電影史上最棒的三部曲TOP10：有你最愛的嗎

Making a satisfying collection of three films is something very few series achieve, because it requires exceptional story control, characters you’ll care about over many hours and many years, plus a writer/director’s ability to tie everything together without necessarily knowing the end of Part Three when they’re making the beginning of Part One. These, in my view, are the 10 trilogies that have done it best.

Every episode of the Toy Story series stands as a classic on its own. They enrich each other but each does not need the other parts to make it a full story. It is also perhaps unique inthe world of trilogies. It’s the best trilogy and it’s not even particularly close.

Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours Trilogy is made up of three completely independent movies, which only barely overlap, but investigating one theme, the three political ideals of France: liberty, egality and fraternity.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s enormous book series had for years been considered unfilmable, partly due to scale. And Peter Jackson had never taken on anything so huge. What he produced was a series that had an enormous sense of scale, really making Middle Earth feel like an entire planet, but never losing focus on character even when it spread its large cast over hundreds of miles. The only thing that keeps it from the top of the list is that the second film, while impeccably made, is very much a middle part, without its own satisfying conclusion. But that’s real nitpicking.

Does it count as a trilogy when the three lead characters have different names, even if they’re all played by the same man, Clint Eastwood? Some would argue not, but they can make their own list.Leone’s camerawork and Ennio Morricone’s music are still copied routinely today.

Good, great, fine is how the Star Wars trilogy runs. The first, mind-blowingly new in its day, doesn’t hold up all that well when measured against today’s best sci-fi pictures -- the plot is almost entirely driven by luck -- but it will always be the father of the modern blockbuster and for that it deserves respect. The second is a much deeper film, playing with bigger themes. The third is OK if you like violent teddy bears and are really big on running through forests.

Despite the existence of The Bourne Legacy we can consider the three Matt Damon Bourne movies to be their own trilogy as they tell a complete story. Legacy is a spin-off. A terrible one.

The filmmakers’ favourite trilogy, Satyajit Ray’s films are lauded by Akira Kurosawa and Martin Scorsese, among others, and you don’t argue with giants like that. It’s not as grand as some of the other series on this list, following a man from youth in an Indian village to life as a man in the city, facing great fortune and even greater tragedy, but it’s not a story that needs scale because it’s huge on humanity.

There are those who really hate the final part of Christopher Nolan’s run in the Batman universe. That’s fine, I just happen not to agree with them. Nolan’s approach to Batman is the only superhero trilogy that has fully documented the career arc of a costumed crime-fighter,and feels like a contained story without the possibility of a fourth, which is what a trilogy should be.

It’s a mark of how great the first two movies are that even with the flabby, graceless third part this is still one of the best trilogies. One fully lays out the Corleone family tree, while two goes down to its rotten roots while also stretching its branches further. Part three doesn’t feel of a piece with the others. It seems on the hunt for an ending to Michael Corleone’s story, rather than driven by a need to finish a story.

The first in the time travel series is unimprovable. A director enjoying himself so much with a perfect cast that the complicated plotting seems like the simplest thing in the world. Part two is fun as a take on what the future could be. Part three is a fun western that feels only very loosely connected to the previous two.