The good, bad and ugly of film trilogies

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

While the film business is flooded with sequels, prequels, spin-offs and reimaginings, there’s something complete about a trilogy.

In a truly good film trilogy, each film stands on its own, but also compliments its counterparts while connecting all the dots to completely flesh out a story. In other words, it’s just right when you want something that’s just right.

At the conclusion of a good trilogy, cinephiles should turn off their TV and ruminate for a moment, allowing a graceful exit from that world back into the one we occupy together.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of trilogies that just leave us shrugging our shoulders saying, “Meh.”

In that spirit, here are some good, some bad and some downright ugly film trilogies.

The good

One cannot discuss film trilogies without mentioning what I consider the holy trinity of trilogies: Star Wars (Episodes IV, V and VI); Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King); and Batman (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises).

You’ve likely seen these nine films, so there’s nothing more for me to do but bow to them all.

I love Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars; For a Few Dollars More; and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly) starring the young and grimacing Clint Eastwood.

The soundtrack, the setting and the old-school Western vibes give these films a mystique that lives on to this day. Perfect for watching in a hotel room in the middle of the day with some warm whiskey.

The Back to the Future trilogy also makes this list, because it’s just a fun romp through time, both within the film and looking back at the 1980s style that defined the era.

Finally, for those who enjoy a break from seriousness, The Naked Gun trilogy (From the Files of Police Squad, The Smell of Fear and The Final Insult) are some of the best and silliest comedies ever put on film. With the inimitable Leslie Nielsen leading the way, this triptych is a joy to watch, even if it is a little weird seeing O.J. Simpson before that whole murder thing.

Honorable mentions include The Matrix trilogy (which started off with a bang and ended with a CGI whimper), Kevin Smith’s trilogy (Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy), the vibey first three Bourne films (Identity, Ultimatum and Supremacy) and, finally, the Die Hard trilogy, which held its own until the last “Yippee ki-yay.”

The bad

Some films are just a little too slick. The Oceans trilogy (Oceans 11, Oceans 12 and Oceans 13) falls into this category not because they’re bad films; they’re just lazy. 

Brad Pitt’s schtick of eating in every scene is funny until it’s not. Julie Roberts walking in heels is about as awkward as her minor throwaway role surrounded by men. Each of the heist characters with their trite remarks elicited more eye rolls than laughs. The films got progressively worse — and banal — as they went on.

While I love J.R.R. Tolkien’s book The Hobbit, the trilogy (An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies) lacks the magic of the LOTR trilogy. It felt spread thin and too cheeky. Despite having three films in which to do so, it struggled to adapt Tolkien’s iconic book to film.

The ugly

I enjoyed my first time watching The Hangover. Then they decided to make Part II and Part III. While the first film had some moments of hilarity (though some parts aged terribly), subsequent films were pandering stinkers that seemingly only had one goal: to make money off the first one by retelling it in a worse way.

In the same vein, if they would have only made one Taken film, it would have remained a favorite in the action genre, if only for that one Liam Neeson line everyone loves to parody.

However, when a new group of kidnappers returns in Taken 2, Neeson has another chance to show off his “particular set of skills” and proceeds to bore everybody. By the time Taken 3 came along, the whole cast and crew should have been taken behind the woodshed and given a smack in the chops for expecting anyone to sit through such unbelievable drivel. I mean, how many times can one person be kidnapped?

Finally, Jurassic Park was so monumental, the film industry will likely never be the same after the original hit theaters in 1993. With director Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel about capitalist downfall due to the constant hunger for perpetual innovation, how could anything go wrong?

Then The Lost World and Jurassic Park III slowly took away from the iconic original until the real garbage Jurassic World films (Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom and Dominion) entered the chat. The prehistoric slop fest that followed kept getting worse as they tossed more and more money at the franchise, which should have ended with the survivors boarding the helicopter and leaving the island once and for all. 

As each new title was released, moviegoers kept asking, “But why do they keep bringing the damn dinosaurs back?” Indeed. But they did, over and over again, and now the franchise is a joke as old as the blubbery beasts that keep turning on their human captors and eating them. Mediocrity must taste pretty good.

Final thoughts

A good trilogy can elevate a franchise into something akin to a spiritual experience, but poor execution on subsequent films can taint the original so badly that it lies down with the dogs that now inhabit its space. Life is too short to watch cinematic bilge. Lipstick on a pig might look fun, but you’re still kissing a pig.