Several months ago I wrote a short entry about the high-definition ‘war’ waged between the two competing standards, HD DVD and blu-ray. Now, one of the battlegrounds between both standards was the support each format had from major movie studios. Basically, enthusiasts were going with the standard which had the movies from the studios they each wanted.
Now, The Matrix was one set of movies in a small corner of such a battle, and for a while was published on HD DVD but not Blu-Ray. But 10 months since that post, it’s been finally released on the latter.
So, I plunked down a not too small sum of money on the blu-ray edition of The Ultimate Matrix Collection. The contents of this set of discs is roughly similar (I think) to the ten disc DVD set released a few years ago, and is stuffed to the brim with around 35 hours of content, with the main trilogy of movies themselves taking up about 7 hours.
Lots has been said about The Matrix movies of course. Many people agree that the sequels extended the story scape and depth substantially but to the point that the story also became convoluted. Who could really make sense of what KFC guy er The Architect was droning on about?
But now that I think back to the point when I first saw the movie (on disc as I missed the theatrical release in 1999), I can see why the movie was such a huge hit. No, I don’t for a moment believe we’re really right now living in a computerized virtual world created to pacify human beings who’re in reality each cocooned as some sort of biological battery. But that very premise of machines enslaving humans is interesting in itself, and makes for great story telling. If nothing else, it’s a nice change from machines only keen on exterminating humans like bugs e.g. The Terminator or the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series (up till a point).
That said, I never really understood the back story from the first Matrix movie alone. All Morpheus said, vaguely, is that at some point the humans waged a big war against the machines, with the former blocking out the sky in a desperate attempt to eliminate the machine’s source of power.
That back story was of course fleshed out in a couple of episodes from The Animatrix. And we watched that too the other night after completing the trilogy of movies. Ling remarked that two of the shorts (The Second Renaissance Parts I and II) that told this back story were so depressing.
Still… another set that’s on its way is the blu-ray Band of Brothers. I’ve got this on DVD already, but it remains the best TV limited series I’ve had the pleasure of watching (The Sopranos remained my favorite recurring TV series). So, it’s well-worth the expense for me. And hopefully Ling will be able to enjoy it too.
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