The great thing about having your own 'head canon' of certain Universe franchises is that you can mentally include what you liked and exclude what you didn't.
For me:
Star Wars = First 6 movies + Rogue One + Clone Wars show +(some of the EU/Legends novels)
Matrix = First movie (the others were an abomination and don't exist)
Terminator = First and Second movies only
Alien = First and Second movies only
etc., etc.
Funny how it's sometimes the sequel that becomes better than the original, but often happens to be worse, but it's very rare for the third movie to be good.
With Alien I actually liked the 2nd one better due to how action-packed it was. After that it was getting worse and worse.
Matrix, the first of course.
Terminator 2, but I really liked Salvation as well. I think it was underrated because it lacked Arnie.
I also liked the first Predator, but everything else they later tried to do with it sucked, but maybe for the last one (Prey).
That new Matrix movie. WTF.
But then I didn't like 2 & 3 either indeed. The Enter The Matrix game I remember being pretty good on the Gamecube 20 years ago at least. Felt more authentic than the sequels.
The Matrix Unreal Engine demo on PS5 is pretty neat but there is nothing really to do. Even then, I enjoyed that far more than the 3 sequel movies.
Also the latest Terminator was a disgrace. The Terminator got old, settled down and is in the curtain business. Compare that to the dramatic ending in T2. Seriously?!
T3 was meh with a few good bits: the crane chase and the excellent ending. Had that one been developed a bit more and done by James Cameron it might have been a good trilogy.
At least we got John Wick 4 which is pretty decent, if you like that sort of stuff.
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But to your point about what you can consider canon is indeed reality for many people I suspect.
It's funny when Hollywood tries to sort of satisfy that consideration and then fall on its ass even more.
To me Terminator Dark Fate is a far worse movie than Terminator 3, that the latest one tries to ignore (John Connor ending up dead at a young age instead).
I actually fell asleep watching Matrix 2 and woke up at the car chase scene - probably the only thing worth watching in the whole movie. Also fell asleep at the third one but woke up when they were making that last stand against machines - that part was pretty good. For the record, I usually don't sleep at movies.
The last terminator? You mean the girl power mockup of a terminator movie?
The first John Wick was good, I enjoyed it and tried the second one, which was worse and the third was again worse than the second, so I'm procrastinating with 4 even though it has good reviews.
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