Marlon Brando and Salvatore Corsitto in ‘The Godfather’
The pressure that comes with making a trilogy is immense. Sometimes they span decades, which can cause continuity conflicts even the best directors cannot solve. At other times, the later films just don’t hold up to their predecessors. To do well at the box office and stand the test of time, trilogies must please critics and loyal audiences alike.
Stacker compiled IMDb data on all film trilogies with consistently high ratings and ranked the top 10 by aggregate score across the three films, with ties broken by aggregate votes. Only trilogies with recurring characters and trilogies that were intentionally directed to be thematic trilogies were included.
While trilogies like the original “Star Wars” and “The Godfather” are not to be missed on this list, there are smaller and lesser-known films that deserve the spotlight too. Coming-of-age stories from the 1950s and romantic dramedies of recent decades reinvent the trilogy as we know it, proving that you don’t need a big budget to craft three films that withstand the test of time.
