The 10 worst movie trilogies of all time
When any given movie performs successfully at the box office, the studio executives behind the triumph get all giddy in the leather chairs of their LA skyscraper. One lucrative cinematic success means a franchise is on the cards, with studios spinning trilogies from even the most unlikely movies like the sports flick The Mighty Ducks or the John Travolta comedy Look Who’s Talking.
If studios are savvy, however, movie trilogies can stand as iconic totems of cinematic success, with such films as The Godfather and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring sparking franchises that would inspire viewers for generations. More recently, Pixar found success with their animated Toy Story trilogy, even if they did try to ruin the franchise entirely with a sub-par fourth instalment released in 2019.
Yet, some trilogies don’t turn out quite as successful, with franchises like The Matrix starting strong before petering off into irrelevance and the modern Star Wars ‘sequel’ films being too inconsistent in quality. Further still, some movies don’t deserve trilogies at all, serving up a trio of cinematic tragedies all in the name of attempted box office acclaim, often falling flat in that department, too.
Take a look at the ten worst trilogies of movie history below, including films from such acclaimed directors as Peter Jackson, Colin Trevorrow, Todd Phillips and Sam Taylor-Johnson.
The 10 worst movie trilogies:
10. The Hobbit (Peter Jackson, 2012-2014)
The Lord of the Rings trilogy remains Peter Jackson’s most remarkable cinematic achievement, standing tall as one of the greatest in the history of the moving image. Yet, lightning doesn’t always strike twice, and when Warner Bros asked Jackson to create another trilogy from the prequel novel The Hobbit, written by J. R. R. Tolkien, a truly awful monstrosity was created.
Made worse by the fact that critics and audiences remembered just how great The Lord of the Rings trilogy was, The Hobbit movies of the early 2010s poorly reimagined exactly what made Jackson’s vision of Middle Earth so great. Too dependent on CGI and gimmicky tricks, The Hobbit is an exhausting watch that stretches a 300-page book over nine hours of boring cinema.
9. Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, J. A. Bayona, 2015-2022)
Steven Spielberg changed the world of big-budget cinema when he adapted Michael Crichton’s sci-fi novel Jurassic Park in 1993, with the tale speaking to the hubris of humanity in a capitalist world that demands constant innovation. Part of what makes the titular theme park, where dinosaurs are the main attraction, so fascinating is that it doesn’t work in the original trilogy, yet this is somewhat ruined in the Jurassic World sequel trilogy.
There is admittedly a child-like thrill at seeing the park operating in all its glory, but this five-minute burst of joy isn’t worth the hours of nonsense that the three movies regurgitate. Soulless and lazy movies, the Jurassic World films are pitiful excuses for cinema that play on the cheapest tricks of contemporary cinema and expect you to be in awe of its majesty. Fat chance.
8. Alvin and the Chipmunks (Tim Hill, Betty Thomas, Mike Mitchell, 2007-2011)
The Alvin and the Chipmunks series that emerged in the 2000s was based on the trio of high-pitched singing rodents created back in the 1950s. They were hugely successful as a novelty act, appearing in several television shows and animated movies throughout the years. However, Ross Bagdasarian Jr, the son of the Chipmunks’ original creator, was, for some reason, desperate to make the Chipmunks even bigger, coming up with the idea for a movie which placed the animated animals into the real, live-action world.
For years, we couldn’t escape those annoying chipmunks who wore different coloured hoodies (but no trousers?) and belted out hits such as ‘Funky Town’ and ‘Bad Day’. If one movie wasn’t bad enough, we were then gifted with a ‘Squeakquel’ and a third movie that saw the chipmunks get ‘Chipwrecked’.
7. The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009-2013)
Before Todd Phillips made the Academy Award-winning Joker, he was responsible for helming The Hangover and its subsequent sequels, Part II and Part III. The first movie was praised, earning both critical approval and commercial success. Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, and Ed Helms star as friends who must, after waking up after a crazy night, find Justin Bartha’s character, Doug, who has gone missing.
While the first one has moments of genuine hilarity, with the trio getting themselves into all sorts of trouble, it has dated quite badly in hindsight, and the following two instalments just rehash repetitive moments, trying too hard to achieve what the first movie did. The final two instalments were received particularly badly, making everyone realise that the first movie wasn’t all that great at all.
6. 50 Shades (Sam Taylor-Johnson, James Foley, 2015-2018)
E.L. James’ terribly written erotic book series, which began with Fifty Shades of Grey, was somehow adapted for the big screen in 2015. The movie follows a stereotypically plain, virginal character, Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), as she begins a sadomasochistic relationship with a rich yet lonely businessman named Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). The acting is bad, the dialogue is cringe-worthy, and for a movie about transgressive sexual encounters, Fifty Shades of Grey is far from subversive.
Yet, it was a huge commercial success despite being panned by critics. Thus, two more movies were made – Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, with both films facing a similar fate. There are many moments in the series that are questionable – its depiction of BDSM is ill-informed, and Grey is simply a domestic abuser painted as a troubled sex lover.
5. Divergent (Neil Burger, Robert Schwentke, 2014-2016)
Divergent followed in the footsteps of The Hunger Games, a similar teen dystopian movie adapted from a book. However, Divergent, while successful, failed to reach the heights of The Hunger Games, with critics blasting the movie as being relatively uninspired and predictable. Still, it was lapped up by largely teen audiences, grossing $288.9 million against a budget of $85 million.
Therefore, a sequel, Insurgent, came in 2015, and a third movie, Allegiant, was released in 2016. Yet, each entry to the series just got worse, so much so that plans for a fourth film were changed so that it would become a straight-to-TV movie. It was then going to be made into a television series before the idea was eventually binned altogether, leaving a pretty limp and unfinished movie trilogy as a result.
4. The Human Centipede (Tom Six, 2009-2015)
Tom Six’s 2009 horror movie The Human Centipede quickly became notorious for its vomit-inducing imagery and general grossness. It was the kind of film that you’d hear people talking about in school, boasting that they’d recently watched it after finding it on a dodgy website and didn’t even find it that bad. In case you’re unaware of what goes down in The Human Centipede, a man conjoins humans by stitching his victims’ mouths to anothers’ anus. It’s as bad as it sounds.
Sadly, Six made two more movies as part of the series, with the sequel acting as a particularly meta instalment to the franchise. In the film, a man becomes so obsessed with the first Human Centipede that he recreates events from the movie. The third movie is just as repetitive, only this time, the events take place in a prison.
3. In the Name of the King (Uwe Boll, 2007-2013)
Anyone familiar with the stranger side of cinema will know that the German filmmaker Uwe Boll is one of the industry’s most notorious names known, first and foremost, for his terrible adaptations of video games, including Postal and Alone in the Dark. Although his 2007 film In the Name of the King wasn’t based directly on a video game, it was heavily inspired by the Dungeon Siege series and remains one of his worst-ever releases.
The first movie of the trilogy is the best of the worst, with Jason Statham, Ray Liotta, and Ron Perlman bringing a semblance of charisma to the poorly-written horror show about a man on a quest to avenge the murder of his two sons. Yet, the first film seems like a masterpiece in comparison to the genuinely unwatchable sequels that followed, with Statham being replaced by Dolph Lundgren in the second flick and Dominic Purcell in the third film.
2. 365 Days (Barbara Białowąs, Tomasz Mandes, 2020-2022)
It’s a sad truth, but if you include graphic sex in your movie, you can be guaranteed that audiences across the world will be interested. Such was surely the marketing approach by Netflix for the release of 365 Days, a truly terrible erotic drama about a member of the Sicilian Mafia who essentially kidnaps a woman and forces her to become his lover within 356 days of cohabitation.
Ignoring the fact that the plot is incredibly problematic, it is also awfully constructed, being largely an incredibly boring film with flashes of hardcore sex. Being seemingly pro-kidnapping while promoting abusive relationships isn’t a good look, and when you’re offering little else in terms of technical quality, you run the risk of creating a trilogy of movies that get progressively worse. Hence, second place.
1. Atlas Shrugged (Paul Johansson, John Putch, James Manera, 2011-2014)
When adapting one of the most divisive pieces of fiction ever written, you should prepare for some criticism, whether your film is great or not. So, when you create a truly awful movie, it’s a lose-lose, with haters of the book flogging the film appropriately and lovers of the novel doing the very same thing. Such happened with the entirely unnecessary Atlas Shrugged trilogy, released from 2011-2014, that turned a horrible book series into a repugnant trilogy.
Essentially, presenting the idea that society would be stronger if everyone just watched out for themselves and no one else, the film adaptation of the troublesome story includes some of the most unlikeable characters ever put to cinema. On top of this, the film is incoherent and terrifically dull, with this same sentiment being carried across each instalment, creating a trio of movies that are almost entirely inaccessible.
