10 Greatest Thematic Movie Trilogies, Ranked

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Published Feb 18, 2026, 12:07 PM EST

Jeremy has more than 2300 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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Some trilogies are neat and obvious, and that’s all well and good, of course. Cinema is all the richer because of something like The Lord of the Rings, which is consistent and continually rewarding because it’s one huge story split into three parts. And then there are also the Star Wars trilogies, one of which is great, one of which is flawed but has aged well, and then the third of which was… well, it was interesting until it fell apart.

No, sorry, let’s stay positive. And let’s also move away from obvious trilogies. What follows is a look at some of the best thematic trilogies in cinema history. They're groups of films supposed to be taken as a whole, but they don’t necessarily share obvious things that tie them all together, and if there are some narrative parts that span movies, they're usually in the background or concern minor characters. Still, the films that belong to each of the following trilogies are enriched, in one way or another, by being tied to two other films.

10 'The Three Mothers' (1977–2007)

With Dario Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy, things definitely peak early, since the first movie, Suspiria, is comfortably the best. But there’s also a strong argument to be made that it’s Argento’s very best (or at least best-looking) movie overall, so that’s not too surprising. Film #2, Inferno, came out three years after Suspiria, and it was also good… not as good, but good.

Then, like, so many years later, the trilogy concluded with 2007’s Mother of Tears, and that one wasn’t so good. Still not bad enough to make the overall trilogy a stinker, by any means, but it weighs things down a little. Still, if you want a somewhat offbeat movie trilogy about witches and supernatural horror more generally, with a mostly separate story in each one, you'll find it here. Very specific thing to want, but hey, here it is.

9 The 'Apocalypse' Trilogy (1982–1994)

Kurt Russell using a flamethrower in The Thing (1982).

Like The Three Mothers trilogy, John Carpenter’s Apocalypse trilogy begins with its best film: The Thing. This one might've come out in 1982, but it still holds up and proves frightening as a sci-fi/horror movie, especially because it’s still intense when it wants to be and is also timelessly heavy. It’s hard to know if you weren’t there, back in 1982, but the idea that The Thing was just a bit much for people at the time isn't the most outrageous one, and would go some way to explaining why later viewers have viewed the film more favorably.

As for the other two movies? You’ve got the decent Prince of Darkness, which is more of a supernatural horror movie, and then In the Mouth of Madness, which is a deserved cult classic of sorts. They're heavy horror films, in many ways, but they're all compelling and maybe entertaining? Entertaining isn't the perfect word, but they're good. They're engaging. And The Thing is especially essential, as far as classic horror’s concerned.

8 The 'Desire' Trilogy (2009–2017)

Somewhat unusually, the first movie in this particular trilogy, I Am Love, is the least well-known of the bunch. It kicked off Luca Guadagnino’s Desire trilogy, and was a solid enough romance/drama film, but A Bigger Splash (2015), was significantly better. And then the whole trilogy concluded with its strongest film: 2017’s Call Me by Your Name.

That last one was a great coming-of-age drama on top of being a very moving romance film. All three are good, though, and showcase Guadagnino’s strengths as a filmmaker. They're far from his only movies to explore themes surrounding love and desire, of course, since that seems to be what he’s drawn to the most, as a filmmaker (even when he’s doing a sports movie, like with Challengers, or a work of horror, like in the underrated Bones and All).

7 The 'Depression' Trilogy (2009–2013)

Willem Dafoe as He carrying Charlotte Gainsbourg as She in Antichrist

What’s kind of wild is that the utterly soul-crushing Dancer in the Dark isn't part of Lars von Trier’s Depression trilogy, instead belonging to his Golden Heart trilogy. His Depression trilogy, on the other hand, consists of Antichrist, Melancholia (go figure), and Nymphomaniac, with all three of them more than living up to the name. They are, to put it mildly, depressing.

They're depressing in different ways, though, with Antichrist being small-scale and mostly about grief, Melancholia playing out like an arthouse disaster movie, and Nymphomaniac being something of an offbeat epic, and one of the most sexually explicit films in recent memory, too (somewhat appropriately, given what it’s about). Actually, Nymphomaniac was released in two volumes, so if you want to call this a Depression quadrilogy instead of a trilogy, then hey, knock yourself out.

6 The 'Trilogy of Imagination' (1981–1988)

A group of dwarves smiling excitedly in the woods in 'Time Bandits'

The Trilogy of Imagination was made throughout the 1980s, and comprises three movies Terry Gilliam directed independent of his work with Monty Python. It’s tempting to say that they're all offbeat fantasy/comedy movies, but with the second of the bunch, Brazil, that’s technically more of a science fiction movie, just with some fantastical imagery that also gets nightmarish at times.

Brazil’s certainly the heaviest of the three, and probably also the best, with Time Bandits (1981) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) both being a little more light-hearted, and situated within the fantasy genre more snugly, too. Still, this is Gilliam’s sense of fantasy we’re talking about here, so the two films get a little weird at times, but in ways that are usually at least a little fun and – not all that surprisingly – imaginative.

5 The 'Death' Trilogy (2000–2006)

Alejandro González Iñárritu has become best known for his post-Death trilogy movies, with Birdman and The Revenant being especially notable back-to-back releases for him (the former in 2014, and the latter in 2015). But the Death trilogy movies did get him a fair amount of recognition, especially 2003’s 21 Grams and 2006’s Babel, thanks to them having more international casts and some Hollywood actors.

Still, the first movie in that thematic trilogy, Amores perros (2000), is probably the best, feeling particularly inventive with how it’s written and edited, not to mention proving utterly devastating at times. That’s to be expected, though, when it’s part of a trilogy with such a morbid name. These movies are indeed heavy, but very much worth watching if you don’t mind the idea of taking in some feel-bad cinema.

4 'Three Flavours Cornetto' (2004–2013)

Sometimes called Three Flavours Cornetto, and sometimes referred to as the Cornetto trilogy, it’s probably the third name this group of Edgar Wright movies sometimes gets called – the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy – that describes it best. There’s quite a bit of violence across all three movies, and at some point, ice cream is involved. Not usually in an important or narratively central way, but still.

Also, each film stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, though they're different characters in each, and their dynamic’s not always the same. Further, all three movies tackle a different genre while also parodying that same genre. You get zombie movies with Shaun of the Dead, buddy cop/action films with Hot Fuzz, and then science fiction/body snatcher/post-apocalyptic stuff with the underrated The World’s End.

3 The 'Vengeance' Trilogy (2002–2005)

Park Dong-ji, played by actor Song Kang-ho, emerging from a lake in Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance

Not surprisingly at all, revenge is the central theme throughout Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance trilogy, with Oldboy (2003) being the middle chapter, and the most well-known. That one’s probably the most approachable, thanks to it being something of an action movie, or at least a well-paced thriller, but the other two movies here are also very good.

If you take all of them together, they make for a revenge epic of sorts, albeit a thematic revenge epic.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) is the first, and perhaps the bleakest, while the third, Lady Vengeance (2005), is maybe the most distinctive and unusual. If you take all of them together, they make for a revenge epic of sorts, albeit a thematic revenge epic. The characters don’t cross over, and each film does indeed tell a new story, but the central theme is persistent across the whole trilogy, and each movie finds different ways to convey a similar sort of message.

2 The 'Once Upon a Time' Trilogy (1968–1984)

Henry Fonda as Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Even if Sergio Leone hadn’t directed a movie post-1966, he’d still be recognized as a great director of epics, for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly alone. That film concluded the Dollars trilogy, which is almost a thematic trilogy, rather than a traditional one, though Clint Eastwood seems to be the same man (one with no name, no less) across all three. So… eh. It’s a borderline example.

But Leone’s post-Dollars films did make up a thematic trilogy, and further showcased what a remarkable director he was when it came to the epic genre. Once Upon a Time in the West is a more contemplative and bittersweet kind of Western, Duck, You Sucker (AKA Once Upon a Time... the Revolution) is one of the most underrated and offbeat Westerns ever made, and then the final film in the Once Upon a Time trilogy, Once Upon a Time in America, is among the greatest epic gangster movies of all time.

1 'Three Colours' Trilogy (1993–1994)

The Three Colours trilogy feels like the gold standard for thematic trilogies, at least within the realm of cinema. You’ve got three movies here that stand apart tonally and visually, with a different color being most prominent in each one: Blue, White, and Red. Also, Blue is the saddest, White is the lightest, and Red is the most mysterious (and perhaps the most romantic, too).

The films here are tied together a little more than in most thematic trilogies, but Three Colours is still taking the #1 spot here because the films are largely independent narratively, outside some background references and then one thing that occurs near the end of Red, which ties things together a bit more. Each one’s a fantastic arthouse film on its own, but then you take them together, and the resulting trilogy is (obviously) all the more impressive still.