Only 3 Movie Trilogies Are More Entertaining Than The Lord of the Rings

4 hours ago 6

Published Apr 9, 2026, 5:45 PM EDT

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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The Lord of the Rings is borderline untouchable, as a movie trilogy. That should be stressed right out of the gate. The three movies adapted J.R.R. Tolkien’s massive novel of the same name, with that novel sometimes being called a trilogy, owing to how it was released in three parts. And it was the same deal with the movie adaptation, or adaptations. You sort of have to take them all as one whole, and they were filmed as one huge production, but then there are also, technically, three movies, one released every year between 2001 and 2003 (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King). But since they're all available now, you're more than welcome to treat all three as one huge movie, and watch them as such, should you have about nine hours to spare for the theatrical versions, or more like 11 hours to spare for the extended versions. The trilogy (yeah, sorry, it’s going to be called that, for present purposes) is largely centered on an increasingly desperate battle to prevent a dark lord from re-emerging and re-conquering Middle-earth, with a Hobbit entrusted with the task of destroying an all-powerful ring, which is what said dark lord wants no matter what.

To cut a long story short (even though The Lord of the Rings is a long story, but oh well), The Lord of the Rings is pretty much the gold standard when it comes to adapting books to the big screen. There are parts of Tolkien’s work that didn’t get fully translated, and some things that had to be streamlined for the sake of the new medium, but the trilogy really does the vast majority of things right. As such, it’s hard (albeit probably not impossible) to argue that there are genuinely superior trilogies overall, but ever so slightly less difficult to argue that there might be some trilogies from cinema history that are even more entertaining. Some of this comes down to the time commitment, with the following trilogies being debatably easier to watch and enjoy because they don’t require nine to 11 hours, and also, you get variety with these trilogies, to a greater extent than with The Lord of the Rings, so that helps with entertainment value, to some extent. And again, it’s not even that these trilogies are better when you take into account everything… since everything, you know, includes more than just a trilogy’s entertainment value.

3 The 'Star Wars' Original Trilogy (1977–1983)

Easy pick here, with the first three Star Wars movies, but it does have to be emphasized that it’s the original trilogy being singled out here (so, the three released between 1977 and 1983). There are two more trilogies within the Star Wars series: the prequel trilogy (1999–2005) and the ever-divisive sequel trilogy (2015–2019). The original three, though, are phenomenal, and chronologically come between the prequel trilogy and sequel trilogy. Star Wars, later called Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, gets things off to a phenomenal start, while middle chapter The Empire Strikes Back is pretty much perfect in just about every way, and then Return of the Jedi is admittedly a little more flawed, yet still a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy as a whole. A New Hope might’ve felt like the freshest at the time, and it can still be recognized and appreciated for what it kicked off nowadays, but The Empire Strikes Back is the film that really showcases Star Wars at its best, and its success is a huge reason why Star Wars, as a whole, is now such a monumental franchise.

The Empire Strikes Back has the best pacing of the three original films, and it succeeds in making the conflict first explored in A New Hope feel a little deeper and more personal to some of the central people involved. It also ups the stakes in a big (and nowadays very well-known) way, and Return of the Jedi is at its best when exploring the fallout from the single biggest revelation that comes near the end of The Empire Strikes Back. Assessing the trilogy as a whole, it’s quite easy to watch all three movies in a very short span of time, given they're all a little over two hours each, and there is a definite progression and upping of the stakes from film to film. Well, okay, if Return of the Jedi feels a little less intense than The Empire Strikes Back, it at least makes up for it, to some extent, with the spectacle it offers, since the whole final act of that movie offers a great deal of action in three distinct settings, cutting between them all in a rather thrilling way. These three movies are all quintessential blockbusters in their own ways, and watching them all back-to-back-to-back proves tremendously entertaining.

2 The 'Cornetto' Trilogy (2004–2013)

Nick Frost eats a Cornetto while sitting on the couch with Simon Pegg in 'Shaun of the Dead'.

Call it a loose or thematic trilogy if you want, but the Cornetto trilogy is still a trilogy. Sometimes, it’s referred to as Three Flavours Cornetto, which is a parody of the title of the Three Colours trilogy, and those films are also great, albeit not as entertaining in the traditional sense. But to stick to the Cornetto movies, they're united by a few things, including the director (Edgar Wright), the two leads in each movie (played by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, albeit they're different characters in each film), and a series of recurring jokes and beats that are hit from film to film. Also, each movie serves as a parody of a different genre, though it’s also worth noting that all these movies go beyond your average parody, and all of them function as genuinely pretty good films if you're to judge them within those genres they're parodying.

The variety here is what really makes the Cornetto trilogy soar, thanks to all the movies belonging to different genres.

That’s not the neatest way to put it, but let’s break it down with a little more clarity. You’ve got 2004’s Shaun of the Dead, which more or less puts a comedic spin on zombie movies, and parodies certain conventions of this particular horror sub-genre. At the same time, there is an increasing sense of tension throughout Shaun of the Dead, and its final act, in particular, ends up being a good deal more intense than a fair few actual (more serious) zombie movies out there. Hot Fuzz (2007) does a similar thing, but with buddy cop/action movies, and it also functions as a surprisingly engaging murder-mystery sort of thing, at the same time. Then there’s 2013’s The World’s End, which some people might like to tell you isn't as good as either Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, but those people are wrong, and time will be kind to The World’s End. It’s the most mature and downbeat of the bunch, exploring a tragic sort of middle-aged angst while parodying – and then also belonging within – the sci-fi genre, more specifically something like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The variety here is what really makes the Cornetto trilogy soar, thanks to all the movies belonging to different genres (and it also helps, of course, that all three films are very funny in their own ways).

1 The Original 'Evil Dead' Trilogy (1981–1992)

A person holds a lamp in a dark cellar and looks wary in The Evil Dead.

Those first three Evil Dead movies are so, so good. Admittedly, the two most recent ones (at the time of writing, from 2013 and 2023) are also pretty good, in their own ways, but here, things are specifically centered on the first three, all of them directed by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell. It’s the Evil Dead original trilogy, so to speak, and they make up what’s probably the easiest trilogy to watch in one sitting. That does come down to all three movies only being about 80 minutes each, so you can get through all three in just over four hours (and hell, there are some movies that are about four hours long, including the extended edition of The Return of the King). Within those four hours, you will be subject to a lot. Maybe even too much. But it’s a trip to go from the straightforward horror of The Evil Dead to the all-out farce that is Army of Darkness.

To be a little more specific, The Evil Dead (1981) is one of those quintessential “evil cabin in the woods” sorts of movies, and it’s genuinely still quite frightening and intense, with very little in the way of intentional comedy. Evil Dead II (1987), on the other hand, sees the series getting a little more comedic, with it having a similar premise to the first movie, but with a combination of horror and comedy elements. And then Army of Darkness (1992) has the protagonist of the trilogy, Ash, getting transported back to medieval times (well, it technically happens at the end of Evil Dead II, but Army of Darkness fully commits to the cliffhanger/bit). In those medieval times, he becomes something of an unlikely action hero and quip machine, and almost nothing is taken seriously. It’s all played for comedy, and it’s all very over-the-top. But if you watch all these movies from start to finish, it makes sense, somehow. You go from grisly horror to glorious camp, and it works. There might be movie trilogies better than the first three Evil Dead films, but there probably aren’t any trilogies that stand as genuinely more entertaining.