The Matrix sequels at 20: Are they really that bad?

A still from The Matrix Revolutions movie showing Neo and Smith fighting in the rain. On the left we see Neo, wearing a black trench coat and sunglasses with this right arm outstretched in a punch. On the right is Agent Smith, wearing a suit and sunglasses, with his right arm outstretched in a punch. In the background you can see an army of Agent Smiths.

"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is," Laurence Fishburne's Morpheus famously teased back in 1999. "You have to see it for yourself." 

He wasn't just talking to Thomas 'Neo' Anderson, either, because his words helped the theater-going public buy into the considerable hype. Everything about "The Matrix" was so stylishly packaged – the impossibly cool outfits, the slow-motion kung fu, those iconic green letters and numbers – that the topic of sentient machines using the human race as batteries became one of the hottest conversations on the planet.