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Final Flight of the Osiris is one of nine short films in The Animatrix series that reveals more about the world of The Matrix. It was written by the Wachowski brothers and directed by Andy Jones, with CG-animation production and design by Square's North American division. It is the only wholly computer-animated short movie in The Animatrix and looks more realistic than the CG-animated movies that came before it. It is also the only segment that does not rely on surrealist imagery or a philosophical background, and primarily serves to provide an explanation as to the fate of the Osiris mentioned in The Matrix Reloaded and Enter the Matrix.
The film was produced by the same animation company that created the film The Spirits Within which also utilized photo-realistic CGI characters, although the realism level was increased for the characters in this short film. Production of Final Flight of the Osiris, according to comments on the Animatrix DVD release, occurred immediately following production of the Final Fantasy film.
Plot
A muscular black man and an athletic Asian woman engage in an erotic blindfolded swordfight in a dojo, each slice of their swords removing another piece of each other's clothing. Immediately after each gets the other down to their underwear, they lift the blindfold to peek at the other. As the two are about to kiss, their passion is interrupted by an alarm and the virtual reality simulation which they were in ends.
In the next scene, the hovercraft Osiris is headed for Junction 21 when Robbie, the operator, picks up thousands of sentinels on his HR scans. The ship flees into an uncharted tunnel away from the sentinels, as crewmembers man the on-board guns and destroy the pursuing sentinels. The tunnel opens at the surface, four kilometers above Zion. Their thoughts of arriving in a barren wasteland end as they see tunneling machines and a sentinel army preparing a descent to Zion. They are detected and pursued.
Captain Thadeus decides Zion must be warned, and his shipmate (and earlier VR sparring partner) Jue volunteers to broadcast herself into the Matrix to deliver the crucial information while the ship is under a devastating attack. Jue and Thadeus admit to peeking at each other in the VR simulation. Entering the Matrix on a high rooftop, Jue jumps off and acrobatically and gymnastically makes her way down structurework between two buildings, and when she finally manages to reach the ground she drops off a package into a simulated mail box. She attempts to contact Thaddeus via a cell phone as the Osiris and its gunners are overcome by sentinels and crash-lands, covered in sentinels. At the time of the call, Thaddeus is making a last stand to hold off the sentinels. Shortly after Jue says "Thadeus" over her cell phone, the Osiris explodes, taking out the thousands of nearby sentinels. Back in the Matrix, Jue falls dead to the ground, her real body destroyed on the ship. It is unclear whether Thadeus actually heard the phone call, and unclear whether the Osiris was destroyed or whether it was self-destructed after news of the successful mailing of the package.
Timeline
In the Matrix timeline, Final Flight of the Osiris takes place a few months after The Matrix and ends shortly before its sequel, The Matrix Reloaded, begins. Linking those two is one level in the video game Enter the Matrix, where the player has to acquire the message delivered by Jue out of the system, which in turn triggers the events of Matrix Reloaded, i.e. the meeting between the hovercraft captains in the upper regions of the sewer system of the Matrix.
Voice actors
- Kevin Michael Richardson — Thadeus
- Pamela Segall (as Pamela Adlon) — Jue
- John Di Maggio — Crew Man
- Tom Kenny — Operator
- Rick Gomez — Pilot
- Tara Strong — Crew Woman
- Bette Ford — Old Woman
Trivia
- Of the nine short films, this is the only one in which the series title, The Animatrix, appears on-screen before the segment title, "Final Flight of the Osiris".
- Before production of the film began in earnest, the animators created a short test film featuring a slightly modified version of the Final Fantasy character Aki Ross, dressed in a leather catsuit inspired by the outfit worn by Carrie Anne Moss in the first Matrix film, fighting a sentinel. Several of Aki's acrobatic moves were later reused in the opening swordfight sequence of the final film.
- The character of Thadeus closely resembles the character of Ryan Whittaker from the Final Fantasy film.
- The ship's nameplate, shown in the transition from the dojo to the ship, reads:
- MARK VI, No. 16
- OSIRIS
- MADE IN THE USA
- YEAR 2079
"Final Flight of the Osiris"