The best movie trilogies: Final acts

In the less-celebrated, three-part tricks, the third and final acts can occasionally fail to stick the landing. Too often the sequel to the sequel is a forced cash grab looking to capitalise on an established audience craving a familiar fix. So, in a loosely threaded, semi-meta Shyamalanesque twist, the final chapter in this series strains as it rushes to push out one more crowd pleaser before the curtain crashes down, or is mercifully resurrected by the smiling eyes of fate.

The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Red Dragon

Anthony Hopkins’ immortal performance as the diabolical Dr Lecter is etched into cinematic stone so that every generation to come will understand the genius of the great method actor. Some may consider it sacrilege to speak ill of the Doctor, but in truth his third big-screen adventure fails to hit the same nerves or tantalise the taste buds in quite the same way as before.

While the William Blake painting elegantly tattooed on the villain’s back inspired a million imitations, the paralysing suspense of Silence or the visceral gore of Hannibal was sorely lacking. Combined with Edward Norton’s unusually bland performance, another bite would be too much to stomach.

Scream 1, 2 and 3

The Godfather of slasher films, Wes Craven, graced audiences with the pièce de résistance of his horror classics with 1996’s Scream. The ghost-face face mask will be dusted off every Halloween ad infinitum, and as the symbol of the playful yet ghoulish spirit of the day, rightly so. Scream 2 is entertaining in the ‘I know he’s in the cupboard but I open it anyway’ kind of way, but part three, which was not written by Craven, is where the franchise truly begins to eat itself from the inside out.

From Cotton Weary’s talk show called 100% Cotton, the ‘Stab’ movies and Randy’s recorded warnings, the movie is a parody of itself. The self-awareness, while completely intentional, inadvertently renders an entire film genre an utter joke.

Blade, Blade 2, and Blade: Trinity

Trench coats and Oakleys went hand in hand, and if you wore them in the club while listening to that Darude club banger, everyone knew you came to slay. Good ol’ fashioned villian-crushing by a no-nonsense, one liner delivering action hero was the winning recipe served with classic bad-boy charm by the great Wesley Snipes.

Que wisecracking Van Wilder, and his Abercrombie and Fitch sidekick who no doubt was still waiting to take her final exams at acting school? The forced humour of Trinity is out of sync with the tough-talking vampire destroyer, and while easy on the eyes, the young additions lack the menace to trouble even the tamest blood-sucking demon.

Star Wars

Which one? All of them. The perfect multi-generational triple threat spans 43 years and an infinite amount of plots, characters and column inches. Fans who would have seen the originals in a cinema or drive-in with their own eyeballs would be nearing 60 years of age, and still the franchise can turn grown men into excitable preteens.

The grand trilogy of trilogies inspires soccer-hooligan levels of partisan fervour, with the most recent of the releases being the one to be cornered in a narrow back alley and given a severe beating.

The Disney incarnations of the beloved franchise, though, fail miserably to match even the second trilogy’s levels of mediocrity.

The Rule Breakers

Sometimes a story snowballs to the point where three movies simply won’t do. Most notably would the boy wizard with the magic wand movement etched on his forehead. Spurred on by the success of the books, no pop-culture franchise has created a industry quite like Potter, Weasley and Grainger.

On the other end of the culture spectrum is the Fast and Furious franchise. Most can agree on a pre and post Paul Walker respect for the films, and hopefully they put the brakes on anymore productions.

The horror genre is bursting with multiple movie monsters like Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, if nightmarish screams are your poison of choice.

Either way, no matter your taste in or opinion on films, everyone watches movies for their own reasons. They can be beautiful storytelling devices or mere fantastical escapism, but the important thing is that we watch them. The cinema universe is full of the greatest stories ever told, and in the words of a personal favourite, “If I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night”.