The Animatrix is The Prince for the electronic age. ::: Click here to read the full text.
Ok, I liked the article and everything, but the final reference to uncle Sam kicking aryan a** while Soviet Russia only "held them off for a while" is so wrong it must be corrected.
Russia won WWII. Pure and simple. The german eastern front was so much bigger, important, bloody and decisive than the western front, it's not even really comparable. Had the US not entered the war, the result is open for discussion. Had Russia not entered, all of Europe would be part of the Reich, no question.
At the height of conflict, Germany and its allies had almost 200 divisions in the eastern front. On the western front? 60. Yup. That's right. Russia fought an army three times larger than the US/British did. It was also better trained, and had a larger armored force.
Apparently the author is a bright, educated young man, but he should bone up on his history, or not comment on it. Specially, his comment sounds like undigested propaganda.
Dang...
How old was the guy who wrote this?
I'm impressed :).
Jim
Yeah, pretty cool article. I think something that's interesting and important about the two shorts that give us the history of the Matrix is that they're told from the Machine point of view. They're "Matrix" archives, not human archives.
So of course the machines were gentle victims of human oppression and attack.
Jim
Well this is a particularly interesting reading of the shorts collection...especially in light of The Matrix's popularity, the claims made by the reloaded analyses on this site, and the fact that many of the shorts weren't even written by the Wachowski Brothers.
That said, I still think both "Beyond" and "A Detective Story" stand on their own as great stories, light-years above the others in term of writing if not animation...as a Cowboy Bebop fan the latter and "A Kid's Story" (both from Shinichiro Watanabe) were actually my only reasons for even renting it.
Actually, that comment about Uncle Sam kicking Third Reich butt voices the opinion of many Americans, who haven't boned up on their history. You're right, it is propaganda, that's the point. 'the attitude displayed in the Uncle Sam comment is an illustration of another effective tool...ways of convincing your followers that they are special.'