Then again, the plot is the usual Hero's Journey (Campbell) like the majority of Hollywood blockbusters tends to be, but I guess the devil is in the details (illusory matrix/maya, recursive resurrection/enlightenment of Neo, the Christian theme of consuming an apple (pill) from the tree of knowledge and the subsequent expulsion from "paradise", etc.)
The Matrix trilogy is good on many levels, but I can't buy the "people used as batteries is easier to understand than people as compute accelerators". There are plenty of other, perhaps more relevant, places to dumben down in the Matrix if one goes down that road.
That's how Morpheus was told or wanted to present the reality. You cannot produce energy by breeding and feeding humans due to the law of conservation of energy.
As later in Animatrix Wachowski sisters showed, the machines were simply conserving humanity.
Or, in a more realistic scenario, might learn how to discern between an article about a tech company and an article about an orchard.
[1] https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm