I rewatched all 3 recently, and I have to say I don't remember why I and everyone else disliked the sequels so much. They are exciting, and tell a good story. I haven't watched the new one yet.
Do not watch the fourth. Not kidding. It's not worth the curiosity.
Yes the 2nd and 3rd were great despite critics. The fourth is a "WTF who wrote this garbage money grab" the entire time, it's not even "fan service" because it destroys everything with poor writing and terrible acting, feels like someone was shouting "we'll fix it in post" after every first take rushing to the next shot to churn it out.
Remember how epic the music was in the first three? The fourth is like that kid from Bob's Burgers mashing on a keyboard.
Remember the epic dialog from Hugo Weaving and those chilling rants from Agent Smith? Yeah absolutely nothing, nothing even vaguely faintly like it in the fourth, it almost undoes the entire franchise.
I'm really of the opinion that they did that on purpose given the philosophical underpinnings of the original. Like, to make a point, because Warner Bros owned the rights to their franchise and were going to make some banal crap anyways, with or without the Wachowskis.
Also 2 and 3 were mostly bad because releasing two part movies wasn't a thing at the time and thus the films had to be forced into (unsatisfying) single-movie narrative arcs despite having an obvious overarching narrative.
Re-watching 2 and 3 as a double feature years later makes them less of a trainwreck and more of a mildly underwhelming but watchable and solid sequel to a movie so good it was impossible to follow up on. It finishes the story, literally ends the universe it created and ties up the loose ends.
On the other hand 4 is the sequel that never should have been but ultimately exists to seal the franchise permanently shut because any attempt to build on it can only be read as a soulless cashgrab because there is now literally nothing left to tell. WB didn't want to let its IP die so the Wachowskis had to drive a stake through its heart and kiss it goodbye.
Ever watch the newest one they made? It's like baudrillardian banality taken to its logical extreme. The first half is literally a clip show. Comes off as a shitty superhero movie of now but with matrix characters
The movie is infinitely better if you understand it within its real world context.
The Wachowskis did not want to make another Matrix movie but the studio approached them and said that they would make the movie either way but they would be given full artistic freedom if they agreed. They basically had the choice of doing this themselves or letting the studio turn it into a soulless franchise detached from their own vision.
The movie is mostly an allegory for how the movie was created and why it shouldn't exist. Aside from mindless indulgence the ending is also giving a middle finger to the production company. The philosophy is dull because everything that needed to be said was already said so the only thing left to do is repeat it more blatantly for the audience in the back.
That doesn't mean it's a great movie and you can argue that a movie should be enjoyable without context, but for me knowing this context allowed me to enjoy it through that lens a lot more than I probably would have had I not come into this knowing this.
They put their name on it. They made appearances. They took a huge paycheck despite already being millionaires and not needing it.
So they own it as much as the 1st 2nd or 3rd. They did not have to do that. In fact it would have been an even stronger statement if every review of the 4th started off with "done without the original creators input or approval".
But now the 4th has been done with the original creators input and approval, so it's their fault, their mess.
In hindsight you can now see the wonder and amazement of the first movies were not just from them but everyone that worked so hard for them, not just the actors but everyone behind the scenes, even the clever color timing, completely absent from the 4th as well as the horrible music, everyone just phoned it in for the paycheck.
"Because someone else would do it if we didn't" is not a viable excuse, it would have been a statement otherwise, a path they purposely didn't chose for either ego or profit.
I don't disagree that they own it, but I disagree that it's a bad movie. I actually found the movie largely enjoyable even without its real world context, but I acknowledge that this is a matter of personal taste.
The Wachowskis not being involved wouldn't have affected the movie's commercial success. There are plenty of examples of "franchises" being carried on by different directors even in directions the original director never intended and to still be successful.
What the Wachowskis did was take a story that had nothing left to tell and then make a movie about the experience of having to keep adding to that story, drive home the point of the original story and provide an ending to the story that is impossible to write around without discarding the source material and starting over (not that that stopped e.g. Star Wars Rise of Skywalker from doing pretty much this with The Last Jedi).
The Matrix is intrinsically anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian and queer. But much of its fanbase likes it entirely for cosmetic reasons (cool slomo fights and explosions and sunglasses). WB would have been entirely happy to cater to that crowd and would likely have gotten away with it. Instead the movie ended up amplifying those themes and alienating anyone who just wanted another film with cool slomo fights and explosions and sunglasses. And IMO they did it in an interesting way nevertheless.
My thoughts exactly. As a fan of the first Matrix, it felt a bit cathartic to see the honesty upfront, so I could just see this movie as a standalone statement with some decent visuals. It was pretty much the opposite of watching the latest Star Trek series, that have completely departed from the original philosophy.
