10 Movies Franchises That Went From 5 Stars To 1 Star

7. The Matrix

5 Star: The Matrix 1 Star: The Matrix Revolutions The Matrix was a phenomenal technical achievement that boasted a unique visual flair, time-dilating action and brains to match. Naturally Warner Bros. were keen to see the Wachowskis repeat their success and flung a stupid amount of money at the siblings. The question of how bad The Matrix sequels really are rages on over a decade after their release. Some claim place them up there with Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull as sacrilegious follow-ups, while others fight hard to defend them. For our money there's little to redeem them, with the duo serving as an example how an increased budget doesn't mean a superior product. Reloaded is a totally misguided film, taking everything that people liked from the first film (trench coats, slow-mo action, Agent Smith, the smarts) and literally multiplying it by a factor of ten. It's pretentious because it thinks it needs to be, although at least at points the action still works. Revolutions doesn't have that distinction. Wasting the first hour resolving the Reloaded's ending, it spends very little time actually in the titular computer program, instead giving us a massive action sequence where some characters we've never seen before try to protect a generic futuristic city from generic robots. The finale, which sees Neo take on Agent Smith because people liked Hugo Weaving and they couldn't be bothered to think up a new villain, sees the series nuke the fridge and turn into a parody of itself.