Our list of the Top 30 Movie Trilogies of all Time. Do you Agree?………Before the 1970s a film trilogy was a rare entity. Usually if a film was successful it was simply left to run or re-released at a later date. However the success surrounding The Godfather trilogy and latterly the Star Wars saga lead Hollywood to consider sequels and threequels as a viable way of making money. Since this period there has been an explosion in the film trilogy release cycle, even going as far as to coin the ˜franchise’ term for those that run over the standard three films format.
Now just because George Lucas, Steven Spielberg or Marvel studios decide to release a fourth instalment after a film trilogy finishes does not preclude the first three films being a fully-fledged film trilogy in their own right and so you can fully expect to see your favourites in the list. The only exceptions to inclusion are those that are too loosely linked, film trilogies such as Kevin Smith’s so-called ˜Jersey Film Trilogy’ (Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy) and the James Bond franchise of films of which there are enough to make a enough entires to fill the whole top 30 list.
Bryan Singer directed the first two installments, while a series of changes lead to Brett Ratner completing the X-Men film trilogy. Focusing on the civil rights movement but with mutants instead of ethnic minorities and Professor X and Magneto replacing Malcolm X and Martin Luthor King. Driven on by the success of Blade pushed comic book film adaptations to the forefront of Hollywood’s production process and the X-Men films were the second of the Marvel film trilogies to be completed.
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When Oren Peli first released Paranormal Activity in 2009, it came as a response to the increase in popularity of the ˜torture porn’ films like Saw that took great pleasure in showing human suffering. Intent in bringing ghost stories back into vogue, and using the same found footage techniques of The Blair Witch Project, he created a hugely profitable franchise of horror films under the Paranormal Activity name.
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The ˜rules’ of the horror film are the subject of the post-modern cinematic classic that is Scream. Wes Craven, a name synonymous with the horror film genre, working off of the incredible script by Kevin Williamson, took all the commonly held ideas of a horror film and began to subvert them. While the sequels never reached the heights achieved by the original, the Scream film trilogy is one of the most interesting set of horror films around.
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Following the success of Tim Burton˜s Batman came a host of major comic characters given big screen films. One of the most commercially successful was Spider-Man, directed by The Evil Dead head honcho Sam Raimi. Proving a series of massive summer blockbusters, Raimi˜s Spider-Man brought comic book films front and centre and ensured years of big releases for the two big comic book producers Marvel and DC. Sadly a disastrous third installment lead to a reboot of the series with The Amazing Spider-Man, but the original film trilogy remains one of the best around.
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When director Tim Burton took on the iconic DC character Batman, he brought with him his vast experience of Gothic stylised cinema. The result was one of the biggest grossing films of 1989, the beginning of a huge franchise and the start of a shift toward successful comic book film adaptations. Replaced for the third installment by Joel Schumacher, Burton’s influence can still be felt throughout all three films before the cartoon-colours Batman and Robin killed the franchise dead. The original Burton Batman films are both great and a reminder of why comic films became so successful.
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Desperate to create any form of competition to Pixar and Disney, Dreamworks Animation decided to adapt a children’s book about a troll whose life in a swamp is disturbed by an evil lord. The rest is history as Shrek launched a franchise of films that spans four direct films and a spin-off in Puss in Boots. With main characters voiced byMike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Antonio Banderas and Cameron Diaz, the Shrek trilogy of films suffers from two great first instalments followed by a very weak third film.
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Director Robert Rodriguez burst onto the independent film scene in the early 1990s along with future collaborator Quintin Tarantino. His first low-budget film was El Mariachi, which he later expanded upon with Desperado before bringing his first film trilogy full circle, in the star-studded Once Upon a Time in Mexico. While none are absolute classics, they provide a great overview of the type of frenetic, action-packed films that Rodriguez would bring to all the films throughout his career.
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Starting with the second incarnation of Dr. Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins three performances as the genius cannibalistic serial killer have helped to create one of the most iconic villains in film history. Recovering from a woeful middle adaptation, with the Brett Ratner directed Red Dragon, the Hannibal Lector film trilogy is one of the most tense and thrilling series of films of all time.
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In 2002, two of the biggest names in Hong Kong cinema, Andy Lau and Tony Leung, teamed up to star in Infernal Affairs. The film was a box office smash in Hong Kong, and also received huge critical acclaim, beating Hero to the Best Film award at the 2002 Hong Kong Film Awards. It also started one of the most financially successful Hong Kong film trilogies of all time, with the two immediate sequels released in 2003.
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George Clooney took an idea hatched four decades previously by Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack and with the help of Brad Pitt and Steven Soderbergh created a trilogy of films around the iconic characters of Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan. Bringing in a host of guest star from Hollywood, the Ocean’s Film Trilogy has become one of the most recognisable and well-loved film franchises in recent years.
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Following one from the success of Wayne’s World and Wayne’s World 2, writer and star Mike Myers moved onto a satire of 1960s spy films. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery saw him don a crushed blue velvet suit and some bad teeth as a sexually adventurous representation of the swinging 60s, while simultaneously playing his own nemesis, the Blofeld-inspired Dr.Evil, complete with white cat, bald cap and sinister laugh.
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In 2003 Park Chan-Wook released OldBoy, the second in a thematically connected trilogy between Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and Lady Vengeance (guess what the theme is). As well as being part of this loose trilogy of revenger’s tragedies, OldBoy is also a loose adaptation of a Manga series that ran between 1996 and 1998 “ an eight volume piece of work, spanning 79 chapters.
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In 1979 a low-budget Australian film called Mad Max was released starring an almost unheard of actor named Mel Gibson. Made on a tiny budget, the film would go onto to become a box office success, leading to the option for follow-up films being taken. In 1981 and 1985 its sequels established it as one of the greatest action trilogies of ll time.
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The late 1980s was a hotbed of action films with fast-talking dialogue, big explosions and over-the-top action scenes. One of the finest examples, and one that was so successful that it spawned a host of hit-and-miss sequels is the Mel Gibson star-making vehicle, Lethal Weapon. Directed by 1980s supremo Richard Donner, Lethal Weapon would turn Mel Gibson into a megastar while reinforcing the dominance of the action film during this era.
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1992 saw David Fincher’s step into a project late, with an unfinished script and attempt to keep the Alien franchises’ streak going with Alien3. Following on from Ridley Scott’s science fiction benchmark Alien and James Cameron’s game-changing action film Aliens, the third installment was dogged with script-writers coming and going, long-running production issues and a fluctuating budget.
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After the commercial success of Darkman, director Sam Raimi found himself in a position to complete his Evil Dead trilogy. Using a script idea that was originally planned for Evil Dead II, he takes the action back to the middle ages in Army of Darkness. Shot on a budget of $13m, Army of Darkness proved to be a moderate success, taking just over $21m at the box office.
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Released at a time when the James Bond franchise was faltering in quality and believability, The Bourne Identity become a commercial success that further solidified Matt Damon’s place as Hollywood A-Lister and created a franchise to challenge the British secret agent. Based on a novel by Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity was adapted to screen by Tony Gilroy and William Blake Herron.
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The Three Colors Trilogy (Polish: Trzy kolory) is the collective title of three films “ a trilogy “ directed by Krzysztof KieÅ›lowski, two made in French and one primarily in Polish: Trois couleurs: Bleu Three Colors: Blue 1993, Three Colors: White in French: Blanc 1994, and Trois couleurs: Rouge Three Colors: Red 1994. All three were co-written by KieÅ›lowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz (with story consultants Agnieszka Holland and SÅ‚awomir Idziak) and have musical scores by Zbigniew Preisner.
In the Christmas of 1988, one actor, with no background in action helped create one of the most iconic action heroes, a man who was just an ordinary New York City cop placed in extraordinary circumstances. That actor was Bruce Willis, that cop was John McClane and that film was Die Hard. He would go on to star in many sequels, but the original film trilogy remains the pinnacle of action film franchises.
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The Terminator was a film that spawned one of the most film franchises of all time, solidified Arnold Schwarzenegger as an A-list star and set writer/director James Cameron on the path to some of the biggest box office returns of all time. The most successful both critically and commercially of the franchise is its immediate sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which reverses the role of Arnie’s character from killing machine to protector.
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It’s hard to imagine a film world without Back to the Future, a film so delightfully playful, wistfully nostalgic and utterly enjoyable that it shaped the childhoods of an entire generation. Directed byRobert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg, Back to the Future had a powerhouse production team who later became used to creating generation-defining films.
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It’s quite hard to overstate how influential A Fistful of Dollars has been to the Western genre. In 1964, the Western was beginning to show its age, as was its most recognisable star, John Wayne; Sergio Leone˜s ironic, subversive film helped breathe new life into the Western, created the spaghetti Western subgenre, and began a serious of revisionist Westerns which would be the dominant force in the genre for the next 30 years
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In the late 1970s and early 1980s there was none more celebrated producers and directors than Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. One had created the ˜Summer Blockbuster’ with release of Jaws, the other had created Star Wars, a franchise so popular that it is still on peoples favourite films list to this day. In 1981, shortly after the release of Spielberg˜s biggest box office disaster 1941 came a genre-defining action-adventure film called Raiders of the Lost Ark.
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The Godfather is widely regarded as one of the greatest films in world cinema “ and as one of the most influential, especially in the gangster genre. Now ranked as the second greatest film in American cinema (behind Citizen Kane) by the American Film Institute, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1990. The film’s success spawned two sequels: The Godfather Part II in 1974, and The Godfather Part III in 1990.
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From director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost comes the final word in comedy film trilogies. The Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (also known as Blood and Ice Cream or simply The Cornetto Trilogy) riffs on the three geekiest of film genres, injecting hilarious comedy throughout. The trilogy is made of Shaun of the Dead (red Cornetto representing blood and gore) was an homage to Romero’s zombie films and Hot Fuzz (blue classic Cornetto representing the thin blue line of the police) brought the big budget American action film to a sleepy English village and The World’s End (green mint choc chip Cornetto representing aliens).
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Where Batman Begins relied on its surprise and The Dark Knight relied on its central villain to impress, The Dark Knight Rises remains determined to present a comic book film with more character than any other. Nolan has claimed that this will be his final Batman film and he has managed the seemingly impossible, by holding all the disparate elements together to create an astounding finale to his Bruce Wayne. The Dark Knight Rises is an emotionally dramatic, bold and completely satisfying end to the greatest comic book trilogy of all time.
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In 1977 the cultural world was shaken to its foundations by a film that changed the zeitgeist for summer blockbusters, science fiction and even entertainment as whole. George Lucas, a man notoriously anti-studio, took a risk. It was a big risk. He had an idea for a science fiction space opera that drew influences from sources as diverse as Japanese samurai, Buddhist teachings and the moon landing. The result of this mixture of styles is one of the most recognisable film franchises and brands in the world today. That franchise is Star Wars.
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Director and zombie aficionado George A. Romero is credited with bringing zombies into the mainstream of horror films. Sure there were some films released previous to his seminal work, such as the original zombie film White Zombie in 1932, but it was Night of the Living Dead that catapulted the shuffling re-animated corpses of loved ones right into the mainstream. Since then Romero’s work has been copied, reimagined and generally referenced in every zombie film, and this film trilogy stands as the greatest horror trilogy of all time.
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He can’t do it. It’s too long. There’s too much detail. It’s impossible. These were the cries that met Peter Jackson and Wingnut Films heard when they announced their intention to turn J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy masterpiece into three films, starting with Fellowship of the Ring. This seemed a popular opinion that was a generally accepted truth ever since the aborted animated film in the 1980s failed to make any money. It must have seemed like a fools’ errand to the naysayers and one with little or no chance of success. How wrong they were.
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In 1995, fledging animation house, Pixar released their first ever feature film, and the first film to use only CGI throughout, its name was Toy Story. Based on a short film called Tin Toy and using recognisable toy characters from the past, Toy Story became a critical and commercial smash hit and revolutionized animation and immediately made Pixar one of the most exciting production houses in the world. Since then they released two sequels, which completed not only the greatest animated trilogy, but the greatest film trilogy of all time.
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Trailer Review Tarantino gets a lot of stick for his movies. He is accused of…