13 Times You Lost Respect For Your Favourite Filmmakers

5. Andy and Lana Wachowski - The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions

While irrefutably derivative, the original Matrix film remains a towering achievement: a glorious, groundbreaking riff on cyberpunk and neo-noir aesthetics, paired with then state-of-the-art technology. It also proved to be exceptionally intuitive, tapping into the cultural zeitgeist of uncertainty swirling around the then nascent digital age. The Matrix also ended definitively, with Keanu Reeves' laconic Neo stopping a phone call trace by the machines dead in its tracks and proving himself the one. And yet, inexplicably, Neo and the gang returned a few years later with two irrelevant sequels that sought to wipe out all the good of the original. While the tension in the first film was exceptionally potent, with images of leaping agents, crumbling buildings, and surreal allusions to Alice and Wonderland obfuscating Neo's grasp on reality. Even better was the intense vulnerability of the main cast of characters: everyone remembers the vicious bathroom fight scene between Morpheus and Agent Smith, not to mention the iconic, pulse-pounding final showdown between Neo and Smith in the blighted subway tunnel. Much of this intensity is drained in the sequels: with Neo's ascendency to God-like status complete after the first film, many of the brawls in Reloaded and Revolutions have all the tension of the final fight scene in Man Of Steel; essentially amounting to just two immortal guys punching each other, and often times with no end in sight. To a certain extent this description of the fight scenes summarize the sequels in their entirety. Basically, the follow-up films added nothing to The Matrix mythos. They were overlong, overproduced films inundated with CGI. Most unfortunately, they were devoid of the heart and ample amounts of style that made the original Matrix a classic.