10 Trilogies That Actually Get Better With Each Movie

Creating a genuinely outstanding movie trilogy can be damn near impossible to achieve. With the best will in the world, and even with some of the most talented people in the world, there are just too many things that can go wrong. The franchise can run out of steam, audiences can lose interest, and expectations can get so high that nothing will ever satiate them.

If a franchise is lucky enough to get to three outings, it can be incredibly difficult to do what, in theory, trilogies should do, which is to get better with each instalment. Some threequels fail to live up to an extremely strong second outing (see The Godfather Part III, The Dark Knight Rises, X-Men: The Last Stand), while others can be so good that further films are greenlit and the franchise expands past a trilogy (see Toy Story 3, John Wick 3, Thor: Ragnarok).

The point is, producing a trio of movies that get better and better is near impossible, but not quite.

Some of the entries on this list actually benefit from having weak first and/or second outings, while others are genuine triumphs in cinematic storytelling. Either way, the best of these trilogies was never behind them, and they achieved what most set out and failed to do.

It may have initially been one of the biggest hits of Sylvester Stallone's legendary career, but by the time Rocky Balboa released in 2006, Rocky was a tired and done franchise. The glory days of the original back in 1976 were long gone, and so questions were naturally going to be asked about a spin-off focusing on Apollo Creed's (Carl Weathers) son.

No one could have seen the success of the Creed franchise before the initial film was released in 2015, and who could have predicted that an entire trilogy would be coming that only went from strength to strength to strength.

While the first picture established Adonis Creed as a character and brought back Rocky in a supporting role, it felt very familiar to the first Rocky, as the underdog ultimately lost but gained the respect of everyone watching. The sequel drew audiences into a deeper story with ties back to Rocky IV, as Creed faced Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu). This was undoubtedly a step up, but the best movie of the three is the third.

Completing the arc of each story getting closer and more personal to Donnie, Michael B. Jordan's character had to face his childhood in Jonathan Majors' Damian, arguably the most physically gifted specimen he had ever had to face. The story wasn't about boxing, it was a deeply character-driven story that ended Creed's journey perfectly.