The Matrix is such an awesome movie...

Seriously. One of the best realised pieces of genuine Science Fiction in years. Great casting. Great performances. Great premise. Great script. Great action. Great balls of fire.

It really could have been the Star Wars for the internet generation but the lackluster second movie and dire third seems to have killed it off for good in the minds of the public at large. With Neo's journey to becoming the One truly underway, the fate of Zion and the Matrix forever playing on our imaginations, for me, the sequels ruined everything the first movie did adding inconsistency after inconsistency, the wrong things over-explained while some of the burning questions left forever unanswered.

What could the sequels have done different to make them effective and worthwhile additions to the mythos in the first?

I would like to see a prequel movie about the first Machine-Human War (no not the Animatrix).

The Matrix did nothing for me. I remember seeing the trailers for the first one thinking WOW! But then not caring much for the movie. I did like the twins in the second movie. I don't even remember the third one. The Peter Chung part of the Animatrix was cool.

I agree it was really a great movie. Though I'm not as hard on the sequels as a lot of people are. I actually spent about 6 months of my life editing them together into one single 3.5 hour movie in efforts to make it a better experience. I think in all I cut close to 45 minutes out and it did turn out better than the originals, but admittedly, some of the edits were sloppy. I think the biggest failures of the sequels were the facts that zion was completely uninteresting and the inhabitants were just even worse, that and the third movie takes way too much time away from Neo, and there was an inconsistent tone through all 3 movies.

Good question.
I'm a major fan of the first film and was gutted by how bad the sequels were. I've got into numerous discussions both online and with friends as to how the sequels SHOULD have been done, and personally I've come to the conclusion that they should have just left it at one film.

The more I think about the first film, the more I feel that ends perfectly, at the perfect point in Neo's story. I can't see where the tale can go from there, certainly not in any way that isn't anti-climactic. I mean yeah, we could explore the world a bit more, see Zion, see lots of cool fights and so forth, but it feels like the real meat of the entire tale, Neo's ascendancy to the role of The One, has already been told.

As it is, the first movie ends with a wonderful soaring sensation that the human race is either just about to be liberated from the matrix, or just about to take control of it and ascend to virtual godhood with Neo and, for me, it's more exciting to leave the tale there than to actually watch the next chapter and see what would probably be nothing more than an extended and anti-climatic coda. The existing sequels for me pretty much prove that the Wachowski's (spelling?) had never intended to make any more Matrix movies, and were really struggling for ways to advance the world in any meaningful way.

To cut my rambling short: Given the ending of the first movie, I can't think of any ways in which a sequel could have genuinely expanded on the tale, or taken it to a "bigger high." But then I do tend to lack imagination.

A few minor character things i would have changed in the sequels:

The whole thing of Morpheous actually being "outranked" completely killed that character in the sequels. In the first he was a bad ass leader of what we thought to be the only humans out there in the "real" world when really he was just being told what to do or not to do. That annoyed me greatly.

Also Zion didn't help. First movie there is a small ship with danger all around if we knew more ships existed along with an Army why would we care about how they are doing, another ship could just save the day.

I would have made Zion smaller and more desperate feeling, like those people are always hiding & on the run. And everyone who is free to be behind Morpheous instead of opposing him so much.

Totally agree. It felt they suddenly realised there was more money to be made so the sequels were made to get it.

Anyone who is worse than I at a video game is a shitty loser and sucks. Anyone who is better than I at a video game has no life and is a cheater. The only people I respect are those at my level, whom I just beat.

I think what would have saved the entire franchise is that when Neo dies at the end of the third film, for him to wake in this Utopian paradise. The other humans would walk up to him, and explain that the Matrix and the "real world" were all a simulation. That only the best, honest, and noblest of people that were deemed worthy through the trials that both simulation offered could live in paradise. Trinity would be waiting for him and they'd walkout together to live their lives.

Not existed at all IMO. Not just because the ones we got were a bunch of pretentious pseudo-religious arse, but because the original was so much a product of its time and the Wachowskis cribbing off other peoples work that any sequel was bound to have some degree of horse beating and creative bankruptcy.

Yeah, Morpheus was kinda relegated to "that crazy guy we keep around cuz he's good at something or other" rather than a real figurehead.

Damn, I hadn't even thought about that. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-.

Also, why the shitty clothes when they can make hundreds of fucking robots? What?

Very much this. Still, there was more that could have been explored meaningfully instead of flying off at the most ludicrous of tangents imaginable.

The first Matrix movie was epic. The next two had their moments of brillance. I actually liked the Twins in the second movie. Zion was disappointing, the entire group dance/orgy/wet t-shirt contest sequence was a waste of time.