They're making a Matrix 5.

[Tyndmyr]

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?

An interesting perspective. I certainly don't think I'd sit down to watch the Two Towers without also watching Return of the King. Last time I watched them, I did watch the whole trilogy at a go. Last time I watched the Matrix, I watched only the Matrix.

I think the big difference here is that LotR was a trilogy from the start, and the first Matrix movie is pretty much a complete film with two sequels bolted on. I do think that multipart films are criticized more heavily when they go awry, particularly when it feels as if one film is being padded into multiple. Long as we're talking LotR, the hobbit films come to mind. Oh, they absolutely had some good bits, but there was some general discontent about padding and added plot. I'll concede that adding the love plot was, technically, story, but it did feel a bit out of place, and it and other bits definitely felt like a distraction from the central tale, not advancing it.

Also, back on Two Towers, the plot of the movie was not half finished. I think Helm's Deep was actually pretty significant, and delivered on the setup. Setup, payoff, that's all well and good. The architect's speech wasn't much of a payoff for its setup.

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.

The architect truly does not have much in the way of a point. The transcript of it is available here.

The matrix reveals that this is iteration #6, Neo makes an unfounded but correct guess that choice is responsible. Thematically fitting, but from a conversational perspective, disjointed as hell. The initial failure and the need for iterations is not truly a reveal. This was already discussed in the first movie, which Smith flat out tells Morpheus this. Therefore, this is not actual progression of the plot. Oh, a number is given. The number doesn't much matter. If there had been five Neos or seven, the story would be the same.

The first movie already gave us the Oracle explaining that Neo had to choose between his life and Morpheus's. This...isn't fundamentally different. We've just changed the people in the choice. Only, it is not even a true choice. Trinity dies regardless, and apparently will be revived regardless. So, it is literally just discussion, and hardly even that. The Architect does all the talking here, it is a lecture. Barely more than a voice over.

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.

The whole "peace is the answer" is again negated by the existence of the fourth film. After all, we basically end up with the cycle restarting all the same, showing that choosing peace is literally futile.

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.

If it reconned the choice to not actually be a choice, then, no, that theme no longer works. The Matrix film with Resurrections in it is far less coherent than when it was just the trilogy(plus Animatrix, I suppose). I would argue even that the original film alone is thematically more cohesive than the trilogy, though the falloff is not so great as the addition of the fourth film.

It undercuts every message, discards a great deal of character, and generally diminishes the importance of all that came before. If the Matrix starts regardless, and you end up with Neo and Trinity in a matrix again regardless of which door Neo chooses, then the choice of doors does not matter. They are merely doors.

Nearly any other story would have been better than Resurrections, I think. I don't mind the Animatrix. I think it gave us some interesting other windows into the world, and more of that might have been interesting, but recycling the same old plot cannot help but be inferior.