Trilogies

Mal-Adjusted

Ever notice that since "the lord of the rings" was released, every film with a couple of sequeals(sp.) is calling itself a trilogy? this is especially true for DVD's
I can understand the Matrix, BttF, or PotC...
But Robocop trilogy?
Jurassic park trilogy?
Mission:Impossible trilogy?
Final Destination trilogy?

Simply having two sequeals does not mean you have a trilogy!:)
What does anyone out there think?

c - 13

Well if theres three films and they all follow a sequence with some elements of the original film in them then they would be a series correct ?

Series of 3 - Trilogy i.e Dusk Till Dawn
Series of 5 - Pentology i.e The Omen (This one may fit your criteria as there are actually only 4 omen films and one is a remake of the original, giving a total of 5 seperate films but only 4 in the series)
Series of 7 - Septology i.e Children of the corn

Tusky

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

ls does not mean you have a trilogy!:)

Err, yes it does.

Trilogy: A series of three movies that are closely connected by plot. Often, a storyline from the first film of a trilogy is altered, twisted or modified by the second or third part of the series.

Nolanger

On the buses
Mutiny on the buses
Holiday on the buses

faceman

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

Ever notice that since "the lord of the rings" was released, every film with a couple of sequeals(sp.) is calling itself a trilogy? this is especially true for DVD's
I can understand the Matrix, BttF, or PotC...
But Robocop trilogy?
Jurassic park trilogy?
Mission:Impossible trilogy?
Final Destination trilogy?

Simply having two sequeals does not mean you have a trilogy!:)
What does anyone out there think?

yeah sorry, Im with Tusky on this one!

Is it the quality of the movies you are concerned with?

Oh and trilogies are along long before LOTR. In fact even french cinema had trilogies with the Three Colours series

Mal-Adjusted

faceman wrote: »

yeah sorry, Im with Tusky on this one!

Is it the quality of the movies you are concerned with?

Oh and trilogies are along long before LOTR. In fact even french cinema had trilogies with the Three Colours series

not so muct the quality. a trilogy should have a singular story running through all 3 films, in such that they can be viewed almost as a single film. simply having 2 sequeals with the same characters should not define a trilogy.

yes, i know that trilogies were around before LotR. please don't patrionise me

Shryke

Your definition seems a little out of whack, maybe due to the focus on The Lord of the Rings? Tolkien ended up writing it as one giant book - thus the story being continuous throughout. That makes it closer to a ten hour long film than a trilogy in my mind.
Would you consider the Bourne films a trilogy?

faceman

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

not so muct the quality. a trilogy should have a singular story running through all 3 films, in such that they can be viewed almost as a single film. simply having 2 sequeals with the same characters should not define a trilogy.

yes, i know that trilogies were around before LotR. please don't patrionise me

Sorry i wasnt trying to patronise you at all.

As pointed out above LOTR wasnt originally conceived as a trilogy.

For the purpose of marketing, trilogies are simply that - a collection of stories or series about the same characters.

Pigman II

Nolanger wrote: »

On the buses
Mutiny on the buses
Holiday on the buses

Best to leave that series be. A sequel today would have to be "Annoying little scobies playing crappy music from their crappy mobile phone ... on the buses"

Honestly why did the phone companies think that was an acceptable feature to market?

johnny_ultimate

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

not so muct the quality. a trilogy should have a singular story running through all 3 films, in such that they can be viewed almost as a single film. simply having 2 sequeals with the same characters should not define a trilogy.

Not necessarily. There are plenty of films that could be considered trilogies, and don't even share characters. I'm thinking The Silence of God trilogy (Bergman's amazing reflections on belief) and Three Colours as faceman mentioned (

although the characters from the three films do meet up at the end of Three Colours Red

). These films are thematically similiar rather than a continued narrative, and they would definitely be considered trilogies even though it is not a singular story, and most definitely are seperate films.

In the sense of a continuing story, there are a couple of films that had a self contained film followed by two more sequels. Even though BttF had an ending promising more, the two last films were made together rather than the whole trilogy. Same with the Matrix: the original story is pretty self contained, whereas the next two were again made together (so Revolutions and Reloaded could be considered 'one film' moreso than the three together). At the end of the day though, alot of trilogies aren't planned that way (with the exception of LotR, Star Wars etc...) but even the ones with two later sequels often have enough story links to be considered as a working trilogy.

faceman

A triliogy could be following a theme or narrative as opposed to continuing 1 or more character's story.

TygerKrash

I think one of the things that might be related is the fairly new phenomena of the rise in popularity of the box set. All the marketing guys are trying to package their movies into these popular presentation box sets, even though they may not have done so before.

I think particularly in cases where you have one godawful movie in a trilogy or series that no one would buy otherwise.. I'm looking at you Blade:Trinity and X-men:the last stand.

faceman

TygerKrash wrote: »

I think one of the things that might be related is the fairly new phenomena of the rise in popularity of the box set. All the marketing guys are trying to package their movies into these popular presentation box sets, even though they may not have done so before.

I think particularly in cases where you have one godawful movie in a trilogy or series that no one would buy otherwise.. I'm looking at you Blade:Trinity and X-men:the last stand.

Good point! lets not forget Robocop 3 and Godfather 3!

Karl Hungus

faceman wrote: »

Robocop 3 and Godfather 3!

Those films should never be uttered in the same breath. Godfather 3 might not be all that great, but it's nothing like the complete piece of s**t that was Robocop 3.

R N' R

I think trilogy better applies to movie you can watch back to back like the godfather trilogy, where as with Pirates it wouldnt be the same because the storyline isn't as griping, progressive and isnt really something worth geting a numb arse over after seven hours

faceman

God I hate those Pirate movies

Mal-Adjusted

faceman wrote: »

God I hate those Pirate movies

Really? i quite liked the first one and thought the second & third were meh...

I comleatley agree with whoever mentioned the box sets. I got the "Cube" collection there a while back for 15€... loved the first one, then sat through that god-awful 2nd film. 3rd one was boring enough until a nice little twist at the end...

QQ...would you still consider something to be a trilogy when one film is not connected to the other two? ie. FD3, the aforementioned Cube 2.

FionnMatthew

The notion of a 'trilogy' has come to mean just a group of loosely similar movies coming in threes, but it was not always so. Need we remind ourselves that a trilogy, in Ancient Greek parlance, was a closely knit sequence of plays with what the OP rightly adduced as an overarching unity of theme and structure. This is a traditional, and still rather prevalent meaning for the word "trilogy," even though the white lies the marketeers tell us have managed to rather weaken that component of its meaning.

The same can be said for any of the sorts of literary sequences - Shakespeare's history quadrilogies for instance.

What happens with the movie industry, however, is that often a singleton will get made which is rather successful, which then demands a sequel, and yes, I do see a current, rather arbitrary demand to finish off such sequences on a multiple of 3.

On the above estimation, Star Wars, for instance, is a trilogy, whereas many other "trilogies" or "sequences" simply aren't sequences in the proper sense. The Alien movies, though I love them, are not a proper sequence, but rather varying essays on a central theme. The Matrix "Trilogy" is not a trilogy, but a single movie with a duologic afterword.

The Indiana Jones sequence (from the 80s) is commonly thought of as a trilogy too, and I'd be tempted to say each of the films complement the others to the level of completeness required, but the three films break another unity because of the fact that the second film is a prequel.

BopNiblets

c - 13 wrote: »

Series of 7 - Septology i.e Children of the corn

Don't forget Police Academy!:p