What is it with trilogies anyway?

Star Wars - may or may not have been intended to be a 9 part story as the aprt which started it all was written in a way that made it seem like that was the final part, with Darth flying off at the end. So, let's call it legit.

Indiana Jones - the first movie rocked, but did they really intend for 2 follow-ups that couldn't stick to the same proven formula? (Temple ofDoom was almost too serious when you consider it's meant for an audience of young teenagers, and Last Crusade was filled with so much corny 'ha ha but not funny' jokes I had to puke.)

Back to the Future - obviously they had to dig up somebody's rear end to keep this going after the first movie, which does little more than show us that a white guy had to convince a black guy how great rock'n'roll was... (didn't Michael J Fox strum up the guitar with the black guy calling up his friend, the to-be rock genius and telling him to "listen to this?") It's amazing what I'll remember after viewing it once in the theatre 18 years ago...

Matrix. The original movie - with great visuals and a bunch of been-there-done-that sci-fi ideas with Japanese martial arts all mixed in did NOT pave the way for two-sequels-in-the-same-year a whole 4 years later... Been there: technology taking over man who created it (the creator becomes the enslaved by his creation, though Blake's 7 had a better phrase for it 20 years ago...). Been there: Guy who has the superpower but has to be convinced of it. Been there: Virtual reality. Been there: There are others, but I'd have to re-watch the movie to pinpoint every little thing and I'm not that much of a dork. It's just very stylized. And so simply written that even your average "less imaginative than a wet pebble" American will sit back and enjoy it for the FX and almost get the plot even. Of that I'll give the movie some significant credit, sci-fi is something the mainstream audience doesn't often go for, so watering down a bunch of cool concepts isn't bad - except I don't like watered down or dumbed down. For me up to your level instead. But who said I was a normal American? Besides, I did rather like how they used the concepts as little as they did, and adding little yet not-so-little twists - nimbly explaining deja vu for example... It could almost be believed. (Anybody ever start killing people, thinking that they were Agents? Such convincing movies have a generally negative impact on the weak-willed, maladjusted, neurotic, or robotic...) The orginal movie is still quite good. Now only if the writers could add something political and anti-republican as if they can get mainstream America to dig sci-fi, a genre once treated like a terrified skunk because nobody understood it yet alone watched it...

Then you have unrelated-trilogies, movies that make no references to each other yet steal the same plot concept. In the mid-80s, there were no less than THREE movies that came out at the same time (movies and/or TV) which were all blatant variations of "Freaky Friday" (1975).

People have always like three-part stories.

Okay, I'll buy that. :-)

Oh yeah, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book trilogy - 5 books in the seris and they still call it a "trilogy". :-)

a great 3 part trilogy! I am anxiously awaiting "Return Of The King".

Viggo Mortenson makes my heart beat like a drum!!:loveya:

EVen alien 1,2,3 and terminator 1,2,3 are great (if you pretend that terminator3 didnt happen)

Only movie that I didnt like was indiana jones 2 of those ones

didn't it?

James Cameron was considering directing the 6th but then he got annoyed because Aliens vs. Predator was already in production and would have come out around the same time. Or something like that.

classic story writing

It's that sometimes those writers should be writing short stories.

...to European and MidEast traditions. The TRinity, the ThreeFaced Goddess, et al. "Things happen in threes" my Grandma used to tell us.

In art, you have triptichs....an old European law said you could divorce your spouse by merely saying in public "I divorce thee" three times.

Plays commonly have three acts. Books, forward-body-epilogue. It's pervasive stuff!

They'll keep coming because it's part of the whole, even if it sucks.

Please, Matrix people, do not read into this statement. This is not a slam on your trilogy. I understand there have been mixed reactions, but I have not seen the second or third and wouldn't judge it prior to screening it.

But that damn Stars Wars movie with the care bears in it, that's a whole 'nother story.

are a different subject than book trilogies.

Book Trilogies are a old tradition, dating back to the ancient Greek plays.

Movie Trilogies are (often) pathetic attempts to 'milk' a good idea to death. A great movie leading to a 'ok' sequel leading to a crap third and then it's dead.

There are few exceptions; rarely do the sequels equal the originals but it does happen.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=greek+trilogies

The Book of Threes
http://www.threes.com/threesr.htm