8 Movie Franchises That Should Have Quit While They Were Ahead

When It Should Have Quit: The Matrix

If The Matrix had quit while it was ahead then it would never have become a movie franchise, which would have been totally fine; it's much better to imagine the possibilities as Neo flies off into the sky than see them hastily realised. But The Wachowskis had only scratched the surface of cod philosophy and myths they could work into their computer programme world so just had to continue, making The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions back-to-back and immediately ending their brief time as the toast of Hollywood.

They were almost asking for trouble, releasing two near-identically-titled (did you spot there were in the wrong order back there? Probably not) films within six months of each other, ensuring hype couldn't be sensibly built and meaning that the first being a miss tanked the second, with no opportunity to listen to criticisms. And miss Revolutions did; it had glimmers of what made the original work, but far too much sheeny CGI, confused mythology and unconvincing third act twists to work.

The little eye-rolling parts of The Matrix became systemic franchise problems, which not only meant by the end of Reloaded we were dealing with blind Neo versus big baby, but served as a self-criticism of the original; it's hard to watch what was once deemed "smart" without reflecting on how little the directors actually understood their ideas.