10 Greatest Film Trilogies Of All Time

Planning out a film trilogy in advance is common practice in Hollywood nowadays, and it's all because of these films. It may not seem so grand now, but the mere idea of adapting The Lord of the Rings to film was deemed impossible for years. And adapting all three parts simultaneously in a production that lasted the better part of a decade to finish? It was a ludicrous proposition, but Peter Jackson took it on and knocked it out of the park.

While not a one-to-one adaptation of the book, Jackson and crew got all of the core essence and adapted the material into a manageable storyline. It was a genre that was almost never popular in cinema, alongside the debut of the Harry Potter films, The Lord of the Rings helped to jumpstart the fantasy craze of the early 2000s.

But what it did better than its imitators and competitors was how deep it delved into the lore of Middle-earth without going into full-on Tolkien appendices territory. The world felt tangible, the characters had deep histories, and the attention to detail on every design level makes it a truly immersive experience.

With hours upon hours of content, and even more if you indulge yourself with the Extended Editions, The Lord of the Rings is still modern cinema's great trilogy and it still stands up to this day.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of The Hobbit films.