the Lore and philosophical views is what makes the matrix so great
The dialogue in the original trilogy is excellent
the concept of machines waging war on humans and using them as batteries and creating power by hooking them up to the matrix is some next level shit
then taking it farther by there being one last human city underground of a uninhabitable earth which gets destroyed over and over and there being an eventual anomaly out of pod grown humans that will also eventually choose 23 people to start the matrix over after rebooting it so the next human city can eventually be created to be destroyed in a seemingly never ending cycle is incredibly thought provoking
you just want a regular action movie when the action in the matrix is generally created from people unlocking their minds enough to do things that aren’t normally possible in a physics based world
but that’s just me and that’s what makes the three from the trilogy forever interesting even if the quality you can say dropped as the movies went on
What made the Matrix interesting was the technical feats that we never seen before in an action movie. The Matrix concept has been done in sci-fi fiction before.
Take that out of the Matrix and what do you have, a bunch of rambling pop philosophy with pseudo Judeo Christianity concepts. Does that work as a movie, no.
The Matrix got worse and worse because of they focused so much on the One and its lore, instead of the action that appealed to mass audiences. I don't give a fuck about what happens in Zion when all the cool shit happens in the Matrix. Zion looked like a hangar with a bunch of people in it, ain't shit was popping in Zion. It would''ve been cool if there were other humans that knew they were in the Matrix and liked it there and wanted to stop Neo's group from making it reboot again and again.
If you are a Matrix nerd and get geeked up to watch the Architect explain shit, then yeah, I get it, but I don't. When I talk about the Matrix with people, we mostly talk about the fight scenes and guns and the feats. We don't be talking about the concept of the Eternal Return and how the Matrix connects it to the Gnosticism of the Early Christian church. Neo is the Logos and Trinity is Sophia and blah blah blah.
The Matrix first and foremost, is an action movie. I wanna see people fight and shoot shit up primarily, with a little bit of lore and philosophy to give reasons as to way things are happening. Like why the bad guys wanna stop the good guys. John Wick is so good because it gives people what they want. There's some deep shit in John Wick, but it keeps it to the background and focuses on fighting because that's what made John Wick John Wick.
Matrix franchise is a shitty philosophy class with guns and kung fu in my opinion. The first movie had it right and ever since then it has gotten more pretentious.