Where do you rank this among the sequels?

I found it to be the worst. Whole thing felt really off and even had a cheap look to it. Something of a low rent story that's a partial rehash and filled with meta elements to make it appear more interesting. The action scenes are some of the worst parts of the movie and are a giant downgrade from the older films. A very tedious viewing experience.

This was the worst one of them all.

It was like watching a comedy spinoff of the series that has no reason to exist whatsoever.

I give it a 3/10, and that's being generous.

It’s kind of a mixed bag but overall really good. The parts where Neo doesn’t remember who he seem to be some of the best of the series, but the “real world” scenes and the finale fight/chase scenes seem to be on a smaller scale than the previous films making those aspects not as good as the others.

It's an incoherent parody

The 2nd best one, IMO, although that's not saying much. Not great, but amusing. And it seems to carry itself with the renewed energy that one would hope from a sequel that was made after so long. I think they made the right choice by re-casting Morpheus and Smith, even though Fishburne and Weaving are great actors. But the combination of old and new blood makes this seem like a familiar, but still fresh universe

The middle of the movie drags. It's a lot of exposition. And the action is not as good as the previous ones. But the story is at least not dragged down by the pressure of its own hype. And by that I mean that this feels like a movie that knows it's an underdog and feels more "in the moment" instead of trying to craft an epic allegorical story. It's just riffing

I don't personally see what the problem is with it being "meta". The other two sequels were very self-serious and people continually shit on them for the last 20 years. If it had been just a straight-forward 4th Matrix people these same people would have complained that it was more of the same shit

Original - max points, 2&3: 7/10, this one 6/10. My ratings start from 5, and I could only give 1 point for the entertainment value, as I was entertained, nothing more. I couldn't give points for visuals, cast, or story. Visuals-wise, the original had similar effects, I expect more in 2021, now it's nothing special, nothing we haven't seen yet. For a Matrix to have a +1 on the visuals side, I'd need it to show something new. Cast is hilariously wtf, I couldn't decide if this was meant to be serious or a parody. The supporting cast looked like they were from an average B-movie. Storywise, just meh. This did not need to be done, but at least they weren't trying to take themselves too seriously. But contained nothing that would urge me to ponder/think and remember later.

After having just watched it, I'd rank it as the best sequel, though has its flaws. I love the meta stuff in the first half of the movie and it's disorienting trying to figure out exactly what's going on. That was always the best part of the original movie to me as well, and why I liked Reloaded at the time it came out (it hinted at a mind bleep that never came about in Revolutions).

I just wish there was a bit more interest in the second half of the movie. From other people's comments here maybe it's the other way around. They didn't like the meta stuff and wanted more action.

1 - The Matrix (none of the others come close)

2 is at least passable to a point.

3 is horrendous though

4th is an incoherent mess with awful special effects, awful acting, awful script, awful music.

Why is it R rated? They literally toned everything down, even the machines look like they have been made to sell toys to kids. The action is half assed, there are no stand out scenes and the ones that are at least half decent are borrowed (like this whole film) from the superior original. The love story in this has already been told and told better in the original trilogy. This film even mocks itself, it mocks bullet time, it mocks the studio that was gonna do a sequel without them, it mocks its own existence. Like others have said it is like watching a parody of itself. This film never needed to be made and frankly shouldn't have.

The actors are sleep walking through the whole perfermance and some genuinly look like they don't want to be there.

The story in this is the same formula as Force Awakens, Terminator Dark Fate, Halloween and others. They basically just remade the original and some how made it worse.

And then to top it off they change the awesome Rage Agaisnt the Machines song at the end to an awful gender swapped version. You know because they are trans and everything in this film must be a trans alagory and have everything go from men to woman for some reason.

Truely awful movie. Anyone who thinks this is a good movie really need to look at themselves.