All throughout the '80s and into the early '90s, sequels were all the rage. Studios were content to milk a franchise as long as they could, putting out sequel after sequel until the audience grew tired.
But today, moviegoing audiences have changed. What they crave is resolution, closure, and being left wanting more. This paradigm change helped give birth to the trilogy, and now Reddit is debating which ones are the greatest of all time.
For sake of argument, let's pretend that Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull doesn't exist. For one thing, it came out nearly 20 years after the original trilogy concluded with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and should be looked at as a reboot as opposed to a continuation of the original story. Harrison Ford helped to create one of the most iconic characters in the history of film and each movie is arguably better than the one that preceded it.
Once again, I'm fully aware that Scream 4 and the newly rebooted Scream film exist. But the original Sydney Prescott trilogy is unlike anything horror audiences had seen before. Each film mercilessly played with time-honored horror tropes and completely turned the entire genre on its head. Absolutely nobody was safe in the Scream franchise and the mystery behind the killer kept you guessing up until the final cut.
It's no exaggeration to say that Star Wars helped to change the entire landscape of the film industry, producing three of the most important science fiction pictures ever conceived. The original trilogy pushed the accepted boundaries of what constituted special effects and helped to usher in an entirely new dimension of filmmaking. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back is not only an incredible chapter in the franchise, but it's also on the shortlist for being the greatest movie ever made.
What's different about Back to the Future is that the two sequels that round out the trilogy aren't really sequels at all. Rather, they're meant to be viewed as a continuation of the first film. You can almost look at the Back to the Future trilogy as one long movie, and it's best received when you take the time to watch all three films in successive order. For my money, nothing even comes close.
h/t: Reddit
