Badmovies.org Forum

with The Dark Knight Rises coming out next year I got to thinking why is it so difficult to make a triology of movies that are good

all of the followoing are considerd to be the only good trilogies by most:  original Star Wars triolgy, The Man With No Name triology, ...and LOTR

and it's also possible I may have forget a few but even if I did the lack of good movie trilogies is something of a mystery

I think it's because the original idea is good, but then when they need to write a sequel . . . and then another sequel . . . they run out of great ideas and end up copying the first movie.  (Hey, if it worked once, let's recycle it two more times!)

The 90s Gamera trilogy is excellent have to add that in, especially since the final film is the best.

For modern slapstick, the AMERICAN PIE trilogy was hard to beat.  The last one, AN AMERICAN WEDDING, had me laughing so hard that popcorn came out my nose!

And, although I know I am in a minority here, I LOVED all three Spiderman movies!

I forgot the Toy Story movies


well then....you have just talked me into checking out American Wedding, I loved the previous 2 and was just too busy with college to see it in theaters

Indiana Jones and Back To The Future got it right, I believe, and I enjoyed all of the Beverly Hills Cop films too. Still, I agree there are a lot of bad trilogies in film. The Godfather 3 and Alien 3 seem to be the most glaring example of this, although I didn't TOTALLY hate the latter (nothing beats Siguorney Weaver in the tiny panties from part 1, though).

Seems like in most cases, the third time is NOT the charm for them, But some are weird, like with Spider-Man and Die Hard, where I really like parts 1 & 3, but detest part 2 with a passion.

Could be just out of random, as in Pirates of the Caribbean, the first one was a huge hit that a sequel just had to be made.

I don't think it's so hard to do, I think the sequels often suck because people are lazy. Once you have a succesful original you don't need to make the sequel good in order to make a lot of money off of it, people will see it either way.

Making a trilogy is always going to be difficult when it wasn't planned from the start. Jackson knew that he was making a trilogy out of LOTR. Lucas at least had some idea where he wanted to go with sequels to Star Wars, even if he hadn't fleshed them out because he didn't know if the first would be a success.

On the other hand, The Matrix was a stand-alone movie that wrapped up nicely. It wasn't written with a sequel in mind, so the writers had to struggle to find a way to spin the original ending into a sequel hook. The result was -- to me at least -- a boring repetition of things we'd already seen in the original, with a lot of extra philosophical bulls**t thrown in. The story became less about the people fighting the machines and more about the machines squabbling among themselves, turning them from a monolithic enemy into a bunch of feuding crime bosses. Rubbish.

Spiderman 1 and 2 fit together pretty well, but 3 was subjected to executive meddling that turned it into a train wreck. X-Men had a similar problem: the first two were good, but they lost Bryan Singer as director for the third, and his understanding of the characters and themes was what made the first two good movies.

An more general question might be "why is hard to make a good move?"  The track record on 'good' FIRST movies is not that great overall...

I'm not sure why so many movies are even turned into trilogies, or even just two part sequels.  Big box office does not mean good story, or a story that needs to be continued.

Well, I think part of it is...Part 1 is "art" for the people who make it...then, the bean counters want $$, so cash in on the 'brand.'  Art and creativity gets lost in the goal simply to churn out a 'product.'

LOTR is really an exception here...as that was trilogy from the start, and longer arc source material to boot.  TOY STORY is an excpetion, also, but then, Pixar is exceptional.  They have the writing to back up the claim "sequel."

I bet that was sexy. 

You're also in a minority here loving them LOTR movies.

I don't think I am in a minority in that last category - just that the LOTR haters on this board are very vocal!

Nora Lim, Asfaloth!!!!!

I haven't seen Back To the Future 2 and 3 since I was a kid so I can't comment on them, but The Temple of Doom is largely ruined for me by Short Round who is just below Jar Jar Binks on my annoyance meter

and yes, I included LOTR in the original post to make indy happy

I loved that first LOTR movie (what's it? Fellowship of the Ring?)  The second one had moments but was kind of silly and disappointing and long.  That third one?  Who?  What were...wars?  Snooze...

I don't know why they deleted this scene:  :question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaqC5FnvAEc&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLA0C1EDF40F922119

OK, that was pretty funny!   Yodelling Istari . . . . Tolkien never thought of that!

neglected to mention the Army of Darkness triology earlier

No need to get political Indy.

I think that in general, sequels are made for different reasons that they used to. In the old days, trilogies were made simply because somebody had the idea to try and capitalize off of the success of the original. This is still true of course, but now sequels and intended from the outset of the original. Franchises are planned from the outset now, instead of afterthoughts of a successful original.

Many times they are based on novel series, and this is a bigger factor I think than many realize. Many older movies were based on novels. Novel series themselves have become far more commonplace than in the past, when stand-alone novels were the norm. And so, in correlary, our movies have become series'. It makes sense from a hack perspective. Think of it. A novelist doesn't have to think up an entirely new story with entirely new characters. Instead they can just use an existing set of characters and concept and bang out 3 or more bestsellers instead of just one if the first one hits. And if not, well, then they're still an unsuccessful hack writer, and back to the drawing board.

It's not unlike how popular waves of art have evolved over centuries. The Renaissance didn't just happen across all mediums at once. One medium of expression affected another, which affected another, and so on.

For what's it's worth, AHD, I slept through both TWO TOWERS and RETURN OF THE KING.  I could not tell you anything of significance that happened in either movie.

That's not a slam against them...except that "they were LONG" is a VERY apt description.

I'm not a hater...not qualified to 'hate' on them as I didn't technically see them.

But I do think it's cool from a movie fan perspective that the entire trilogy was made at once.  That's rare.

I like the Lord of the Rings movies.

Maybe the problem with trilogies is not that there telling 3 stories, but continuing one long story.  It's probably easier to just take the same characters and saying this is something new.  That you don't need to see the previous films to understand and enjoy.

Think about it, how many James Bond films are there?  Or Godzilla films?  Only a couple of those are true direct sequels.

I'm a fairly big fan of Lord of the Rings, but the book moreso than the movies, but other than that I think the only other super consistent trilogies are Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Back to the future.

I wanna say Evil Dead as well, but Army of Darkness is kinda middle of the road for me.

The Evil Dead isn't a trilogy to me. From where I'm standing, it's one film I didn't like, a remake that I liked much more than the original, and a sequel to the remake. Otherwise, well...why the hell did he go back to the cabin and play the tape?

And I do agree that very few contemporary trilogies are worth seeing. Going off press releases for a couple of films, they seem to just assume that the film is going to do well enough to warrant a sequel and start planning it right away. To me, this results in very rushed, uncreative sequels that have to reuse cliches and overdone plots because there wasn't enough time in pre-production to do anything really creative, and it sucks funding away from new projects since planned sequels have been cancelled after people had already been paid when the first movie flopped.

I hope Dark Knight Rises is as great as the trailer. Nolan said he had a trilogy in him. Begins was good, Dark Knight brilliant. By all accounts, Rises looks amazing, and Catwoman serves a purpose, and they've gotten Bane down.

Toy Story trilogy was amazing.

Didn't like The Rings trilogy.

Spider-Man 2 was the best of that series.

I just realized one I forgot. If you forget that George Romero Made anything after Day of the Dead you could say that the original dead trilogy is good.

But I think they worked because the director made them when he wanted to and not because the previous on made big money and a sequel had to be made instantly.

The first 3 Karloff Frankenstein films were good...and the 4th with Lon Chaney was ok too...but the others were pure expliotation. Don't get me wrong-I enjoyed them,but they come nowhere as close to the Original,Bride and Son.

The CREATURE form the BLACK LAGOON trilogy was good! Though The CREATURE WALKS AMONG US was the weakest one IMHO.

The Jungle Woman trilogy-(JUNGLE WOMAN,JUNGLE CAPTIVE,CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN) stared out lame and remained there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXKxPN1R85g

I know I'm probably in the minority but I enjoyed all 4 Terminator movies  :thumbup:

I love the Lord of the Rings movies. Really a superb series from both a technical and artistic point of view. However, they aren't really a trilogy in a sequel sort of sense, rather one story told over the course of three movies. The original story was only split up into three separate books because the publishers thought nobody would buy one gargantuan book.

I'll agree with others in that many sequels are only made because the original movie made so much money. Two of my favorite films The Matrix and Pirates of the Caribbean were turned into "franchises." I detest franchises, which is the most apt term for these movies, because they are no longer thought of as artistic works, but cash cows for the studios.

Both The Matrix and POTC worked very well as single films. They worked well as entertaining action films, and the stories were complete for each of them. The sequels were made to make more money, and there didn't seem to be any further ideas for either of them. Instead of new and vital ideas, the same characters and the same ideas were trotted out to pander to the original audience.

The nadir of any series is when we are simply seeing the same characters over and over, because it's the belief of some producers that what the audience loves is the characters, and we'll pay anything just to spend more time with them. POTC was especially egregious in this regard. It's not uncommon, and it works in a monetary regard. The Police Academy series is a shining example of this mercenary outlook.

Then again, Lethal Weapon 4 made me want to punch a random stranger in its awfulness.

I think the central thing to make sequels or trilogies work is to have a story worked out in advance. I have the same problem with books and comics. I don't like continuing comics that have no end in sight, I like a complete story. If I get the sense that a series is only continuing for its own sake, I lose interest. Fables was one of the most compelling stories I've read recently, but they finished up the main storyline (expertly, I might say), and then decided to just keep going. It hasn't been the same, and the law of diminishing returns is in full effect.

A lot of sci-fi and fantasy novels have this same problem. A story that starts out promising ends up petering out into endless rehashes because the author doesn't understand that the very nature of stories involve a beginning and a finite end. Who wants to read a story with no end? It's like listening to a shaggy-dog joke that doesn't even bother to have a punchline.

Blech.

I'd like to weigh in on the original discussion:  why is it hard to make a good trilogy.  I'm going to argue that part of the answer lies in probability.  There is a certain probability that any stand alone movie will be a good film.  I'm not certain of exactly what the probability is, but for arguments sake it's less than 50% or 1/2 (how about 30%?).  Just taking that fraction or percentage and trying to score three times dramatically reduces the possibility of a good trilogy.  Using 30% as a guide, we end up with 2.7%.  Now, there are things that increase the probability of a good movie, like the director, writer, and producer.  However, those don't always stay the same through a trilogy.

The big thing that affects that base probability is what appears to be a law of nature:  sequels tend to be worse films than the original, and the quality diminishes the farther from #1 that you get. 

Maybe it's hard to make a good movie triology because no one knows what that is?

 :bouncegiggle:




I've been saying the same thing about STAR WARS for years....there was no "need" for follow-up.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, there may have been a plot point here or there that was left open, but who cares?  The original stands perfectly well on its own, and Lucas FUBAR'd the whole thing in the long term.


I think the recurring theme in this thread is that when the sights become set on $$ rather than the art, the quality goes down.

Even within the realm of "bad" or "B" movies, part of the reason I think many of us love them is because they are, in most cases, true to the art of the those that made them.  The end product might be a train wreck, but the PROCESS is pure enough.

I cannot believe SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS popped into my head as the demonstrative example for my last statement.  I haven't been sleeping well.

Anyway, for every PLAN 9, MANOS, TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE or name-your-visual-poison, there's a grip, a sound man, an editor that was doing their thing.

While that's true on its face for movies made solely to make money, when those jobs become "just a job," a 9-5 way to earn a living and there is no "soul," we end up with things like PEARL HARBOR.  Oh my word.  That's bad in a non-fun way.

I think this gets to be hyper-decay in the case of soulless sequels.  The crew, if any of them even are the same, are "been here, done it, what's new?"

And, the problem that drives all of it is that we keep paying our money to see the crap.  I've seen all four POTC movies and only really cared for the first one...the stand alone one that needed no additional story to make it "complete."  I've seen all six STAR WARS movies even though I all but detested the latter five entries (on a sliding scale of detestation, though...I mean...wow...Ep 1?  You've got to be kidding me).

We continually reward the behavior we complain about with remakes, sequels and big budget garbage in general.

Sorry, ulthar, had to call attention to this, you don't like The Empire Strikes Back?

I love that film. Unreservedly, it's built into my brain.

Well, there's no accounting for taste.   :bouncegiggle:

And, by that of course I mean to stave off all the "hate mail" I'm about to get.

No, I did not like ESB.  From the first moment I could not get my head around the fact that it was completely unnecessary to "improve" or "build" upon the original SW.

I am not a big fan of the retcon.  And, ESB is perhaps the archetype of retconning a previously GOOD basic storyline.  And, those retcons not provided for in ESB certainly had their stage set in that installment.

And, while I've come to like the Yoda character, at first his introduction was just annoying.  As was Lando.  Which is another of my big problems with ESB....it begins the habit Lucas has of just having TOO MUCH going on.

In SW...we had a nice, tight little group of characters, only two sets, and enough tension not only between the good guys and the bad guys but also within those two groups to make it interesting.  With ESB, Lucas begins his ever expanding trend of just making things too darn complicated.

And, no matter what anyone says, I think the whole "Vader is Luke's father" storyline complete neutered one of the baddest movie villains ever created.  Vader was EVIL not because you cared how he became that way, but in that he was a total mystery...

(not unlike the idea that a movie can be scarier by not showing you the monster but hinting at it....)

With SW, Lucas had a literary success; then he got into "overtelling" the story and, in my opinion, destroyed the magic.  "Always leave them wanting more," as the saying goes.  You yourself admit that the extension of this that he accomplished with the midochlorians was abysmal storytelling; I just make the claim that this trend began with ESB.

"Clean" stories are many times more fun.  Lucas' tendency to over complicate,  even if it requires the dreaded retcon, turned me off ALMOST completely.  It is my flaw that I kept returning to the well time and again expecting the original "tight" magic of the first one.

Don't get me wrong...I don't mean "tight" here in the sense of overly GOOD storytelling in the original...but, it was interesting enough and simple enough...the original movie was not intended to have a sequel, so the plot was somewhat linear.  Only after it was successful were longer arcs introduced, and I think that's the fundamental weakening.

A stand-alone movie should have a linear plot...one that ENDS (as you said) within its running time.  Who cares if there are unresolved points?  It does not matter to me, at least.  Those are usually subplots and provide needless detail (or complication).

And that's the gripe with sequels you mentioned...that the bending of the original linear plot into a multi-movie arc rarely works.  I see SW and POTC as exactly the same model...SW and POTC were great FIRST installments and stand on their own (pretend for a bit that none of the SW sequels exist...does that diminish the original in any way?).

And NONE of this "analysis" was on my mind with the first viewings.  My dislike was a gut reaction and I've spend the intervening years trying to put words to it.  At the end of the day, I just did not like it.

That's not to say, too, that over the years I have not come to enjoy watching it.  Within the larger arcs, yes, it's a key piece of the puzzle and far better made than another of the other sequels/prequels.  Even now, though, I'm left with the basic question "was it REALLY necessary?"

Could Lucas have put the effort into retconning that story to just simply create a new one?  New characters, new worlds, new conflicts, new themes...would THAT have kept the magic I missed from SW?

Oh, fantastic, ulthar. I can understand each and every one of your points.

I disagree, of course, very vehemently in some cases.

But no accounting for taste, as you say.

I think the one thing we can agree on is that we all hate George Lucas. The only point of disagreement is when we decided to throw him under the bus.

The original trilogy was all created when I approached it, so I don't even have the option to complain about the ewoks. I had to wait until the prequels to get all heretic about Star Wars. But we're all acolytes to the original text, it's just which Luther with his list of complaints we're willing to follow.