re: Could they hav actually made decent Matrix sequels?

The first one ended with a great ending. Hell, it's implied what will happen next. He's going to wake up the humans and then the machines are going to have decide what happens next - go back to war and lose their resource, or figure out something else. Perhaps a lot of humans will voluntarily do it while others start trying to work with the machines to fix the surface. No one knows.

The second movie immediately shits on the first one's ending. Any sequel would be hard pressed to fix that.