They're making a Matrix 5.

[Vahnavoi]

I expect a movie to be a viable story in itself. Merely setting groundwork for the next movie is not, itself, much of a story.

It is half of the story. You can criticize Reloaded and Revolutions for not being good standalone films due to that. But do you extend that to other multipart films? Do you also complain that (say) Peter Jackson's the Two Towers isn't much of a story?

Yes. But take away all the lecturing, and any door that Neo goes through or doesn't is a choice. He goes through quite a lot of doors in this movie.

None of which are particularly important.

So, the difference is the dialogue, but the dialogue is not good. It is some heavy duty filler.

Here you veer into nonsense again. Yes, the plot is Neo going through just another door if you ignore all the context and story around that choice. That's not a fair criticism of anything. Saying the very dialogue that establishes and explains the difference is filler is a complete oxymoron. It's like saying all the talk in Lord of the Rings explaining what rings of power are, and all the flashes of Sauron's eye in Peter Jackson's films, are filler - then turning around and wondering why people are so upset about a wedding band.

Seriously. Taking too long to get to a point, is not the same as not having one. Being bad, in whatever subjective way, is not the same as being unimportant.

Why shouldn't Neo punch the Architect? He has no motivation not to, and in fact, ends the speech by threatening the architect, which seems utterly pointless.

It has completely sailed past you that this might tell you something about who Neo is as a person, and tie in to the fact that Neo ultimately goes to the machine city to negotiate peace, rather than, say, try to blow the city up.

Neo doesn't punch the Architecht because he knows it is, at this point, futile. It cannot save Trinity or help him in any other way, it can only distract him. He threatens the Architecht to make his personal dissatisfaction known. The Architecht replies the way he does because he knows the threat is empty. For Neo, acting on his love towards Trinity is more important than acting on his rage against his creator.

And, in any case, thanks to Matrix 4, all the talk of sacrifice is undone in any case. One can no longer take Trinity's death seriously, since she is merely resurrected again in any case. What meaning is left to the "choice?" We are left with the inescapable conclusion that all the paths lead to the same place regardless, and thus even the choice of which door is walked through is ultimately as meaningless as the words the Architect babbles.

That's untrue. Remember what Architecht said: "She is going to die and there is nothing you can do about it."

Neo does nothing about in Resurrections. His and Trinity's continued existence was completely out of his hands. It is other people who make the choice to bring them back, a choice they only make because of Neo's and Trinity's earlier sacrifice and disappearance. Resurrections isn't subtle about this point.

You don't have to let Resurrections off the hook just for that, though. You can fairly argue the movie makers had better options than bringing Neo and Trinity back. You can also argue they could've made a better movie about them coming back. But saying the earlier sacrifice was meaningless because of an ultimate happy ending (20 years later in real life and 60 years later in the movie!) is silly.

Granted, the overall story would be rather less bad without 4, but if you're insisting that one can only fairly judge a movie as part of the broader whole, well, then you're stuck dealing with the fact that the whole includes some pretty rough stuff.

Resurrections wasn't shot concurrently with Reloaded and Revolutions. The point I made of Reloaded and Revolutions being two halves of the same story doesn't apply to it. It's a late addition made under duress and self-aware of it. If I found Resurrections to detract greatly from Reloaded and Revolutions, I'd have no trouble telling people to disregard it. As is, I'm mostly lukewarm to it - it doesn't defeat the point of Reloaded and Revolutions, but neither is it an interesting continuation of them.

Animatrix shorts and Enter the Matrix videogames are far more relevant to judging Reloaded and Revolutions, as they actually directly tie together.