(this is not an answer to Dan's question, just a ramble)
The Wachowski brothers tried to be waaaay to deep in the Matrix movies. The first one was cool because it did new things and had some revolutionary action sequences, but the minute they started getting philosophical and put in the KFC guy, it got ridiculous.
IMO the key to getting an audience to care about the storyline of a movie is to make them care about the characters and what they're trying to achieve. I mean, who really cared about Zion being invaded and Neo's personal journey to discover
"the truth". What with everyone saying "Am I real? Or am I

". How can anyone really empathise with the characters in a movie and their motives when we don't know what the hell is going on?
It was a horrible move by the Wachowskis to remove any sense of closure in the second film. When I pay my money to see a movie, I pay to see the conflicts in that particular story
resolved. Sure, it's all well and good to end a movie with a blatantly obvious hint that there's gonna be a sequel, but in other movies that you watch, the problem
at hand is resolved, but the second Matrix film served only to confuse audiences further and build up to the third movie, which was ultimately a huge disappointment too.
You can go ahead and call me a shallow person who's too lazy to figure out the
real plot of the movie, but again... when I pay my money to see a movie, I don't wanna have to be thinking about what Colonel Sanders was talking about 12 hours later, I want to be
told what the **** is going on.
Horrible