The Second Renaissance Part II (2003)

So much average

Great Film overall

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Again, I'm not exactly sure why this one had to be divided from the first part, which was a lot better and more effective in creating a sense of doom. This one also felt a little incomplete because it ended before explaining how the resistance featured in the Matrix trilogy main plot arch even managed to form. If there were two parts, was there supposed to be a third? The animation in both parts one and two is decent, though the second one stands out more for its expressive use of dissolves and that uncanny image of the (robotic?) horseman falling into flames. I really wish the two parts were one, as I think they'd both be more effective that way.--PolarisDiB

this is the second part of the story of the events that led to the machines' dominance over the planet and the Matrix, this episode presenting the conflagration that completely ravaged Earth and eventually ended with humanity's downfall. Narrated by a female bearing a fairy appearance in both parts and named as a file in the Zion archives, we are presented with more imagery to reinforce the events and decisions that take place, such as a skeleton clapping when world leaders decide to destroy the sky to block the sun and a mechanical, seemingly apocalyptic rider on a horse during the war. it begins with the machines retaliating after Zero One is bombarded with nuclear weapons, and operation dark storm is implemented to deprive the machines of their main energy source, the sun. it appears to be a gas, or perhaps nano-machines, distributed by planes across the sky. it is called a last resort, and although it seems crazy that leaders would resort to such an ecologically damaging solution, it is perhaps a sign of the sheer desperation of the situation and a hint at the world shattering escalation of methods and weapons of war concurrent with our technological development. after all, the cold war partially involved averting the use of globally destructive weaponry.the machines fight back in full force after the sky is scorched and we see the terrible and overpowering onslaught of the machines against marines and soldiers and human weaponry in a battle royale. it's preceded by praying and trenches and fear and bravado, and then our world falls, with brutal explosions and machines rending people limb from limb. in the aftermath, the music takes a tragic turn and the narrator presents the post apocalyptic vision of the machines' victory and subsequent experiments and conversion of our bodies and species to batteries and an energy source to compensate for the lack of sun. we return to the UN where world leaders are told to give up their flesh by a machine, before the place goes up in a massive explosion.we see the fields getting set up, people getting experimented on and the symbiotic, one sided relationship being born. we then see a boy playing in the snowy ruins of a city, before being called home by parents. running home, the spotlight falls on him and the penny drops. we see a flash of agents in the parents' place, and the world falls apart around the boy, to reveal him in a pod. it was possibly an early matrix. the fairy strokes the pod sadly before fading and the camera pans out to reveal the fields. the narration wraps it up, and it's a bleak, tragic, poignant and effective precursor to the films.

Part 2 goes on where part 1 stopped (such a surprise!), as the machines feel they don't belong to the humans any longer and start their own country, zero-one. Their economy is growing and they become a threat to all mankind, so they bomb them with everything they got... but fail (as you would expect since otherwise there wouldn't have been a matrix).Part 2 is a bit more gripping than part 1, although I keep on wondering: is it really important for us to 'know' this? The animatrix series should be an extra for the matrix movies, and for instance 'Osiris' is just that... but Renaissance, whether it's part one or two, feels silly more than intense and pointless more than important... 5/10.

I love history in all its forms, even made up movie history. And this movie was one hell of a history lesson. It displayed suffering like I've never seen before. It gave more meaning to the other movies. And it also made think. Is the human rebellion against the machine slavery just? (Don't want to express further thoughts about that in this comment because it would spoil the movie). And the animations were fantastic. In short: one hell of a movie.