It’s hard to make one good movie, and so it’s naturally, what, three times harder (at least) to make three good movies, and have them all add up to tell the one story. But that’s what undertaking a trilogy involves, and a good trilogy is a wonderful thing to behold, even if it exists within a larger franchise (looking at you, Toy Story), or was actually more or less filmed as one giant movie but then edited into and released in three parts (see The Lord of the Rings).
With the following trilogies, something went wrong. At least one thing went wrong. Some of the following have two good movies let down by one really bad one that sort of ruins some of the good found in the first two, and then others are pretty terrible from start to finish. They kind of range in quality, in other words, largely starting with the disappointing/flawed, and ending with the outright disastrous movie trilogies.
10
‘Blade’ (1998-2004)
This is on the milder end of things, because Blade (1998) works as a decent enough superhero movie that can be admired for adapting a comic book character within an R-rated movie before it was cool. And then there’s Blade II, which is probably messier, but in some ways, it is an improvement on the first movie, since having Guillermo del Toro as its director ended up helping it quite a bit.
But then you get to Blade: Trinity, and Blade: Trinity is just awful. It’s a movie where you can feel the lack of enthusiasm towards it from pretty much everyone involved; those both in front of and behind the camera. It’s a tedious and miserable watch, and it’s understandable why it killed interest in Blade for so long (he’s since shown up in Deadpool & Wolverine, and a new take on the character within the MCU has also been teased, but at the time of writing, it’s 22 years and counting since the last solo Blade movie).
9
‘Star Wars’ Sequel Trilogy (2015-2019)
It’s always tricky talking about Star Wars, since there are so many Star Wars fans and no one really agrees about much within the massive series, but it’s particularly tricky talking about the three movies that make up the sequel trilogy. In an act of cowardice, here are the names of those three movies, as a way to chew through the word count required for every entry: The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker.
What’s the other option? Talk about Star Wars? Be vulnerable about Star Wars? Whatever you say, someone will get angry at you for saying it. So, this entry’s not even going to say which of the Star Wars movies in the sequel trilogy led to it being a bad trilogy. Maybe two of the three are good, and it’s one bad one that lets the whole trilogy down and shows that there wasn’t really enough planning that went into the trilogy overall. How are you going to know? Also, let’s face it. You have an opinion about these films already.
8
‘Ant-Man’ (2015-2023)
There are quite a few trilogies within the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe, with the worst of them probably being the Ant-Man trilogy. The first two films centered on the titular character are fine enough, if a little forgettable, but the third one, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, is genuinely pretty bad, and it feels even less worthwhile now, since the plans to have Kang the Conqueror become a new big-bad for the whole MCU fell through.
Even without that poorly aged part, though, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is still a bad superhero movie, and if it doesn’t kill your enthusiasm to some degree for the MCU overall, then it’s likely to have harmed your anticipation of any future Ant-Man-centric films. Maybe he just works better as a side character, or as part of an ensemble cast, like in an Avengers movie or something (or Captain America: Civil War).
7
‘Tron’ (1982-2025)
It’s a bit of a mystery why Tron movies keep on being made, even though they don’t seem to be much more than cult films at best, and even then, not particularly beloved cult movies. You’ll get people pointing to some interesting special effects in the first movie, and the Daft Punk score in the second movie, in terms of highlights of the overall series, and maybe that’s fair enough. Sort of. It’s still probably not enough.
Then you get to Tron: Ares, and it’s a bit harder to find much worth feeling enthusiastic about over there. Mixed reviews and a low sum at the box office ensued. Whether the cycle keeps on repeating, and Tron becomes more than a trilogy one day, who knows? Perhaps more importantly, who cares?
6
‘Hanzo the Razor’ (1972-1974)
You’ve probably not heard of the Hanzo the Razor films, and you’re probably better off not knowing. If you’re morbidly curious, though, they’re three intense and highly uncomfortable samurai movies about a law enforcer who goes around enacting justice in ways he sees fit, and they’re ways no one else would really see fit, given how he treats potential criminals and/or villains, with female characters getting particularly abused.
There’s sometimes some slack that can be cut for older movies that have some alarming stuff in them, but it’s hard to do here. Hanzo the Razor, as a trilogy, is just a bit much. The tone is off for a trio of movies that center around a main character doing the kind of stuff he does, and even if you like exploitation movies from the 1970s, this trilogy’s potentially a bridge too far. They’re gross, and Shintaro Katsu being the star here might well impact your enjoyment of the other samurai series he’s well known for starring in: Zatoichi.
5
‘The Hangover’ (2009-2013)
The first of The Hangover movies was good for its time, and also surprisingly successful, more or less earning its, well, earnings. That success seemed to make the idea of sequels look appealing, even though The Hangover wrapped itself up very neatly in just the one film, and those sequels were rushed out in a manner that seemed to make it hard for an appealing angle to be found.
All that’s to say that The Hangover Part II felt, to an infamous extent, like too much of a retread, just with more gross-out humor, and then The Hangover Part III felt like it went too far in the opposite direction, having nothing in it that was appealing or in line with the first. If finding a sweet spot was possible, then it sure as hell wasn’t found during the making of either sequel (and Todd Phillips went on to make another infamous sequel post-The Hangover, too).
4
‘Meet the Parents’ (2000-2010)
By the end of 2026, Meet the Parents (or whatever you want to call this trilogy) won’t be a trilogy anymore, as there’s a fourth film called Focker In-Law planned for release. Whether anyone wants another one of these 16 years on from the genuinely awful third movie, who knows? The first movie, from 2000 (a remake of sorts, weirdly enough), was good, but everything after that has been awful.
Meet the Fockers felt like a low point, but this trilogy could indeed go lower, and lower it sank with Little Fockers, a movie that did indeed exist, and somehow made more than $300 million at the box office. With its budget being about a third of that, it was likely profitable. Maybe that’s why there’s going to be more. People have turned out to see this series at its worst, so onward marches the Focker clan, and hopefully the series Focks off soon.
3
‘The Hobbit’ (2012-2014)
The Lord of the Rings was mentioned before as an all-timer of a trilogy, and here’s another mention that yes, it really is that great. It was so good that it felt hard to imagine Peter Jackson returning to Middle-earth being in any way underwhelming, but that’s what The Hobbit trilogy ended up being, mostly because the source material being worked with just didn’t lend itself well to being told over the course of three movies.
Jackson can still be recognized as a great director because of how good The Lord of the Rings was, as a trilogy, but The Hobbit films did very little by way of anything positive for his reputation.
An Unexpected Journey is okay, and has just enough to work with, but then films #2 and #3 are where things start to feel agonizingly drawn out and ultimately unsatisfying. Jackson can still be recognized as a great director of epic movies because of how good The Lord of the Rings was, as a trilogy, but The Hobbit films did very little by way of anything positive for his reputation… and they didn’t do much that was very good outside some sequences in the first movie either, really.
2
‘The Kissing Booth’ (2018-2021)
Thankfully, no one really talks about The Kissing Booth movies much anymore, unless they’re looking for notorious and/or bad trilogies out there and need to add something to a ranking that may or may not be related to such a search. And hey, here it is. Here’s The Kissing Booth. There are three of them, they’re not old in the overall scheme of things, and they’re all quite bad.
To its credit, all three movies were directed by the same person, so yay? Also, Jacob Elordi was in these movies a little before he blew up thanks to Euphoria and Saltburn (among other movies), so it’s good to see his post-The Kissing Booth career being onward and upward, so to speak, even getting an Oscar nomination for Frankenstein. That’s all the good that can be said about this trilogy. In every other regard, it’s non-stop bad.
1
The ‘Godzilla’ Anime Trilogy’ (2017-2018)
There are so many Godzilla movies that you can group some of them together, in threes, and get decent enough trilogies, even if those three movies you picked weren’t necessarily envisioned as parts of a trilogy. What of the three anime films, then, that came out in the 2010s, and were intended to be a trilogy? They’re pretty awful, actually. Sorry to give you a disappointing answer to that question there, old sport.
Essentially, this trilogy kicks off with an intriguing premise involving a world that’s been taken over by monsters, and humanity coming back to reclaim the planet after the remnants of it have been living in space, WALL-E style. The problem is that beyond the intriguing idea, there’s absolutely nothing to enjoy here. The characters are boring, the animation looks cheap, the action’s anticlimactic, and so much of the trilogy feels unbearably repetitive. If not for Godzilla (1998), this trilogy would be the weakest thing Godzilla-related out there.
Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters
- Release Date
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January 17, 2018
- Runtime
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89 Minutes
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Mamoru Miyano
Metphies (voice)
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Takahiro Sakurai
Haruo Sakaki (voice)
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Kana Hanazawa
Yuko Tani (voice)
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Tomokazu Sugita
Martin Lazzari (voice)
