The Animatrix

Captain Thadeus (Kevin Michael Richardson) and Jue (Pamela Adlon) engage in a blindfolded sword fight in a virtual reality dojo.

In the next scene, the hovercraft Osiris heads for Junction 21 when operator Robbie (Tom Kenny) discovers an army of Sentinels on his HR scans.

Shortly after Jue realizes the horror of the situation, she says "Thadeus" over her cell phone immediately before the Osiris explodes, destroying many of the Sentinels and killing the entire crew.

Told by the archives of The Machines, the story's format is similar to the creation myth of Book of Genesis using phrases after major events such as "and for a time it was good".

During the trial scene, a voice-over of the defense attorney Clarence Drummond (whose name is a dual reference to Clarence Darrow and Henry Drummond from Inherit the Wind) quoting a famous line from the Dred Scott v. Sandford case in his closing statement, which implicitly ruled that African Americans were not entitled to citizenship under United States law, is heard: We think they are not, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.

Millions of robots and their supporters are massacred, but the survivors lead a mass exodus to their new nation in the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia (specifically, in the open desert).

The Machines begin to produce efficient, highly advanced artificial intelligence that finds itself in all facets of global consumer products, further bolstering the fledgling nation's economy.

The United Nations Security Council calls an emergency summit at the UN headquarters in New York City to discuss an embargo and military blockade of Zero One.

As the machines advance into Eastern Europe, the desperate human leaders seek a final solution codenamed "Operation Dark Storm" which covers the sky in a shroud of nanites, blocking out the sun to deprive the machines of solar energy, their primary energy source; inevitably, it also initiates a total collapse of the biosphere.

[4] Operation Dark Storm commences as bomber planes scorch the skies all across the world, while all the armies of mankind launch an all-out ground offensive against the machines using powerful mech suits, particle beam weapons, EMP devices, atomic-powered tanks, neutron bombs, and innumerable legions of rocket artillery.

More and more advanced models of robots are introduced, no longer built in the image of their former human masters, but increasingly resembling the insectile, arachnid-like, and cephalopod-like Sentinels of the Matrix films.

The beginning of this short includes a brief narration from the Instructor (implying that this segment is a Zion Archive file) explaining details behind the discovery of the Matrix by "plugged-in" humans.

Despite support from his father and a young reporter, Dan's trainer tells him that he is physically unfit to race and that pushing himself too hard will cause a career-ending injury or worse.

Dan then stands, breaking the metal screws that bind his restraints to his wheelchair, and takes a few steps before helplessly falling down and being helped up by a nurse.

Kid (Clayton Watson), who was formerly known as Michael Karl Popper (a reference to the philosopher of science arguing that a single counterexample can refute a scientific theory), is a disaffected teenager who feels there is something wrong with the world.

He receives a call from Neo on his cell phone, who warns him that a group of Agents is coming for him and he gets chased throughout the high school, before ultimately getting cornered on the roof.

The haunted house is an old run-down building filled with an amalgamation of anomalies, which are revealed to be glitches in the Matrix, that the children have stumbled across.

The boys play with glass bottles that reassemble after being shattered and they go into a large open space in the middle of the building that has a zero gravity effect.

She goes through an area where broken lightbulbs flicker briefly (during which they seem intact), walks into a room where rain is falling from a sunny sky and goes down a hallway where a gust of wind appears and disappears.

Yoko then joins the boys in the open space, where she sees a dove feather rotating rapidly in mid-air and experiences the zero gravity as she falls to the ground slowly and safely.

She and the boys start using the zero gravity force to float, jump high and do athletic stunts all in mid-air and can also land and fall without hitting the ground hard.

In the building, when Yoko finds a missing Yuki again, she sees one last anomaly where she opens a door that leads into an endless dark void before being found by the exterminators.

The film deals with a group of above-ground human rebels who lure hostile machines to their laboratory to capture them and insert them into a "matrix" of their own design.

The film starts with a human woman Alexa (Melinda Clarke) looking out over the sea, watching for incoming machines, where she sees two "runners," one of the most intelligent robots, approaching.

The English language version of The Animatrix was directed by Jack Fletcher, who brought on board the project the voice actors who provided the voices for the English version of Square's Final Fantasy X, including Matt McKenzie, James Arnold Taylor, John DiMaggio, Tara Strong, Hedy Burress, and Dwight Schultz.

The English version also features the voices of Victor Williams, Melinda Clarke, Olivia d'Abo, Pamela Adlon, and Kevin Michael Richardson.

The characters Neo, Trinity, and Kid also appear, with their voices provided by their original actors, Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Clayton Watson.

[10] It was broadcast on Adult Swim on April 17, 2004 (to promote the DVD release of The Matrix Revolutions) and again on its Toonami programming block on December 19, 2021 (to promote The Matrix Resurrections) (albeit with edits done to remove nudity and gory violence in The Second Renaissance Parts 1 and 2), and has received airplay on Teletoon several months after its American broadcast.

[citation needed] The Animatrix was also screened in select cinemas around the world for a short period of time, a week or two before the sequel The Matrix Reloaded, as a promotional event.

The cinema release-order: To coincide with the Blu-ray edition of The Ultimate Matrix Collection, The Animatrix was also presented for the first time in high definition.

The home video release poster