powers that should have been available to him only in the Matrix.  We learn that Neo’s effort has left him in a coma, an odd coma that manifests brainwave patterns of someone who is jacked in.  From Neo’s point of view, he’s in a Purgatory, an irrationally dimensioned place between reality and Matrix.  It resembles a train station from which program constructs can escape their cybernetic servitude.  The station is controlled by Merovingian (Lambert Wilson) - the Frenchman - through his minion, the Trainman (Bruce Spence).  It will fall to Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), guided by the Oracle (Mary Alice), to rescue Neo.  And rescue him they must, for the machines still are drilling down through the Earth’s crust to reach humankind’s last refuge, the subterranean city of Zion. 
 
The defenders of Zion have not been idle.  They prepare for the invasion, arming their fighting machines and setting up a primary line of defense within the point of entry, the vast dock that accepts the city’s hoverships.  What the city needs is an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) device to fry the machine invaders’ circuits, but all EMPs are out on the hoverships.  Captain Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) with Morpheus at her side races back to Zion, hundreds of sentinels closing on them, in a frantic bid to save the city.  Neo has decided that he must undertake an even more desperate voyage, one that he believes is the only hope for the survival of humankind. 

What no one has yet to realize is that Smith is the wildcard.  The agent’s ability to transform any construct within the artificial reality of the Matrix isn’t the only “upgrade” it’s achieved.  Smith has become independent of the machines, able to transform the fabric of the false reality of the Matrix and influence events within the true reality of Neo’s world.  He’s become an independent sentient program, more powerful than its machine creators ever intended.  Smith’s unbridled hatred of Neo drives the construct onward, as unrelenting as the original Terminator, but with much more malevolent intent.  Not only is it obsessed with Neo’s destruction, it is transforming the Matrix into an Earthly hell.
 
When the drilling machines break through into the docking area, we experience one of the most complex and visually stunning battles yet caught on film.  Dozens of combat machines pour thousands of rounds into the holes created by the boring machines.  But no amount of firepower can stop the uncountable sentinels.  They swarm into the dock like schools of fish, unleashing death with mindless abandon.  Writers/directors Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski have created a very dark world in every sense of the words.  It isn’t clear whether mankind can survive, so the story is compelling, and yet... 

The underlying elaborate structure has become inconsistent.  How does a computer program, an artificial construct of the Matrix world manifest itself in the real world?  How does a human who’s learned to enhance his powers in the artificial Matrix world manifest some of those powers in the real world?  And what of Matrix Reloaded’s tantalizing questions left unanswered?  Did Neo’s choice condemn mankind to annihilation?  Was the Architect lying?  Perhaps. The Architect is a sentient that claims to be incapable of lying, which itself then must be considered a lie. And what is the significance of the Oracle’s habit of snacking little red pills?  We now know from Matrix Reloaded that the Oracle is a computer program.  Another independent sentient? The architect of revolution?  Or just a facilitator?
 
I can accept those open plot points and the negligence of the Wachowski Brothers’ letting them slide, but I’m still left a bit dissatisfied.  The first film is an ingenious concept of an alternate reality.  It offered remarkable visions of unexpected creativity.  The fusion of martial arts, Eastern philosophies, science fiction, and social commentary was executed with fascinating skill.  But with each succeeding film, action assumed an increasing priority.  I was looking forward to ingeniously unpredictable resolutions to my questions.  Instead, The Matrix Revolutions is a series of action set pieces and a distinct geographical shift away from Eastern mystical philosophy, evoking with little subtlety a Western religious icon. 

That isn’t to say that this film should be avoided; it is the culmination of a long journey that must be seen.  I had to learn of the ultimate fates of Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, Smith, and mankind.  As escapist entertainment that overloads the senses, it can’t be beat. 
 
The Video: How Do The Discs Look?
 
The films’ theatrical aspect ratios of 2.40:1 are presented in a splendid high definition video compressed with the VC-1 CODEC.  These are very high quality transfers and the images are razor sharp.  There is a very slight softening of small object detail that masks to a small degree the facial features of mobs of people seen in long shots; I’ve seen greater definition of faces in similar scenes on other discs.  But the climactic battle within the Zion dock is truly impressive.  Exceptionally high visual density reveals the sentinels and the humans’ robotic battle suits in remarkable detail.  The chroma accuracy is very fine.  The subtlety of the green tint in the Matrix is eminently clear without being dominant.  The natural flesh tones in the real world speak to the accuracy of the hue.  Fiery explosions light up the screen with vivid yellows, oranges, and reds.  There is a tad of black crush, but it isn’t clear to me that this wasn’t an artistic decision.  Warner Home Video wisely created a hybrid HD DVD/DVD for each of the feature films, preserving a sufficiently large bit budget for the film and consuming the remainder with supplements on an as-available basis.  Even more bits were saved by simply porting over the standard definition supplements as is, with no effort to create new high definition transfers for any of that content originally caught on film, like the trailers.

A great disappointment is that the disc that contains The Animatrix is a double-sided, dual-layer DVD; none of the Animatrix shorts are presented in high definition.  That isn’t to say that, as DVD transfers go, these aren’t first-rate.  The films’ aspect ratios of 2.35:1 are presented in anamorphic video.  These are very fine transfers, virtually completely devoid of halos.  The occasional subtle hint of mosquito noise found on the original DVDs seems to have been banished.  Colors are pure and noise free.  Saturation is admirable in those few segments in which the artists chose to use highly vivid chroma.  Shadow detail is outstanding; this is fortunate since many of the segments are quite dark.  I noticed no blocking artifacts.

The Audio: How Do The Discs Sound?
 
There are two audio tracks for each of the feature films: one in Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 and one in Dolby TrueHD 5.1.  For each, the surround channels are extremely active and benefit wonderfully from EX decoding.  For example, bullet-time projectiles streaming past the viewer are placed with great precision within the entire 180 degrees of surround field.  I could feel extremely deep bass; the fabric of my pants legs moved from the pressure waves, very impressive.  Sound effects and gunfire are conveyed with brisk attack times, a visceral experience.  The raucous orchestral score by Don Davis and the many source tracks pummel the listener, but in a nice way.  The dialog runs distortion-free throughout.  I found it interesting that with each succeeding film, the audio slightly improved, with deeper bass and slightly better transparency.  These excellent tracks are perfect accompaniments to the exceptional transfers.  And if you’re set up for it, you’ll enjoy the subtle improvement that an uncompressed audio track conveys.
 
The alternative languages are in French and Spanish, presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Surround 2.0, respectively.  Subtitles are available in French, Spanish, and English.

The Animatrix films offer splendid Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks.  Deep, deep bass could be felt as well as heard.  Surround effects are extremely active, immersing the viewer in sounds that will greatly benefit from EX decoding.  Very well done.  Sound effects have a great dynamic range, providing a visceral impact to gunshots and explosions.  Don Davis, who scored The Matrix, composed the orchestral scores and the music has a pleasing fidelity and sense of spaciousness.  The dialog was, of course, looped; after all, this is animation. The resulting voices are dry and have a great sense of presence.

The Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

I must ask for your indulgence and understanding.  This remarkable set contains over 40 hours of content.  In addition to three new In-Movie Experiences, Warner has ported over almost every supplement that’s been released on every Matrix DVD.  The slipcase indicates that there are over 35 hours of supplements alone.  Time constraints and the reality that these supplements have been reviewed before (but some reordered or renamed, making it difficult to correlate), force me to be less thorough than I would have liked to be.  I only hope I’ve included everything this impressive collection has to offer.  I’ve culled some comments from my own reviews of the films on DVD as well as Mark’s review of the Ultimate Collection on DVD.

All the discs offer Trailers: theatrical, teaser, and TV Spots.  As I previously wrote, none are in high definition.  So let’s start with the new content.  The In-Movie Experience is now familiar to HD DVD owners: an audio/visual commentary that occupies small windows superimposed atop the feature film as it plays.  One might expect that the overwhelming content of the included supplements would render these features superfluous.  I’m pleased to report that that is not the case.  These are very revealing extras that provide a comprehensive view of how the films were made.  The features seem to have been culled from the existing library of supplements, but their inclusion in-context is very welcome.  I was so pleased with the content that reviewing the rest of the supplements seemed almost anti-climactic.  So at this point, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that these films are available in a less expensive high definition form, one in which the fourth disc and the second side of the film discs are absent.  And considering that The Animatrix isn’t in high definition, that purchase option should be seriously considered.

On The Matrix HD DVD side, you’ll find the Behind The Matrix collection of featurettes: Making of The Matrix (25:48); The Dance of the Master: Yuen Wo Ping’s Blocking Tapes (5:47); The Bathroom Fight and Wet Wall (3:15); The Code of the Red Dress (0:46); The Old Exit: Wabash and Lake (2:36); Agent Down (1:32); and, But Wait - There’s More (3:09).  Subjects include fight choreography and the brawl in the bathroom with Morpheus. The level of minutia explored in these featurettes is so deep that there’s even a sub-one-minute piece about a woman in a red dress that walked through the frame in one shot.

There are twelve audio commentaries, and you’ll find a written introduction by the Wachowski Brothers on each feature film disc in which they discuss, among other subjects, why they don’t talk about the films publicly and why they chose people like Cornel West and Todd McCarthy to do the audio commentaries.

The first commentary is called The Philosophers and it includes Dr. Cornel West and Ken Wilber. The second is called The Critics and it includes Todd McCarthy from Variety, John Powers from Vogue, and author David Thomson.  Both commentaries are surprisingly listenable, but the one you enjoy most will depend on what you think of the film. West and Wilber completely buy into the Matrix’s philosophical leanings and attempt to explain much of it. Cornel talks of the “intellectual violence” that keeps us sleepwalking through our dreary days and how the movie brings that concept to life. Wilber deifies the movie more than Cornel, who is a very odd, interesting, and obviously brilliant person. Cornel is also able to find meaning in scenes and shots where none seemed to exist, which shows how thoroughly he’s drunk the Matrix Kool-Aid.

The critics are surprisingly hard on the movie. McCarthy admits that The Matrix was not on anyone’s radar before its release, especially after Bound, which had a heavy sexual component.  Before long, of course, the critics are referencing Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Cocteau, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.  They go back and forth on the dialog, calling it both operatic and insipid.  There are plenty of gaps in their comments, but it never takes away from the overall effect.

They also may be heard during Matrix Reloaded.  The critics are harder on the first sequel than they were on The Matrix. They mention how there was no way the sequel could live up to four years of fan expectations. McCarthy addresses how the Wachowski Brothers knew what the audience liked in the first film and tried to deliver more of that, which was ultimately a miscalculation. Powers rips on the computer-generated unreality of the milieu, asking to “get to something I can recognize.” The introduction of veteran TV actor Anthony Zerbe made the critics “feel the air starting to leave the room.” At one point, one of the critics even makes a snoring sound.

Even the philosophers rip on the second film. Dr. West notes that the first film was about the resistance, which is much more interesting then war, which is what Reloaded is about. While the critics practically laughed at the Zion rave scene, Wilber called it “a wonderful celebration of the body,” with Dr. West adding that according to Descartes the body itself is a machine. Wilber likens the evolution of Agent Smith (as he takes over body after body) as a Kabalistic spirit, which the practitioners of Kabala probably won’t appreciate. Finally, West concludes that Reloaded is about needing “to know how to practically deploy instruments” that it still serves human purposes without the idolizing of machines.

And, like the previous two installments, Matrix Revolutions contains two similar audio commentaries.  The philosophers admit their excitement going into this one was diminished, and Lord knows there are major gaps in their comments (doing a 7-hour audio commentary must be difficult).  McCarthy rightly says that the philosophical elements that made the other films unique are lost when 250,000 sentinels attack Zion and the film becomes one enormous special effect.  In the final scene Powers asks, “Will they manage to slip in one authentic moment in here?”  To the critics, they did not. McCarthy says he felt “relief and weariness that it’s over.”

Not surprisingly, the philosophers groove on the religious symbolism of the last third of Revolutions.  Over the end credits, they go into how Trinity and Neo become one with the spirit and their oneness redeemed the world.  West closes by noting how every individual digs deep into his or her soul to find a way to connect with something bigger.  That’s what the major characters in The Matrix saga did and, in a sense, that’s what the fans did, as well.  In all, their take on the material is unique and fun to listen to.

There are more commentaries for the patient.  On The Matrix, you’ll find one by editor Zach Staenberg, special effects supervisor John Gaeta, and actress Carrie-Anne Moss. However, the commentary is almost entirely by the first two, with Moss disappearing after the first five minutes, as though she had very little to say and decided to go to lunch.  But the track still is pretty good, as the two men do reveal much about the special effects despite several long gaps.  On the same disc is a composer commentary by Don Davis with a Music-Only Track.  He reveals many things, including his work with the Wachowski Brothers and his methods and reasons for the artistic choices he made.  Fortunately, he only talks during the quiet passages, otherwise the purpose of having an isolated score would have been defeated.  The rock music can also be heard on this track.  A nice addition for music fans.

Want more commentaries?  Check out The Animatrix DVD.  Four segments offer full-length commentaries by the director and/or producer of Program, World Record, and both parts of The Second Renaissance.  The audio is in Japanese with English captions activated by default.  I found these commentaries consistently interesting and informative.  The segments’ backgrounds, writing and conceptual credits, interpretation, and artistic decisions are discussed thoroughly. 

To return to the subject of music, on the Matrix disc you’ll find under Audio Features The Music Revisted, which is a collection of forty-one source tracks in stereo.  And then there is “Rock is Dead,” a 3:19 music video by Marilyn Manson.

Disc one, side two is in the DVD format.  We begin with a documentary called The Matrix Revisted.  It’s 33 chapters and about two hour in duration.  It chronicles the making of the first film. This is the same documentary was the released as a single DVD in November of 2001. Behind the scenes footage that was too boring for inclusion before is now fair game when you have so many discs to fill. And man, is there a lot of behind the scenes material. The documentary, which starts with Laurence Fishburne playing the harmonica waiting for a setup, is incredibly comprehensive.  Costume designers, producers, music supervisors, special effects artists, actors, makeup people, and production designers are all accounted for.  Keanu Reeves talks of the books he read in preparation for filming, including Kevin Kelly’s Out of Control and a textbook called Evolutionary Psychology.  Carrie Anne Moss says the original film was so low-key they didn’t even have a coffee maker in the production office.  Things changed drastically for films two and three, with Fishburne admitting to “a lot less anxiety” about the production.  There is plenty of footage of the reclusive Wachowski Brothers, which adds to the ultimate-access feel of the documentary.  The Matrix Revisited is actually very impressive.  It’s thorough and it’s interesting. The full-screen picture is clean, but the clips are non-anamorphic widescreen and some of the interview footage is flawed, be it too hot or a bit soft. The audio is perfect.

Take the Red Pill will be familiar to those who watched the first Matrix DVD release. It’s comprised of two pieces. What is Bullet Time? delves into the creation of the groundbreaking effect in which the use of multiple still cameras and morphing techniques seem to spin around an object or objects frozen in space. What is the Concept? is a montage about the making of certain special effects, like when Neo “dips” his hand into the mirror.

Follow the White Rabbit takes all of the White Rabbit featurettes found on the previous Matrix DVD and makes them available on a menu page.  Subjects included the lobby shootout, the helicopter scene, and the subway fight between Neo and Smith.  Most of the video is full-frame, but it looks terrific.

On The Animatrix disc, there is Return to the Source: Philosophy and The Matrix in anamorphic video.  It asks a bevy of religious professors and writers from prestigious institutions to weigh in on the subject.  Calling it “a savvy modern myth,” the Matrix is said to be based on Jesus of Nazareth and expectation of the One that infuses the bulk of the Hebrew Bible.  The film also touches upon aspects of Buddhism, which posits that ignorance is the problem and liberation or awakening is the solution.

Social scientists see The Matrix as a world of rigid thinking and institutionalized control.  People in our world are guilty of this every day, giving ourselves over to parents, schools, or police. West says that all of us should be suspicious of authority and blind obedience. The people in the Matrix who are not ready to know the truth are the ultimate losers in the minds of the social scientists interviewed.

Philosophy professors discuss how the Matrix is the opposite of Socrates’ main thesis, which is that “we know that we do not know.”  Those who live in the Matrix don’t know that they don’t know (very Rumsfeldian).  Return to Source: Philosophy & The Matrix is an hour long, and it’s worth the trip.  At the end, the Matrix trilogy is memorably called “jazz mythology,” where little bits of different mythologies are thrown out there and the sum effect is the creation of a totally new myth.

The Burly Man Chronicles is a full screen documentary about the filming of the 2nd and 3rd films of the series complete with its own white rabbit seamless branching.  It runs 1:34:33 and offers optional French subtitles.  It begins in August 2000, with the pre-production of the two Matrix sequels and the Matrix videogame. The piece starts in Alameda, California, where stuntmen are undergoing fight training.  It continues with storyboards, wire-work training, (including a trip on the Vomit Comet, a plane that flies in a parabolic arc to attain zero gravity), green screen shooting with Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith), more fight training, costume fittings, stunt coordinating, designing of the freeway chase, etc., etc.

March 27, 2001 is Day 1 of principal photography and the first shot of the first day is Trinity driving full speed out of an underground garage. From there, we go to the freeway chase (which was covered on another doc on another disc), The Burly Brawl (what the filmmakers called the Neo vs. 100 Agent Smith fight) and the Zion rave (which included 959 extras).

From there it’s on to Australia, where over 140 sets were built, for scenes that would take over 200 days to shoot. 7,500 costumes were sewn Down Under, which included 1450 self-covered buttons for Neo’s jacket. Two tragedies marred the Australian portion of the shoot.  On August 25, R&B singer Aaliyah, who had a role in the film, was killed in a plane crash.  And two weeks later, September 11th.  There’s emotional post 9/11 material, including Carrie-Anne Moss carrying a painting from the Matrix cast and crew that will be sold to raise money for a fire station in New York that lost 11 firemen.  Also, Laurence Fishburne gives a speech to the crew, telling them to “give as much as we can to this project,” since the themes of The Matrix seem especially relevant now.  And if that wasn’t enough in the tragedy department, Gloria Foster, the actress who played Oracle, died.

The Burly Man Chronicles ends with the 1st AD announcing, “Thanks everybody and that’s a wrap on Matrix.”  That’s followed by Moss and Fishburne giving “thank you” speeches while the champagne flows.  Directed by Josh Oreck, The Burly Man Chronicles is actually quite excellent.  The behind the scenes footage has been mercifully paired down to the essential and the interesting, while Oreck’s team was able to capture lots of great “inside baseball” moments, where the Wachowski Brothers and the actors discuss their characters.  The documentary is full-frame and looks good, even in low light.

The anamorphic featurette The Hard Problem: The Science Behind the Fiction is an hour and it focuses on the technological aspects of the Matrix story. The overall thrust of the trilogy is not new: robots become aware and become our masters.  In that sense, The Matrix is no different from The Terminator or I, Robot or any number of sci-fi concepts. Everyone interviewed agrees that a totally persuasive virtual reality world is possible, but drawing electricity “from our spines,” as one scientist puts it, is a bit harder to believe.  Still, the very basis of all science fiction is, “you never know.”

We’re left with The Zion Archive, which are concepts and stills and some video.  The Media of The Matrix are trailers and TV spots for all three films; Rave Reel is CGI and raw FX footage backed by Techno music; and The Matrix Online Preview describes the interactive, multi-person Internet game.

I think it may be time to move on to Matrix Reloaded. 

Enter The Matrix: The Game (28:13) is a featurette that takes you behind the scenes to film actors, some from the trilogy, to supplement the game.  So this is a preview of the game plus a making-of.  Once we’re done watching Jada Pinkett Smith and producer Joel Silver expound on how amazing and fantastic and brilliant and groundbreaking the videogame is, we get to the good stuff. There’re twenty-three live action scenes that were shot especially for the game. Pinkett Smith stars in pretty much all of them. Bruce Spence (The Road Warrior) also reprises his Matrix role, as do a couple of other minor players. The studio really put some money into these; using existing sets and costumes, the scenes look great and could pass for clips from the actual film.

You’ll find a music video of “Sleeping Awake” by P.O.D (3:43), which will only be appreciated by completists.

Next is the documentary Behind The Matrix (46:54 with optional play all feature), organized into chapter entitled: The Matrix Unfolds; Pre-Load; Get Me An Exit; and, The MTV Movie Awards Reloaded.  The Matrix Unfolds (5:21) traces the evolution of the Matrix multimedia experience.  Highlighted are the video game and The Animatrix.  While this sequence can be considered a marketing tool and promotion piece, as I pointed out in my review of the collection of Matrix related Anime, The Animatrix is a very worthwhile addition to the canon. It fills unavoidable gaps in the Matrix Universe left behind by the motion pictures.  Preload (22:10) may at first seem like the usual puff piece to stimulate ticket sales, it does in fact reveal many of the behind the scenes details of the shoot. Wire work, computer animation, motion capture, combat training, set design, costume design, and more are touched on.  The stars and the producer are prominently featured to offer insights and anecdotes. Our education is subliminal, without being explicitly lectured.  Get Me An Exit (9:48) is an extension of the shameless but necessary product placement found in the film and doubles as a forum for Matrix-related commercials.  I'll not play into the commercialism by citing the products and manufactures that must have paid small fortunes to be prominently visible, but I will mention that in a bizarre twist, a cell phone conceived by the film's production designers was transformed into a viable commercial product.  The MTV Movie Awards Reloaded (9:40) is a clever parody promoting the award show.  Co-hosts Justin Timberlake and Seann William Scott and other performers are cleverly integrated into footage from Matrix Reloaded in the style of Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.  Very droll.

On the second side, you’ll find Behind The Story, divided into a number of featurettes.  I’ll Handle Them is about the fight in the Great Hall.  Like all the other featurettes, there’s plenty of behind the scenes footage.  Production designers take us through the foyer of Merovingian’s vulgar, decorative mansion, while Chen Hu, the actor who played Tiger, demonstrates his martial arts expertise. Footage from 1997 of Chen going through his moves in a karate studio is mixed with on-set footage. If nothing else, it reminds you that even the tiniest role in these movies must be filled with a professional.  Finally, we learn about the hundreds of rubber weapons that were created for the Great Hall fight scene. Medieval texts and history books helped the weapons designers create these instruments of death.  Next is Teahouse Fight, which is seven minutes all about the, um, teahouse fight. Clean, full-screen on-set footage is mixed with interviews with principles like first AD James McTeigue.  We also meet Collin Chou, the actor who plays Seraph, the guardian of the Oracle. He’s been practicing martial arts for over ten years and he’s done over thirty films in his native Hong Kong.  The best sequence in Reloaded is the freeway chase. A mile and a half of roadway was built specifically for it.  Car Chase is a one-hour look at how the scene was planned and shot.  There are scads of great footage for the amazing stunts.  The filmmakers considered shooting on an existing stretch of road in Akron, Ohio, but then decided that building their own road was more conducive to filming.  Storyboards and computer simulations are mixed with on-location footage to show how it was all choreographed.  Morpheus’ fight on top of the truck was shot indoors on blue-screen and that footage is also included.  Trinity’s stunt double was a three-time national motorbike-riding champion, and she really drove that Ducati the wrong way through freeway traffic.  The piece ends with a slick comparison of the storyboards with the actual footage.  The Exiles explains the character of Merovingian and his wife Persephone.  The actors who play them explain their roles within the Matrix world.  Then we meet Adrian and Neil Rayment who played those cool looking albino twins.  Unplugged is a forty-minute look at the scene in which Neo fights one hundred Agent Smiths.  As is customary here, boatloads of computer models, on-location footage, and interviews tell the story.  The last part of the fight, with eighty Agent Smiths was all CGI, including Neo. Legendary fight choreographer Yuen Wo Ping weighs in via subtitles on how he learned Kung Fu and then became a stuntman.  His contribution was essential in the whole series, but especially this big fight. We also meet Chad Stahelski, who is Keanu Reeve’s stunt double. This guy has a cool job. He gets to fly in the air and spin and jump and do awesome wire work.  The piece ends with footage of Keanu Reeve’s CGI face that looks almost indistinguishable from his real face. Amazing stuff.

Let’s move on to Matrix Revolutions.  Behind The Matrix (1:29:58) is organized into a number of chapters.  Revolutions Recalibrated (27:00) takes us on a personal journey with the featured players and the filmmakers as they describe the experience of making the Matrix series. We gain significant insight into how specific sequences and effects were done. Included are entirely too many spoilers that will impact the viewer who has not yet seen the film, so as I always recommend, save the supplements until after you've enjoyed the main event.  Neo Realism: The Evolution of Bullet Time is precisely what the title implies, a discourse on how the technique evolved during the filming of three feature films.  What hath George Lucas wrought? In CG Revolution (15:23), we're guided through the myriad of computer generated or computer supplemented special effect techniques that run through the film.  We learn about the miniatures, the full size set elements, sophisticated motion capture, and the hydraulic gimbal mechanisms that create the preprogrammed motions that correspond to the CGI ballet.  This is an absorbing glimpse into the evolution of imaging technology.

Super Big Mini Models reveals how not all the special effects were realized in the computer.  Double Agent Smith delves into the reproduction of the character.  Future Gamer: The Matrix Online (10:59) in an introduction to the massive multiplayer online game that will continue the epic beyond the events in this third film. The game's plotline is intended to evolve organically as the players interact, but there still remains a significant influence by the creators as they establish the environment and provide significant events.  The hardware and software approaches are described for this very ambitious effort.

Super Burly Brawl is about 16-minutes. During a climatic fight, Neo gets thrown through a wall and here we learn that two stuntmen and one very well paid actor were involved in that three-second shot. The piece does a good job of pointing out which bits were done by stuntmen and which were done by Reeves. According to Hugo Weaving, the rain in the climatic fight was coming down so hard, they couldn’t hear themselves speak. Finally, there’s a brief bit on the super-punch Neo delivers to Agent Smith. A mold of Hugo Weaving’s head was made grotesque looking, as if it had just been hit with the hardest punch a man could deliver. Computer models and storyboards continue the story, which ends with the final footage. Good stuff.

In Aftermath, we meet the other unsung heroes of filmmaking, post-production.  First we meet composer Don Davis, whose contribution to the film is sometimes overlooked. While the score isn’t heavily thematic, he does say that Neo and Trinity have a love theme, which becomes very prominent in Revolutions.  Nice, long chunks of scoring session footage fill out this interesting piece.  Next we meet editor Zach Staenberg who looks relieved that principal photography had just finished. Getting “Larry and Andy’s attention” is now a lot easier.  Staenberg, who wanted to keep the three films consistent editorially, takes us around the editing offices.  Finally, we meet the crew responsible for all the sound effects.  And man, there were lots of sound effects and the team tried mightily to never use the same sound twice.  We see them recording the sounds (sometimes in the oddest places), then deciding how they’ll work in the shot.  I liked this piece, because it sang the praises of very important, but sometimes overlooked crew members.

New Blue World is a 26-minute tour of Zion, humanity’s last free city.  They talk of giving Zion an engineering quality, different from the coolness of the Matrix.  The actors marvel at how most of the inhabitants of Zion are minorities.  We also take a tour of the Nebuchadnezzar cockpit and we meet the people who designed all the computer displays. Again, video is full screen and dirt free. Some individual shots can be flawed, but it’s nothing to worry about.

Wow.  I hope I’ve covered it all. There is so much content, it’s easy to overlook a feature or two.  Suffice it to say that this is the single most complete release of the Matrix trilogy, enhanced substantially by the high definition presentations of the films.

Finally, I’ll mention that there is an exciting little piece of paper included in the package.  Warner is letting us know that before the end of 2007, we can expect Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut (with any amount of luck, the unrated version) released in high definition by the end of the year.

Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the disc into your PC?

Each disc invites you to mount the DVD sides of these discs into your PC for weblinks and potentially other content.  I must be honest with you and admit that after going through the seemingly endless supplements, I simply didn’t have the time or inclination to explore the DVD-ROM supplements and links.

Final Thoughts

This is a remarkably comprehensive release of the trilogy that offers a wonderful audio and video experience.  This is the way these films must be experienced.  Highly recommended.


Here’s a note about the apparent duplicate Buy Guide.  Our I.T. people are hard at work on a large project and have not yet had the time to modify the underlying site database formatting code to accommodate the new 0-to-10 rating scales.  So until they do, for HD on disc, I’ll insert this note and a Buy Guide at the end of the review text and leave the conventional 0-to-5 Buy Guide blank.