15 Thematic Trilogies From 15 Directors

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s BRD Trilogy: “The Marriage of Maria Braun” (1979)/ “Veronika Voss” (1982)/”Lola” (1981)
Drawing on his direct experience of the blend of confusion and blame in post-WWII Germany, director Rainer Werner Fassbinder pulled together his scathing satirical and dramatic talents to produce a trio of films in response. The BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) Trilogy portrayed the country’s post-War history through the eyes of three women and uses their fates as potent commentary on the recent past.

“The Marriage of Maria Braun” is a layered, challenging drama that possesses a force of nature in its lead, actress and longtime Fassbinder collaborator Hanna Schygulla. As Maria, a WWII widow who rises out of despair by virtue of a quick mind and keen self-awareness, she is the central reason to seek out the film; to learn her character’s quirks and watch as she changes tact. That type of agile character hollows out with Fassbinder’s second film, “Veronika Voss,” which follows a washed-up silent film star (Rosel Zech) struggling to stay afloat with the help of a young sportwriter (Hilmar Thate). Here, the emphasis is on illusion, and the lengths people go to in order to avoid a cold reality; naturally Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard” is a prime influence and so was the life of actress Sybille Schmitz, who worked regularly during the Third Reich and faced an overwhelming rejection by the country’s post-war film industry. “Lola” likewise takes inspiration from Josef von Sternberg’s “The Blue Angel,” and concludes the trilogy with as bleak an outlook as that film’s. Its characters (with Barbara Sukowa in the lead) may hold a sense of optimism, but their progress is blocked by insurmountable obstacles due to their given status in life.

Terry Gilliam’s Imagination Trilogy: “Time Bandits” (1981)/ “Brazil” (1985)/“The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” (1988)
To call a selection of Terry Gilliam’s films “The Imagination Trilogy” might feel a bit pointless, but when we talk of “Time Bandits,” “Brazil,” and “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”, we’re speaking of imagination in a distinct role: as a form of escape, and at three different stages of human life. In each film, we follow a protagonist stuck in what Gilliam describes as “the craziness of our awkwardly ordered society”: a young, history-obsessed boy with neglectful parents; a lowly government worker wrapped up in a terrorist plot; and an old man in war-torn Europe who claims he’s the Baron Munchausen of legend.

Wrongly judged as a “children’s film” upon release, “Time Bandits” is a fantastic romp, filled with cameos galore from Michael Palin, John Cleese, Shelley Duvall, and more. But it only takes until the minotaur gladiator sequence to reveal Gilliam’s intention of contrasting carefree and horrific elements, as the young boy Kevin (Craig Warnock) witnesses Sean Connery gruesomely dispatch a minotaur warrior. The implications of the film’s ending also shock, but they also bring up another of the trilogy’s main threads, the idea of truth and fiction in day-to-day life. Did Kevin dream up his entire journey through time with six robbers? In “Brazil,” does Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) really encounter the woman of his dreams and mount a fight against the totalitarian government? Gilliam delights in the audience being challenged for their own conclusions. “It was only at the making of ‘Baron Munchausen’ that I kind of realized what was going on here about the child, the man and the old man, so I took full credit for having done a trilogy,” said Gilliam years after the films’ releases. However, considering the overflowing well of prescient sci-fi ideas from Gilliam, seen in “12 Monkeys” and most recently with “The Zero Theorem,” we’re likely to see a 14-chapter “Berlin Alexanderplatz” of Imagination from him soon enough.

John Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy: “The Thing” (1982)/”Prince of Darkness” (1987)/”In the Mouth of Madness” (1994)
Inspired by his childhood in the 1950s, reading Revelations in grade school and fearing the atomic bomb, John Carpenter set out to make a series of films in the ‘80s and ‘90s that focused on “the end of things”—the end of people, order, our environment, and the likelihood that the apocalypse would come from mankind’s own hand. He also carried with him a love for gut-punch storytelling, and so The Apocalypse Trilogy was created, positing the end of days through alien invasion, Satan, and the presence of something borne from the mind of H.P. Lovecraft or Algernon Blackwood.

Based on the John Campbell novella “Who Goes There?,” 1982’s “The Thing” is an essential sci-fi horror, stripping exposition clear away and leaving its team of scientists, which includes Kurt Russell and Wilford Brimley to figure out who or what’s picking them off one-by-one in their South Pole outpost. The chilling lack of explanation is what makes the film so successful, and it is exactly the reverse that hinders “Prince of Darkness” from attaining anywhere near the same quality. As a team of physics grad students pore over a mystery green goo and we’re treated to their hallucinatory dreams of Satan, the poor dialogue and shoddy plot undermine the atmosphere that Carpenter creates. However, the trilogy goes out on a high note with “In The Mouth of Madness,” which features a game Sam Neill as an insurance investigator-turned-asylum-patient recounting his search for famed horror author Sutter Cain. Carpenter spins a massively entertaining yarn with both humor and genuine scares, while also commenting on the blurred reality of authors and their fictions. But the real takeaway from all three films in not in the genre, but rather its detail of humanity’s downfall. As they effectively depict, the threat of apocalypse is at its most terrifying when the idea of self dissolves first.