xhonzi said:
Ryan McAvoy said:
Anchorhead said:
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade.
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
The Dark Knight Rises.
Last Crusade and TDKR are weaker than what came before, but I have to admit they do make a decent fist of wrapping things up nicely, although there isn't any plot to wrap up in Last Crusade, as the Indy Trilogy are all self contained films. TDKR doesn't have much to wrap up either, as few characters crossover the 3 movies, although the League of Shadows storyline comes full circle.
Where as ROTJ brings all the characters from all the movies and all the threads together in one neat bow IMO
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, although excellent is just a third movie (as has been said above). It's not the conclusion of a third part story.... plus arguably it's a prequel ;-)
I still think often about "Capital 'T'" trilogies. I know I posted about them a few times here- but I only found this example: http://originaltrilogy.com/FORUM/topic.cfm/Act-Breaks/post/451754/
The BTS stuff for PotC2 is really interesting... they didn't write Curse of the Black Pearl to be a Trilogy opener, so they have to sort of backdoor into it to use it as part one of a proper Trilogy. They discuss what was in it that could possibly be used to thread out into parts two and three. Something along the lines of "let's not make sequels- let's make a Trilogy- and if there's nothing in the first movie that sustains that, then we'll just drop it."
Of course... not a trilogy anymore..
I actually consider Pirates 4 to be a sort of rewrite of 1. Most of the cast is completely new. The motivations of Jack and Barbosa change considerably from off-screen events in between 3 and 4. The Barbosa story line is new and different, he's looking for revenge and is more of a gray character than a pure villian. But Jack is back to trying to reunite with the Black Pearl as in the original film.
Oh, and an interesting tidbit on pirates 2/3. They were filmed together, and they did not have a script well into the start of production. They had a story arc, and the writers had a basic outline to do storyboards. But the writers had to tag along during filming and were often writing dialogue for scenes to be filmed the next day. So when some of the logic that the characters use to set up an upcoming scene makes no sense, that's probably why. It kind of works with Jack I guess because part of his charm is how his absurd schemes work out so well.
Jedi does this too, the plan to save Han just seems overly complex. I'd bet that the sail barge, Sarlac, and slave Leia were dreamed up first and resources were already committed to making them a reality. As a result our heroes weren't allowed to come up with a more logical strategy.