While I am generally inclined to believe the first film stands alone and the later films had at most vague hopes and dreams about where to go if it was successf

While I am generally inclined to believe the first film stands alone and the later films had at most vague hopes and dreams about where to go if it was successful, I also think this overstates the case a bit. If Morpheus was wrong about 5 previous "The Ones" in the Matrix, that changes his character and Cypher's character in the first movie, sure, but it doesn't have much effect on the subsequent stories. If you watch carefully, you can penetrate Laurence Fishburne's incredible screen presence by the end of the second movie to notice that Morpheus is a naive tool, quite a while before the character figures it out himself. (In fact, I find him a bit cringe to watch in the third movie because by then it's obvious that almost every word out of his mouth is unjustified by reality, and he is only right by coincidence. I don't mean the bad accidental sort of cringe, it's deliberate, and it works fine. Legit character choice.) It doesn't change the overarching story that much to make it possible to derive that in the first movie. It would just change the first movie. I'm not sure accommodating this revelation would require any changes in the second and third movie. You could add a conversation where Neo confronts Morpheus more directly, but it wouldn't be obligatory. My guess is that the reality is the same for them as it is for a lot of us. How many times have you worked on a project, either personally or at work, and come up with hopes and dreams about what Phase 2 will look like? Tons of times for me. But even when I stick with the design we hoped and dreamed about (which is basically the task I'm working on right now at work), there's still a lot between those hopes and dreams and running code. I bet there was at least thoughts about future plans, but there's a lot between hopes and dreams and a functioning script, let alone actual movies.