Movie franchises are all the rage today, but there are plenty of excellent film series that don’t get the recognition they deserve. A film franchise can offer filmmakers a chance to tell a long-form story that stretches beyond one installment, and they have been part of movie history since the beginning.

Sequels are often derided because they show a lack of creativity, but good film franchises justify each installment by continuing the story in a compelling way. Some franchises last for decades, such as the James Bond series, while others only last a few years. Timing isn’t always important, as legacy sequels can follow up on movies that are decades old.

What truly drives a franchise is money, and the opportunity to continue box office success is usually what inspires Hollywood to churn out sequels. This has produced some unique movie franchises that don’t follow the conventional formula, but it has also created a bevy of series that have nothing new to offer.

Sometimes, a film series is very popular at the time, but slowly loses steam and becomes forgotten. This doesn’t necessarily speak to the quality of those films, but it says more about how trends can affect franchises as they leap from movie to movie. Even if they have been forgotten, there are some franchises that are worth revisiting.

10

The Tetsuo Trilogy (1989-2009)

Director/writer/producer Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man was a disturbing piece of Japanese cult cinema, and it was not necessarily a prime candidate for becoming a franchise. Drawing inspiration from multiple sources, the cyberpunk body horror story uses surrealism to tell the story of a man slowly transforming into a metal monster.

Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer followed in 1992, and solidified the series’ theme of revenge. The final film, Tetsuo: The Bullet Man was not as well-received, but completed a thematic trilogy with equally disturbing imagery. Unlike other franchises which have their moment and are forgotten, the Tetsuo trilogy are cult classics only sought out by cinephiles.

9

The Gator McKlusky Duology (1973-1976)

Burt Reynolds’ most iconic roles often cast him as the ultimate working-class hero, and his turns as Gator McKlusky helped solidify that position. Starting with 1973’s White Lightning, Reynolds starred as the ex-con hero twice, but the McKlusky series is one of those classic franchises that is often overlooked because there was no third film.

Crown jewels of the ’70s Rednexploitation boom, White Lighting and Gator were both hits, and delivered a lot of humor and action. Despite being light fun, the two films evolved the character of Gator, showing him grow instead of resetting him at the end of the first movie. They aren’t masterpieces, but they feature Burt Reynolds at his very best.

8

The Mr. Tibbs Trilogy (1967-1971)

Though In the Heat of the Night is one of the greatest films of the late 1960s, its sequels are almost universally forgotten. Sidney Poitier gave a career-defining performance as detective Virgil Tibbs, and his pairing with Rod Steiger’s backwards local police chief was a stroke of genius. The film skewered racism without any subterfuge, and it daringly challenged conventions.

They Call Me Mr. Tibbs! caught up with Poitier’s heroic cop, but it was more a conventional detective story than groundbreaking cinema. Similarly, The Organization put Tibbs back on the case, but it didn’t have any teeth. The sequels suffered from having to follow In the Heat of the Night, and would have been much better if they weren’t overshadowed.

7

The Lone Wolf And Cub Series (1972-1993)

The Lone Wolf and Cub series was one of the most important manga in Japanese history, and it only made sense for them to be adapted into movies. The first four films in the series were released in 1972 alone, with the rest stretching across several years and eventually decades.

They borrow the narrative of the manga, with a rogue warrior protecting an innocent child in feudal Japan, and do the manga justice. Though often overlooked in favor of other classic samurai films, Lone Wolf and Cub is shockingly consistent. They have a lyrical quality that can sometimes be hypnotic, but are punctuated with over-the-top graphic violence.

6

The Tremors Series (1990-2020)

With an airтιԍнт script and stellar performances, Tremors was a shockingly-strong monster film that had clear franchise potential. Sadly, the sequels immediately jumped to video, and only one movie in the Tremors franchise has ever been given a wide theatrical release. Nevertheless, the seven-movie series has a lot of highlights.

The sequels expand upon the cleverness of the original, dreaming up new scenarios for the monsters to terrorize unsuspecting victims. Kevin Bacon didn’t return for the sequels, so Michael Gross became the de-facto hero after a scene-stealing role in the original. Far from perfect, the Tremors franchise is classic monster movie fun.

5

The Once Upon A Time In China Series (1991-1997)

The wuxia genre of martial arts cinema explores China’s past, and none are as famous as Once Upon a Time in China. Mostly starring Jet Li in the lead role, the films concern folk hero Wong Fei-hung in the 19th century. The pinnacle of Hong Kong’s cinematic golden age, the series expanded through five sequels in almost as many years.

Li is at his very best, and the choreography is some of the strongest in the modern era of martial arts movies. Because they were made so close together, all six movies have a continuity that is usually lacking in a long-running franchise, and they feel like one epic storyline stretched across a series of films.

4

The Pusher Trilogy (1996-2005)

Director Nicolas Winding Refn launched his career with 1996’s Pusher, but he wasn’t done after only one gritty installment. The unflinching crime trilogy isn’t on an epic scale, and instead shows low-level criminals as their lives spiral out of control. Lacking the polish of American cinema, the Danish trilogy is almost unbearably real in its depiction of street crime.

Because the films are international, the Pusher series isn’t as well-known stateside among casual moviegoers. However, it is best known for jump-starting the career of Mads Mikkelsen, who has found great success in Hollywood and beyond. Despite a decade gap between movies one and two, Pusher is clearly Refn’s vision from start to finish.

3

The Thin Man Series (1934-1947)

Adapted from Dashiell Hammett’s eponymous novel, The Thin Man was one of the earliest franchises from Hollywood’s Golden Age. Though it quickly exhausted its source material after only one movie, the husband-and-wife detective duo of Nick and Nora Charles clearly had a lot of future potential. The films eschewed typical hard-boiled detective tropes, which made for box office gold.

Across six installments for more than a decade, Nick and Nora returned to crack cases and solve crimes. William Powell and Myrna Loy co-starred in all six movies, and The Thin Man was box office gold all throughout the dark days of WWII. Modern audiences have mostly forgotten, but The Thin Man franchise almost never dipped in quality.

2

The Three Colours Trilogy (1993-1994)

While most film franchises are specifically designed to make money, the Three Colours series is more about making an artistic point. Director Kryzysztof Kieślowski delivers three mostly disparate films that each explore one word in the French motto: liberty, equality, and fraternity. The trilogy is very loosely connected, with only a few cameos to link them.

Critically applauded, the series is more about subverting genre expectations than delivering any sort of satisfying story developments. There is also a sense of symmetry between the three movies, with order and design taking precedent over the strictures of film storytelling. Three Colours isn’t often lauded alongside other great trilogies, largely because it tries not to be one at all.

1

The Before Trilogy (1995-2013)

The pᴀssage of time plays an important part in the Before trilogy, both for the characters and how the story itself is told. Director Richard Linklater delivered Before Sunrise in 1995 as a slice-of-life romantic drama that follows two characters as they spend an evening together in Vienna. Not much happens, but the stellar dialogue waxes philosophically about the nature of happiness.

As discussed in the movie, the characters return (around) 10 years later for Before Sunset, and again 20 years later in Before Midnight. Each time they reunite in the sequels, they take inventory of their lives, examining their happiness. With an equivalent amount of time pᴀssing in real life, the largely forgotten trilogy allows the audience to do the same.