Poll: Best movie trilogy

[Thanee]

BTW, voted Star Wars, with LotR being a very close second.

Indiana Jones is also superb.

Bye
Thanee

 

[collin]

Trilogy films

Some tough choices here, but I also am going with LotR. Star Wars would have been no. 1 for me if the 3rd movie had not been such a let down. As for the new Star Wars trilogy, well, let's just say I wouldn't even consider it in the list.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

I'll go the other route and say the books got "worse" as they went on. Fellowship is a fine novel, the others are less so.

P.S. Worse as in, less good than FotR, they were all quite good.

Eh, different strokes for different folks, and all that.

Even when I was 10, I could never get past the incredibly poor decision making of everyone involved in Fellowship, and the overwhelming flood of exposition. It took me 9 years and 7 tries to get as far as the end of the Council of Elrond. Once I got past that, I plowed through the rest of Fellowship and the other two books in about 2 days.

Nowadays, I can plow through the first two thirds of Fellowship to get to the rest, but it's the slog necessary to get to the better stuff.

 

[Mr. Kaze]

Gotta go with LotR as it's between that and Back to the Future which, while amusing, just can't compete.

Star Wars is not a trilogy. George broke it. And as much as we'd like to live in the past -- say, circa 1995 when we were looking forward to new Star Wars movies -- we can't. Instead, we get LotR as a parting gift.

Indiana Jones will not remain a trilogy for much longer if they persist in insisting on breaking it. Never quite held me rapt anyway... nazis are so cliche.

Matrix wasn't exactly a trilogy with Animatrix and Enter the Matrix being canon material -- but they should've left it with just the first movie anyway. Really, Matrix 1: "All we have is this EMP as a weapon..." Matrix 3: "All we have are these really big guns as weapons..."

::Kaze (suspects that the I, Robot script was written specifically as a bit of smack-down for the shoddy historical records offered up in the Animatrix)

 

[nikolai]

LotR too. I love Empire and Raiders, but those series don't have the same consistancy and quality throughout.

 

[John Crichton]

That's not a good reason for excluding it. I think think it deserves mentioning, and I'd take it over LotR. It defintiely wouldn't rank above SW, not sure about Indy though.

I wasn't saying that it should be here on a list, but it wouldn't make a list of mine for "Best Movie Trilogies." The rest would all be on my list.

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

Star Wars for me... No questions about it.

Star Wars kicks major ass, but Lotr is the most powerful IMHO. It shaped me more than Star Wars ever could when I was a kid.

Are you talking about the books or the movies?

 

[Welverin]

Star Wars is not a trilogy. George broke it. And as much as we'd like to live in the past -- say, circa 1995 when we were looking forward to new Star Wars movies -- we can't. Instead, we get LotR as a parting gift.

Speak for yourself, I'm looking forward to Ep3 and believe John does as well.

Matrix wasn't exactly a trilogy with Animatrix and Enter the Matrix being canon material -- but they should've left it with just the first movie anyway. Really, Matrix 1: "All we have is this EMP as a weapon..." Matrix 3: "All we have are these really big guns as weapons..."

The Animatrix and Enter the Matrix aren't movies and thus don't break the trilogy definition. If you're going to toss anything for not being a trilogy, then LotR needs to be dropped for being one book/movie broken up into more manageable pieces.

I wasn't saying that it should be here on a list, but it wouldn't make a list of mine for "Best Movie Trilogies." The rest would all be on my list.

That makes more sense, but then anyone who's paid any attention to your comments on the Matrix would know you wouldn't include the series on your list. That combined with the way you phrased it made it sound like a general comment.

Question for you, are you looking forward to Ep3 as well? And would the prequels make you list of favorite movie trilogies?

 

[Desdichado]

Rather than focusing on "trilogies", I'd say movies that come in multiple parts are amongst my favorites. The original Star Wars trilogy is still at the top, but LotR stands not far below it (although I still need to see the EE RotK to officially induct that in my personal Hall of Fame.)

Below those two is a vast sea of movies I like a lot, and of the multiple part movies, the Aliens (4 movies) and Predator (2 movies) series are probably near the top. Terminator probably deserves a nod, as does Die Hard, although I sometimes try to ignore the second one there. James Bond long ago busted any resemblance to trilogy, but I could probably come up with three that I think stand head and shoulders above the rest. Indianna Jones is definately a contender, but Back to the Future, while entertaining, is not, and neither are the Matrix movies.

 

[John Crichton]

The Animatrix and Enter the Matrix aren't movies and thus don't break the trilogy definition. If you're going to toss anything for not being a trilogy, then LotR needs to be dropped for being one book/movie broken up into more manageable pieces.

I agree with this. The trilogy can still be understood without non-movie material. Even thought the Animatrix shorts were more entertaining (overall) than either of the sequels to me.

That makes more sense, but then anyone who's paid any attention to your comments on the Matrix would know you wouldn't include the series on your list. That combined with the way you phrased it made it sound like a general comment.

Ah, all good.

The funny thing about me and the Matrix is that I did enjoy the films, I really did. However, none of them blew me away like most of the population that considers them classics or "better than Star Wars" or somesuch. The first Matrix film was too close in concept and tone to Dark City which came out just the year before and, to me, is one of the best science fiction films ever made. Dark City blew me away. And while The Matrix did a very good job and had a very solid beginning and middle, the end left me dry. While it looked cool it was basically just a shoot-out with little impact.

I won't even get into the sequels because that is not my point. My point is that the Matrix films are great eye-candy and have a nice comic book feel to them. The story sure sounds important as it goes along but ends up with very little meaning within the trilogy's own context. All in all, they were fun popcorn movies. I look forward to buying the trilogy box-set just like I did and do with Indiana Jones, Alien, LotR and Star Wars. But the Matrix films just don't compare.

All good.

Question for you, are you looking forward to Ep3 as well? And would the prequels make you list of favorite movie trilogies?

I am looking forward to Revenge of the Sith like nobody's business. I really enjoyed the first 2 prequels (AotC being my 3rd favorite film of the 5 so far) and saw them multiple times in the theater which I don't do very much.

As for the prequel trilogy making my list? Just like with Return of the Jedi which was a solid ending I'll need to see the last third to really make a distinction. The first 2 prequels movies really don't compare well to the first 2 OT films as they were 2 of the best sci-fi/action movies ever made. What should happen here is that RotS should be the best of the current 3 and lead well into ANH. My hope is that I won't have to distinguish between the "two trilogies" and the whole saga will be taken as a whole - which is how I've been treating the first 2 films anyway.

So, I guess we'll see. I have high hopes. The scenes in RotS are things that Star Wars fans have been waiting 20 years to see on film. We know how it ends but not how it happens.