The Animatrix: Expanding The Matrix Universe with Anime

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By

Ben Sherlock

Published May 1, 2026, 7:39 PM EDT

Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock.

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Keanu Reeves is one of the patron saints of science fiction. He went on an excellent adventure through space and time in the Bill and Ted_ movies, he made the Earth stand still in an underrated remake of a ‘50s B-movie classic, and he freed the human race from their digital shackles in The Matrix trilogy. The first Matrix movie is a true masterpiece; it’s one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made, one of the greatest action movies ever made, and just generally one of the greatest movies ever made. The same cannot be said for any of its sequels.

The efforts to expand The Matrix into a larger franchise have been noble, but fruitless. The Matrix Reloaded is overplotted, overcomplicated, yet thematically shallow, but it’s redeemed by a couple of stellar action sequences. The Matrix Revolutions is a messy conclusion to the original trilogy, resorting to a literal Deus Ex Machina to dig itself out of a plot hole. And The Matrix Resurrections, released nearly two decades later, doesn’t even feel like a Matrix movie. With just one Wachowski at the helm, its action scenes are sloppy, its self-awareness is grating and on-the-nose, and it adds nothing to the overall saga besides a couple of jabs at Warner Bros. executives.

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QUESTION 1 / 8STAR TREK

01 The most famous opening monologue in TV sci-fi begins: “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the ___.” Complete the line from the original 1966 Star Trek series.

AUSS Voyager BUSS Defiant CStarship Enterprise DUSS Discovery

✓ Engage! William Shatner’s iconic opening — “Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before” — has become one of the most quoted passages in all television. Later Trek series would adapt it, but the Enterprise is the one that started it all. ✗ Subspace interference! The answer is Starship Enterprise. USS Voyager belongs to the 1995–2001 series, the Defiant to Deep Space Nine, and the Discovery to the modern 2017 series. It’s the original Enterprise, captained by James T. Kirk, that William Shatner immortalized in that final-frontier monologue.

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QUESTION 2 / 8DOCTOR WHO

02 The Doctor’s time machine is disguised as a 1960s British police box and is famously bigger on the inside than the outside. What is the acronym it’s known by?

ATRACIS BTARDIS CTRADIS DTANDIS

✓ Allons-y! TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. The name was coined by the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan in the very first 1963 episode. The police-box shape is the result of its chameleon circuit getting stuck while parked in 1963 London — and it’s stayed that way for sixty-plus years. ✗ Chronal distortion! The answer is TARDIS — Time And Relative Dimension In Space. The other options are invented distractors. The TARDIS first appeared in 1963 and has followed every regeneration of the Doctor since, though its interior famously redesigns itself whenever the showrunners want a fresh look.

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QUESTION 3 / 8BSG REBOOT

03 The acclaimed 2004 Battlestar Galactica reboot — considered one of the greatest sci-fi TV shows ever made — was developed by which writer-producer, a veteran of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine?

ARonald D. Moore BJ. Michael Straczynski CDavid Eick DGlen A. Larson

✓ So say we all! Ronald D. Moore developed the modern Battlestar Galactica, reimagining Glen A. Larson’s 1978 original as a gritty, post-9/11 political allegory. Moore had cut his teeth writing many of TNG and DS9’s best episodes. His BSG aired 2004–2009 and tackled terrorism, torture, faith, and what it means to be human. ✗ Frak! The answer is Ronald D. Moore. J. Michael Straczynski created Babylon 5, David Eick was Moore’s co-executive-producer on BSG, and Glen A. Larson created the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica. Moore took Larson’s cheesy space opera and rebuilt it into a Peabody Award-winning meditation on war and morality.

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QUESTION 4 / 8STRANGER THINGS

04 Netflix’s ’80s-drenched sci-fi hit Stranger Things is set in a small American town sitting above a secret government lab that tore a hole into the “Upside Down.” What is the town called?

ADerry, Maine BCastle Rock, Oregon CHawkins, Indiana DSpringwood, Ohio

✓ Friends don’t lie! Hawkins, Indiana is the fictional town the Duffer Brothers invented for Stranger Things — home to Hawkins National Laboratory, where Dr. Brenner’s MKUltra-style experiments opened a rift into the Upside Down. The show is actually filmed in Jackson, Georgia, but the Hawkins sign is now an iconic TV landmark. ✗ The Upside Down! The answer is Hawkins, Indiana. Derry is Stephen King’s fictional town from IT, Castle Rock is another King town (and an anthology series), and Springwood is from A Nightmare on Elm Street. The Duffer Brothers deliberately evoked King’s small-town horror tradition when creating Hawkins.

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QUESTION 5 / 8THE X-FILES

05 In The X-Files, Fox Mulder has a famous poster hanging in his FBI basement office — a UFO photograph with a three-word tagline beneath it. What does the tagline say?

A“Trust No One” B“The Truth Is Out There” C“Deny Everything” D“I Want To Believe”

✓ The truth is out there! “I Want To Believe” sits below a blurry UFO photo on the poster that hangs in Mulder’s basement office throughout the series. The line became so associated with the show that it was used as the title of the 2008 feature film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe. ✗ File that one away! The answer is “I Want To Believe.” “Trust No One,” “Deny Everything,” and “The Truth Is Out There” are all iconic X-Files taglines — but it’s “I Want To Believe” that’s literally printed on the UFO poster in Mulder’s office, and which became the title of the franchise’s 2008 movie.

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QUESTION 6 / 8SEVERANCE

06 Apple TV+’s Severance — about office workers whose memories are surgically divided between their work and personal lives — was created by a first-time showrunner who used to be a customer service rep. Who is he?

ADamon Lindelof BDan Erickson CBen Stiller DJonathan Nolan

✓ Praise Kier! Dan Erickson wrote the Severance pilot while working soul-crushing office jobs — literally daydreaming about splitting his mind so the “work-him” would suffer instead. Ben Stiller came on as executive producer and directed most episodes, but Erickson is the creator whose personal ennui gave us Lumon Industries. ✗ Outie interference! The answer is Dan Erickson. Damon Lindelof created Lost, The Leftovers, and Watchmen; Ben Stiller is Severance’s executive producer and primary director (but not its creator); Jonathan Nolan created Westworld and Person of Interest. Erickson’s script sat on the Black List for years before Stiller championed it.

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QUESTION 7 / 8BLACK MIRROR

07 In 2018, Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror released a groundbreaking feature-length episode that let viewers make choose-your-own-adventure style decisions for the protagonist. What was it called?

ABandersnatch BUSS Callister CSan Junipero DMetalhead

✓ Interactive transmission received! Bandersnatch followed young programmer Stefan as he adapted a choose-your-own-adventure novel in 1984. Viewers could make choices at key moments, branching the story into multiple endings. It was Netflix’s most ambitious interactive experiment — and the meta commentary on viewer control remains quintessential Black Mirror. ✗ Null pointer! The answer is Bandersnatch. USS Callister is the Emmy-winning Star Trek riff, San Junipero is the beloved ’80s romance episode, and Metalhead is the black-and-white robot-dog thriller. All are Black Mirror, but only Bandersnatch was the interactive choose-your-own-adventure special that launched in December 2018.

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QUESTION 8 / 8FIREFLY

08 Joss Whedon’s space-western Firefly became a legendary cult classic after Fox infamously cancelled it — airing episodes out of order, burying the pilot, and pulling the plug. How many episodes aired on Fox before cancellation?

A8 B11 C13 D22

✓ Shiny! Only 11 of the 14 produced Firefly episodes aired on Fox in late 2002 before the network pulled the plug. The remaining three (including the two-hour pilot “Serenity”) first aired in proper order on the Sci-Fi Channel and eventually on DVD. Fan outcry led to the 2005 film Serenity — a rare cinematic rescue for a cancelled series. ✗ Fox strikes again! The answer is 11. Fourteen episodes were actually filmed, but Fox only aired 11 before cancellation, and they aired them out of order with the pilot held until last. The complete set finally aired on Sci-Fi Channel and DVD, and the fan-driven “Browncoats” campaign eventually convinced Universal to greenlight Serenity.

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Trekkie-level canon — or still buffering?

⤴ RETRANSMIT

But it’s not all doom and gloom. The Matrix_ franchise has yielded some decent video games and comic books, and it spawned an animated spinoff so great that it made the whole enterprise worthwhile. In 2003, The Animatrix** was produced to coincide with the release of The Matrix Reloaded and help to promote the back-to-back Matrix sequels. It was a way of returning the favor; the Wachowskis had been heavily influenced by Japanese anime when they made The Matrix (it’s basically a live-action Ghost in the Shell), so they gave the anime world an opportunity to play in their playground.

The Animatrix Is The Second-Best Matrix Movie

_ The Kid looking at a computer screen in The Animatrix

The Animatrix_ is a feature-length anthology of nine animated shorts set around the events of The Matrix trilogy. The Wachowskis came up with the initial idea and oversaw the entire production, but they gave a lot of creative control to their directors and animators. The Wachowskis wrote four of the nine segments, but even those four were handed off to other directors. This spinoff was an opportunity for other filmmakers to leave their mark on The Matrix universe, and some of the biggest names in Japanese animation stepped up to the plate.

On a practical level, The Animatrix was created to expand on The Matrix’s lore and dig into mythology and backstory that the other movies didn’t have time for (and that stuff is fascinating; it goes in-depth on the history of the Matrix, which got reduced to a few throwaway lines in the live-action films). But on a creative level, it gave a bunch of different anime creators a chance to bring their unique voice to The Matrix universe, and share their interpretation of the Wachowskis’ epic.

The Animatrix is only tangentially connected to the other Matrix movies. Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss briefly reprise their roles as Neo and Trinity as a fun Easter egg, but the real fun of The Animatrix is how it expands the universe. The Animatrix is purely an exercise in worldbuilding, but it stands out as a great movie in its own right, just like Andor is a great political spy thriller that happens to take place in the Star Wars universe.

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