10 Movie Trilogies That Are Absolutely Perfect

Movie trilogies are already becoming a lost art. Thanks to the MCU, DCEU and various other genre-bending, multi-narrative franchises on offer, the idea of having three interconnecting films to tell one, complete story has become a lot less common, replaced by the need to use dozens of movies to tell an even larger tale.

Trilogies, when done right - which, honestly, they rarely are - can act as one, long film, telling a story so enveloping, epic and exciting that you forget each chapter is its own, self-contained movie.

Many trilogies fall apart, often by going too big at the last hurdle, struggling to find the right tone to balance the whole narrative, or ruining otherwise solid character arcs with a last minute shock twist.

You'll find none of those failures here, though. These 10 trilogies are spotless, unblemished wonders. They're trend-setters, rule-breakers, icon-makers and career-defining epics. Each tell a strong story of characters facing adversity, crafting a vivid world for their adventures and often capturing the imaginations of entire generations in the process.

From brilliant family-fun comedies to fantasy epics, superhero blockbusters that never missed a beat to romantic dramas that cut right down to the joys and pains of being human, here are 10 movie trilogies that are totally, 100% perfect.

Few films so perfectly encapsulate the 80s movie scene than Robert Zemeckis' glorious time travel trilogy Back to the Future.

A franchise that was kicked off in 1985, the films follow high school slacker Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and eccentric scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) as they face the flaws of time travel and attempt to undo a series of increasingly cataclysmic mistakes and misunderstandings.

Intensely rewatchable, immeasurably iconic and endlessly quotable, Back to the Future proved a major, game-changing success, and spawned two sequels - the first of which very nearly matched the original, with the third and final instalment taking things to the Wild West in an often unfairly maligned homage to the days of John Ford and Sergio Leone.

Each film carries with it its own sense of adventure and an ingenious premise, which builds around its characters a brilliantly constructed world with its own delirious sense of humour and wonder.