10 Movie Endings That Basically Doomed Their Franchise
9. The Architect Bores Us All - The Matrix Reloaded
The Ending
Neo (Keanu Reeves) meets up with the creator of the Matrix, the Architect (Helmut Bakaitis), an exposition-spouting Colonel Sanders knock-off who presents Neo with a choice.
He can return to the source and rebuild The Matrix or try in vain to rescue Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) from certain death and cause a system crash, likely killing everyone connected to The Matrix.
Neo, believing he can defy the Architect, saves Trinity and discovers that he can now manifest some of his powers in the "real world", before passing out.
Oh, and the film's "tantalising" cliffhanger? Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) has found a way into the real world by possessing a resistance member, Bane (Ian Bliss).
Why It Doomed The Franchise
The hype surrounding the release of The Matrix Reloaded was indescribable, and though the film certainly delivered its fair share of epic action, it culminated in a fashion so woefully unsatisfying the third and final film grossed barely half of what Reloaded did.
The Architect's pseudo-intellectual exposition dump made it abundantly clear the Wachowskis were neither interested enough nor able to deliver a truly compelling - or concise - continuation of the classic original movie.
Duly, the third film followed in the same overwritten stead, all the way to an even more unsatisfying and equally incomplete ending, while not really doing much interesting with Neo's new real world abilities.
Though at least by this point, many fans had already given up expecting anything good.