I still really like the first movie, but the sequels just endlessly puzzle me. How do you miss the appeal of your first film so thoroughly? There are a lot of examples of that in the sequels, but the biggest is the complete dropping of the notion that the Matrix is our world. The first film is very careful to construct the Matrix as though it could be our reality. That's the mindfuck hook of the original film, the notion that we could be in that virtual simulation and not know it. The deja vu bit specifically plays on that notion, possibly implying that outside of the Matrix, humans don't experience deja vu. Meaning that because we do, we're totally in the Matrix, dude!
The sequels completely jettison this, with the Matrix being presented as sort of a massive megacity with bits and pieces of all major cities. It's basically an open world sandbox game rather than a simulation of the planet Earth circa 1999, as implied in the first film. Then you drag in these weird ghosts and vampires and werewolf things that are purported to be the origin of human folklore but don't look anything like the things they're supposed to have inspired. The sequels take place in a reality removed from ours, and unrecognizable to our eyes. Whereas the first film pulls you in with the idea that we're all Neo, plugged into a pseudo-reality waiting for our minds to be freed, the sequels make it clear that no, we're not. We don't live in the Matrix, because the Matrix is just one big city with some outskirts that doesn't resemble the real world at all. To me the biggest mistake of the Matrix sequels is the jettisoning of that incredibly potent worldbuilding hook, for no discernable reason whatsoever.
