I haven't read the whole thing but here is my point of vue.
I learned english by watching the matrix 8 times in a week with friends in the USA. I love the movie, love the effects, love the story line, love the talks. This movie is brilliant. One of the best ever made.
Now I don't see the point of the two other release. Let's begin by the worst : number 2
Visually, I would say, brilliant, this movie blows my mind in term fo visual effects. Now the story sucks, talks suck a well and the romance start to become more "padme-anakin" like (that is to say awfull). The discotheke scene in Zion is completely useless.
Another thing: if you don't know anything about computers : forget about this movie, you won't anderstand it.
Number 3 is excellent but I suffered from this long long long long long long (and I will add long) battle. 14 minutes hearing m-60 like guns destroying everything on screen made me sick. I really really like the goliaths though, but they made an abusive use of those in the movie. The end is also dissapointing with the evidence of chistians allusions, just to make the movie look more phylosophic than it actually is. If you don't anderstand it : don't try to, it's useless, there is nothing to anderstand.
So my final advice : watch number one and send the other to trash. I guess number one was a mistake by seeing the other two. A good mistake.
Number one introduced an excellent concept with intereting hints to follow. It contains some revolutional visual effects for that time, but if think about it, it's not used everywhere. The movie could have been unique, and the end is like star wars V : it can end like this if the lovie don't work in theater but it can also let you think there will be another movie.
Unfortunatly, there was two other. The concept is developped, but we can't see the whole point. To correct this lack of new stuff in the story, we introduce fights and battles everywhere, shake the whole stuff and you obtain a good movie, but far away from the first one.
And think about the end. The matrix is infected by a virus (smith). Neo cooperate with the matrix and people who want to be free can be free (how ?).
At the end they show us the matrix as it was before. So what changed ?
Well now Zion folk can eat their synthetic food peacefully.