The 6 Best Movie Trilogies Released Since 2000, Ranked

A trilogy is a much harder thing to pull off than a single great movie, since you need three separate stories that each work on their own and still add up to something bigger by the time the credits roll on the last one. A lot of trilogies coast on the first film’s goodwill and just get worse from there.

These six didn’t do that. Every one of them either stayed level across all three entries or actually improved as it went, which is rarer than it sounds. Some of these films are the greatest movies ever produced in Hollywood. Good to best, have a look at them below.

6

‘Captain America Trilogy’ (2011–2016)

Image via Marvel Studios

Each movie in this trilogy is basically a different genre with the same lead actor. The First Avenger is a pulpy World War II adventure, Winter Soldier is the second one which turns into a 70s political paranoia thriller openly inspired by Three Days of the Condor, and Civil War, the last one becomes a full ensemble political drama that barely has room for its own title character.

Anthony and Joe Russo came from sitcom backgrounds, Arrested Development and Community, before taking over the back two entries, and the elevator fight in Winter Soldier alone is still held up as one of the best pieces of action choreography the entire Marvel universe has produced. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) anchors all three films despite the genre whiplash and he is still easily one of the most favorite Avengers of teenagers and adults.

5

‘How to Train Your Dragon Trilogy’ (2010–2019)

Image via Universal Pictures

Dean DeBlois directed all three of these movies, which is rarer than it sounds for an animated franchise, and it shows in how consistent the emotional throughline stays across almost a decade of real time. Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) loses his father partway through the second film, and by the third, he has to let Toothless go be with his own kind instead of keeping him forever, which is a genuinely mature thing to ask a kids’ franchise to sit with.

You can actually watch the animation technology improve across the three movies, fur, water, and fire all get noticeably more detailed by the third installment. Not many franchises built for children trust their audience with actual grief and actual goodbyes the way this one does.

4

‘Planet of the Apes Reboot Trilogy’ (2011–2017)

Image via 20th Century Studios

Caesar (Andy Serkis) is one of the best performances of the last two decades built entirely through motion capture, and he never once feels like a special effect, but only a tragic figure slowly losing the fight to keep his own ideals intact. Matt Reeves took over directing for the last two entries and leaned hard into genuine moral weight instead of just monkeys-with-guns show.

War for the Planet of the Apes borrows heavily from prison camp movies and Apocalypse Now, which is an unusual place for a summer blockbuster about talking apes to end up. Serkis never got an Oscar nomination for any of this, despite basically every critic agreeing he deserved one, and that omission still gets brought up as one of the Academy’s bigger blind spots.

3

‘The Dark Knight Trilogy’ (2005–2012)

Image via Warner Bros.

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Christopher Nolan built each entry in this trilogy as a completely different genre stitched onto the same character. Batman Begins is a training film, The Dark Knight is a crime thriller, and The Dark Knight Rises is closer to a war epic about revolution. None of these films looks like it belongs to a superhero movie in the way that word usually gets used.

Heath Ledger’s posthumous Oscar for playing the Joker is the moment most people remember, but the bigger legacy is what this trilogy did for the genre as a whole. It proved that a movie about a guy in a bat costume could get taken seriously by people who’d normally skip anything with a cape in it. IMAX became a real blockbuster format partly because Nolan kept insisting on using it here first.

2

‘Guardians of the Galaxy Trilogy’ (2014–2023)

Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

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James Gunn directed all three of these and built the whole thing around a soundtrack gimmick that turned into two genuinely bestselling real albums, Awesome Mix Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) leads a team of misfits that starts out as comic relief and slowly turns into one of the more emotionally devastating found-family stories in any recent blockbuster franchise.

Gunn actually got fired from the franchise briefly over old resurfaced tweets before the third movie, then got rehired once Disney reversed course, and Vol. 3 ended up dealing with a genuinely dark, upsetting backstory for Rocket involving real animal cruelty. It’s a rare trilogy that gets more emotionally serious with each entry without ever losing its sense of humor.

1

‘The Lord of the Rings Trilogy’ (2001–2003)

Image via New Line Cinema

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No studio had ever greenlit three blockbuster films shot back to back before knowing whether the first one would even work, and Peter Jackson filmed all three of these together in New Zealand over about eighteen months anyway, an enormous gamble that could have bankrupted everyone involved if audiences hadn’t shown up.

They did, obviously, and The Return of the King went on to win all eleven Oscars it was nominated for, a sweep that basically never happens. This trilogy also built WETA Workshop into a global force in visual effects and turned New Zealand into one of the biggest film production hubs in the world. Fantasy movies got taken seriously by the Academy because of what these three proved was possible.