Creating a movie that will eventually become a classic and will be talked about for decades after it leaves the theaters does not happen by accident. It requires a great script, talented actors, a director with a vision, and a lot of dedication from all concerned.

Creating three great movies around the same characters and/or concepts is even harder, almost inconceivable – but, as it turns out, not impossible. (In fact, these are some movie sequels that were better than the original.)

To determine the 25 best movie trilogies of all time, 24/7 Tempo developed an index using average ratings on IMDb, an online movie database owned by Amazon, and a combination of audience scores and Tomatometer scores on Rotten Tomatoes, an online movie and TV review aggregator, as of July 2022, weighting all ratings equally. Values were averaged across all films within a trilogy using number of votes or reviews as weighting. Only film franchises with three installments were considered.

Click here to see the greatest movie trilogies of all time

Some of the installments of these trilogies have been criticized, albeit usually for minor issues such as the design of an animated character or the divergence of a storyline from the source material. (These are the 25 worst sequels of all time.)

Nonetheless, all the three-film groupings on this list have scored highly with both audiences and critics, and all are well worth watching.