Finally managed to see Spider-Man 3 this afternoon and although I don't regret going it wasn't as good as I'd hoped it would be. In fact I believe The Admiral's exact words were "eh, it was ok". Which gets me to thinking...how many solid trilogies have there been? By "solid" I mean trilogies where all three movies where good in their own right and could have stood on there own merit.
There have been problems with most of them. For starters consider The Holy Trilogy (that would be the original Star Wars movies for anyone that isn't a Sci Fi geek like I am). A New Hope was brilliant. "Empire" is widely recognized as the best of the 3. But the only people I know of that think that "Jedi" was a great movie are girls ("those Ewoks are so cute" cue the eye roll and stifled groan). Which means I'm going to start my blasphemy early and say that this series does not qualify as a "solid" trilogy.
The Matrix trilogy was laughable. Wow they really didn't ever plan on moving any further than the first film. The first two X-men movies were solid but the 3rd installment felt both campy and rushed. Lethal Weapon didn't have the good sense to stop at 3 movies which means that thanks to Chris Rock and friends they don't qualify for this exercise either.
LOTR was much too long and i could actually feel my life passing before my eyes as they tried to close out the 3rd movie. Sometimes you don't really need to stick to the book letter for letter.
In fact the only trilogy that even comes close to being a completely successful series are the Indiana Jones movies. Raiders was phenomenal. Temple of Doom was different enough to keep sparking our interest and Crusade was both exciting and witty. Sean Connery's "we named the dog Indiana" is still one of the all time best movie quotes.
But that's it. Its the only one I can really turn to and say, "yep solid all the way thru".
