Fans want good, meaningful, interconnected trilogies, but it doesn't always work out
that way.
For every Lord of the Rings trilogy, there is a Hobbit trilogy.
For every Star Wars, a lesser Star Wars.
And that's not even counting the plethora of unworthy spin-offs, knock-offs, and rip-offs.
Is it any wonder, then, that so many trilogies slip through the cracks?
Here are a few, but don't expect them all to be masterpieces.
The Thing
John Carpenter's self-described Apocalypse Trilogy intends to cause nightmares, and succeeds
with a fury.
Carpenter's The Thing, Prince of Darkness, and In the Mouth of Madness are all connected
thematically and meant to be considered together.
These films ask more questions about the nature of evil than they answer.
What does pure evil look like?
Can it be killed?
Will we recognize it when it's staring us in the face?
And most importantly, what can Alice Cooper teach us about the devil?
Shaun of the Dead
Edgar Wright's Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy began as an in-joke about treating a hangover
with Cornetto ice cream, but led to a series of tangentially related genre comedies.
Shaun of the Dead started it all as a film about friendship in the face of the apocalypse,
where Cornetto’s strawberry ice cream represented the bloody undead.
Edgar Wright’s feature rejected Dawn of the Dead’s harsh critique of society, instead
opting for a simpler statement of people good, zombies bad.
Follow-ups Hot Fuzz, a police-inspired Classico “blue” Cornetto, and The World's End,
mint-green for the alien invasion, tied it all together rewriting genre tropes of their
own to great success.
The Addams Family
We love The Addams Family.
Most people love The Addams Family Values even more.
So, how haven't we heard about the third film sooner?
1998's The Addams Family Reunion is that rarest of peculiarities: a bad movie with Tim Curry
in it.
Good as they are as Gomez and Morticia in The Addams Family Reunion, Tim Curry and Daryl
Hannah can't compete with Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston.
The other replacements fare worse.
To be fair, even the original cast would have struggled to make sense of a plot where a
disease turns the elder Addamses normal.
Cruel Intentions
Sure, Cruel Intentions kept us entertained.
Ryan Phillippe's remarkably punchable pout, Sarah Michelle Gellar's cheeky threats, Selma
Blair's gullibility, and Reese Witherspoon's ridiculous innocence add just enough charm
to this silly, misanthropic tale of almost-kissing step-siblings.
Following the success of the film, a Cruel Intentions TV series was shot, abandoned,
and then allegedly re-edited with patched-in Skinemax-ready adult content before being
released as the direct-to-video prequel Cruel Intentions 2.
Of course, it's bad, but there's more.
Cruel Intentions 3 is basically a lower-budget Cruel Intentions by way of Wild Things, minus
what made each of those previous movies sort of interesting.
Believe it or not, it's worse.
Shocking, right?
Dungeons and Dragons
No one would blame you if you missed 2000's Dungeons and Dragons film, which beat Peter
Jackson's similarly fantastic Lord of the Rings trilogy into the theaters, but was quickly
obscured by it.
There was one major problem with Dungeons and Dragons : the classic tabletop game depends
entirely upon players' input and the narrative skills of Dungeon Masters for its continuing
appeal.
You can't just slap the D&D brand on a generic fantasy film and lure fantasy nerds into the
theaters.
The first film has all the hallmarks of a garbage 1980s fantasy script that was dusted
off and re-branded, and features Marlon Wayans as Snails, the Jar Jar Binks of fantasy realms.
There are two direct-to-digital sequels.
Avoid them like the plague.
"You know what?
I got a new name for dumb.
Ridley!
This is the Ridley-est thing I've ever heard of."
Big Momma's House
Taking one too many pages from the Nutty Professor section of Eddie Murphy's career playbook,
Martin Lawrence put on a fat suit and played a horribly stereotypical character for cheap
laughs, not once, but three times.
Big Momma's House and Big Momma's House 2 are essentially retreads of Mrs. Doubtfire
with a flimsy "FBI man goes undercover — as an old lady!" gimmick.
To his credit, Lawrence's Big Momma beats Tyler Perry's Madea at her own tired game,
but it's still too close to minstrelsy for our comfort.
We can only hope that Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son sealed this overwrought franchise's
fate.
Legally Blonde
Unlike its empty-headed peers, Legally Blonde rose above a tired premise and defied our
jaded expectations.
Then came the sequels.
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde retained its principal actress — and that's all.
Everything from the Capitol Hill setting to Witherspoon's tone-deaf getup failed to impress
fans and critics.
The straight-to-video Legally Blondes rehashes tired blonde jokes in a prep-school setting.
With neither Witherspoon's charisma nor a halfway entertaining concept to distract us
from its cash-grabby one-dimensionality, this movie ought to qualify as an act of war.
We're surprised the filmmakers haven't been sued for damages.
"You can't get the people to care."
"Watch me."
Desperado
Trilogies aren't cheap, and they usually require the backing of big Hollywood studios, but
Robert Rodriguez's Mexico Trilogy is an exception.
El Mariachi, the first movie in the series, was produced for only $7000 dollars, and was
purchased by Columbia Pictures, who went on to finance the rest of the trilogy.
When the second film, Desperado, replaced the lead with Antonio Banderas, the series
hit its high point.
Once Upon a Time in Mexico, the final movie in the trilogy, was famously made in just
seven weeks, making it a fun experiment more than a cohesive movie.
Rodriguez’s DIY sensibilities in making the Mexico Trilogy proves that awesome shoot-'em-up
action movies can be made for a fraction of typical Hollywood budgets.
Darkman
A trilogy in the technical sense only, the Darkman series follows the established tradition
of an inverse relationship between quality and sequel number.
Sam Raimi's original Darkman takes a stupid premise and makes it pulpy and palatable.
The Darkman series' later entries neutered the movies by putting the original's director
in the role of executive producer and hiring a competent, though bland, director instead.
To make things even less coherent, Part 3 was originally going to be Part 2, and vice
versa.
That's the extent of the sequels' uselessness in the franchise; what order they're viewed
in doesn't even matter.
"It doesn't matter."
"IT MATTERS."
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