I never thought of them as a trilogy, but I’m all for them (except maybe the last.)
I’m not saying it has the dramatic highs of Godfathers, the scope of Lord of the Ringses, or the overall new-paradigm-inducing-ness of the Matrices, and it’s not sci-fi, but I seriously think the Ocean’s trilogy belongs in the conversation.
And the first three prime-time Charlie Brown specials, of course (Xmas, Halloween, Thanxgiving).
Going to have to go with The Star Wars Trilogy here.
For books I have to put in a mention of The Tripod Trilogy, which were my favorite books as a kid. As far as how to structure a 3 part story, I don’t know of anywhere it was done better.
Does Star Trek II-IV count as a trilogy? I think they should. Still not quite as good as Star Wars, but they are close!
It shouldn’t surprise you or anyone, that I’m in complete agreement with you …again:D
Love Star Wars, but Lord of the Rings is the perfect movie trilogy (and the perfect book trilogy) in the everything of everything.
(Edit: for full disclosure I should state that I am ignorant of the Ocean’s trilogy. Seen 11 many times. Seen 12 only a couples days ago, and never seen 13 at all.)
It was a movie about walking! Walking!
That being said, I still loved it 
Star Wars FTW
Toy Story needs to be in the conversation.
Got to take it in perspective, though. Star Wars instantly reached out to a larger audience by virtue of its format, time period, and merchandising. Lucas quickly got into the money aspect of things, and all of the movies and fiction and games etc. based from Star Wars were licensed out by Lucas for more money.
Lord of the Rings was very controlled by Tolkien in his life, (he was very resistant to movies because he was afraid of them destroying his story), and his son has been fairly closed on it as well. They never licensed out the universe for other writers to write in, whether or not there were authors that did (and there were). They were very protective of even the word Hobbit. First ed of D&D had hobbits and ents as races, and the Tolkien estate sued their ass off.
I’ll paraphrase Stephen King here, Lord of the Rings did inspire a generation of writers. They didn’t stay in that universe, but the Sword of Shanarra and its following books, Dragonlance and its world, any number of one-off fantasies, they all started with people who were inspired and wanted to recreate Tolkien’s world. He says one of the things that inspired his Dark Tower series was Tolkien, and that he didn’t write his story when he read Tolkien because if he had tried to do it then, he would have tried to write Tolkien’s story, and the 60s and 70s had enough of that (The actual quote can be found in the introduction to The Gunslinger, by Stephen King, I think the title of the intro is “On being Nineteen” or something like that).
Plus, the two are more apples and oranges. Lord of the Rings isn’t (technically) a trilogy, it’s one story commonly packaged in three parts. Also, Star Wars was something put together in the beginning by a thirty-something guy. Tolkien started writing his languages before World War I, and the Lord of the Rings wasn’t published until after World War II. Tolkien had almost as much time worked into LotR as Lucas had in living at the time the books were published, and Peter Jackson was working on years later after much fan art, some movie attempts, and a lot of thought. It’s no suprise that there’s a lot more depth and story-telling in LotR, it had longer to mature.
Lord of the Rings is my favorite among fantasy, Star Wars has my heart for space adventure, but it doesn’t fit so much into science fiction for me.
I consider Star Treks 2,3 and 4 a trilogy.
I don’t know about greatness…
But TWOK rates high enough to make mine :
1st place: Star Trek 2,3,4
2nd: Indaiana Jones
3rd: Star Wars
If you had asked me at 16… different answer, but Trek adn Indy have grown on me.
As for the “star wars is fantasy” discussion… It’s all fantasy. In your bookstore fantasy genere is generaly defined as Swords and Wizzards in a dark ages setting, on earth or in a mythical preimitive land. Sci-fi is pretty much anything with a laser, spaceship, or science beyond our current happening. Of course there are “swords and Wizzards” in Star Wars… but the second one of them talks to a droid, handles a blaster or get’s into space ship… it’s sci-fi. There is a sub genre called Sci-fantasy ( as opposed to hard science fiction) bbut really that is so elitist Arthur C Clarke adn Asimov nerds can try to seperate themselves from that they see as sci-fi for stupod people. They are all just the same…they are sci-fi. There are no monoliths or Star Childs… so why is that less fantasy then Star Wars? because it’s boreing? Or because it is set in what we thought was our future? The distant 2001.
Is Trek not fantasy? Pschic pointy eared half aliens that can die and come back to life? A bald skinny man that can be the boss of a ship for 8 plus years! A man made machine that has emotions and can whip anyone’s ass and they let it roam free because it says it’s good!
Sure it’s all fantasy… but in these discussions it’s all about genre… not language.