10 Movie Franchises That Will Be Remembered For The Wrong Reasons

7. As The Franchise That Completely Disappeared Up Its Own A*se - The Matrix

For shame: with the first Matrix movie, the Wachowski siblings tapped into the zeitgeist and gave us what is still arguably the best blockbuster of the 1990s. But nowadays when you say the words "The Matrix," people tend to give you dirty looks, as if the first movie never even existed, and all we have to go on are the not very fabulous sequels, which excelled at pretty much undoing all the good work in the original. But the original Matrix flick was clever, gripping, genre-defining stuff: for audiences to have forgotten how brilliantly entertaining it is on account of the mediocre Matrix Reloaded and the bombastic, sleep-inducing Matrix Revolutions seems unfair. The Matrix teased movie-goers to such a degree that their imaginations did a lot of the work; infinitely more satisfying, apparently, than when the filmmakers give you everything.