I don't want to say it's crap, but I won't argue with anyone who does."

At one point I checked to see how much time had passed - assuming I was just over halfway through - only to find that I had about 1/5 of the movie left, at which point I realised I couldn't even recall what had just happened in the past hour. I feel like my brain saccadic-masked it all because it deemed whatever I saw to be unintelligible or something.

Do they plan to follow up on this? Because I genuinely don't even know if that ending was supposed to be definitive for the franchise or not. I've never been that confused about a movie before.

I was super onboard with all the metanarrative stuff going on in the beginning, but then they just kinda shelve it and then here we are repeating all these same scenes from the first trilogy, only its all worse this time. I almost started laughing when Not-Smith and Neo fell through a floor and magically into the subway station from Matrix 1, where they then proceeded to just havea significantly worse version of that same fight.

 Trinity this time--and build around them. So it makes sense they have the super user powers collectively.

They were mostly addressed in the OT and information from the Animatrix. 

The Animatrix which animated the prequel founding of Machine City and the creation of the Matrix supports it was the real world. If you rewatch the scenes and listen to what the Architect and Oracle said, it basically explains most of it. Neo is the sum of all the free will that refuses to accept the Matrix and his purpose in life is to basically do server maintenance by turning the servers off and on again by rebooting the Matrix and starting Zion all over again. When he touched the Source code after meeting the Architect that was arranged by the Oracle for Neo to choose Trinity this time out of love for her instead of a general self sacrificing desire to ensure humanity's survival, changed the game. Neo left with basically system admin access to the machines in the real world too. When he tried using it, he wasn't ready and he got knocked out and was jacked back into another server between servers. The Mobil Avenue where the Trainman is System Admin and rules that digital server. Trinity had to have been plugged in somewhere to reach Neo and get him out. Since Neo was connected to the Mobil Avenue server, he had a wireless connection with it. 

When he was seeing things in the real world, if you notice only the things that carried machine code/machines were glowing to him. He couldn't see anything else. He couldn't see Trinity was impaled until he physically felt the ship piercing her body. He describes seeing the light of the machine city which we can see through his pov when they cut to it. How it only shows Trinity's reaction to the sun since only she could actually see it, but not Neo. Also again he sees Machine City in that clip and only sees it glowing, but the rest is black. The battle between Neo and Bane's possessed body by Agent Smith, he only sees Agent Smith's machine code and once the body dies, he can't see it anymore. Also he needed Trinity to drive the rest of the way since he cannot see the regular surroundings. Neo couldn't fly, bend reality, move super fast, etc in the real world. Only see and effect things that are part of the Source machine code.

both Zion and the Matrix served as two equally fake layers of simulation

well, that was a big theory back in 2003 after the end of the first second film - if Neo has powers in "the real world", is it just another layer of simulation? but apparently not, according to Rev. i was always a little disappointed in that outcome, but also the theory seemed kind of uncreative as well (13th floor did it already, etc)

Edit: Although Chris Nolan has been doing it for years now, forgot to mention.

In broad strokes, it's an epilogue to a love story that Lana was (at times almost begrudgingly) only able to tell in the confines of the Matrix IP she and Lilly created. And the epilogue to the love story itself worked very, very well to me.

Truth be told, it felt like both a Thank You and a Fuck You to the original trilogy. The meta commentary is primarily found in the first Act, and this is where the Fuck You is both not as clever as it thinks it is but curiously neither is it as clever as it could have been. The Thank You though is sprinkled throughout, and this is the aforementioned love story. So it is really no surprise when I say that anything connected to Neo and Trinity is the most fleshed out. Honestly? I barely remember anything explaining anything with regards to any new character and any new variation of the Matrix (not the fault of any of the new cast. Generally, alongside a few familiar 'Sense8' faces, they were good). This is the absolute least of what Lana is interested in (the Fuck You) and that transfers to the audience.

I also suspect that after years of hesitating to come back to the role, the idea of focusing more on the Neo/Trinity love story is what finally convinced Keanu to come back. Keanu and Carrie sell it, by the way. All the way.

So much more that could be said. So much more that could be faulted, questioned (the action scenes are an afterthought, although the final act 'chase' was a lovely form of fucked up symmetry to our first ever meeting with Trinity in '99). As a Matrix movie, it wasn't necessary, and Lana whilst being respectful clearly wasn't interested. As a closing of a love story that gave both her and Lilly their careers, lives and personal identities? It might be the most personal story Lana has told.

Just a final thought. If there is to be more movies in this IP, spread it out. Let others tell stories in it. Writers. Directors. But on one condition. Leave Neo and Trinity alone. They have their ending. Give others their start. I can think of nothing more Lana than that.