Breja: To me both Matrix sequels were just ungodly boring. I didn't care at all about any of the new characters, I barely cared about any of the old characters, the writing was terrible and the dull, pretentious dialogues just neverending, even the action wasn't impressing me, it all just became a CG cartoon at that point... to this day Reloaded is the last movie that I ever just gave up on and walked out of a movie theatre (I didn't even go to see Revolutions in cinema). And that's actually saying quite a lot - untill last year I would see something like 20 movies in theatre a year, some years it was more than double that.
But then, to be fair, I was never even that crazy about the first Matrix. It was fun, I enjoyed it, but I never thought of it as anything more than a fun, dumb action film, and really just an ok one, nothing great.
Can't really remember the dialogue quality, but I do remember some parts did feel quite boring: the scenes with the Frenchman particularly, and even the fight with his minions.
However I'd imagine if the characters don't work for you, it will quickly poison the film. For me that happened with Harry Potter after the 3rd or 4th film. Once that teenage angst thing started to kick in, I found the films unwatchable.
arrua: "The real world" was another layer of matrix. Its function was to make, the humans who escape from the first layer of the matrix, believe they escaped from the system.
I didn´t like all the religious symbolisms they threw in the sequels. I mean, I could have enjoyed them if done in a different way. I don´t know, Batman Vs Superman Ultimate Edition has plenty of it, but it´s done much better. Much much better. I hated to see Neo dressed as a priest, for example.
I like what they tried to do in the sequels, but I didn´t like the way they did it.
I'm not an expert on the lore, but do you meant the "real world" was another actual simulation? Was this established in the film at some point? I do recall that the architect mentioned that zion being regularly allowed to thrive only to be later destroyed was part of the machines' overall plan.
Actually now that I think about it, it would explain how Smith took over a human, and how Neo could destroy the machines in the 'real world'