Best two out of three

I'm disgusted. I just can't believe this!

I just watched Blade: Trinity.

Now I'm fully aware that some of you elitist types might take me to task for enjoying the first two Blade movies; well, the only aspect of your cultural tastes that I care about is that you read my blog. Otherwise, you can stuff your judgments. See if I care.

See, the first two Blades were pretty decent. Brainless fun really. Lots of good action, some good lines, some amusing characters. Then comes Trinity, where Dracula, lord of the vampires, is some Eurotrash pretty-boy and the protagonist is just an inscrutable dick. Sure, he was pretty much an inscrutable dick in the first two, but at least there was an iota of character development and some one-liners. Instead, it's just stone-faced assholery; makes it hard to get behind the hero. But when the villain is also crap, who do you root for?

I was rooting for me to turn the movie off.

As this cinematic crapfest played out in front of me, my brain went elsewhere. Random thoughts abound. Hmmm, my fans are howling for a new blog. So what about movie trilogies? Why does part 3 always suck?

In another superhero vein, the first X-Men movies were also quite good. Then, another director takes over and you've got a special effects-laden disaster with no depth but lots of explosions. What a disappointment that one was.

Batman Forever? Yikes! After the totally serviceable Batman Returns, they go off in some garish flamboyant carnival of awfulness, with a totally insufferable Jim Carrey screaming and mugging for two hours… no wait, that's almost his whole career.

Terminator 3! Superman 3… possibly the worst movie ever made! Ever seen it? DON'T.

What's up with this? Shouldn't people get better at making movies? You know, by the third time around, they ought to be pretty good at it.

But hang on. The more I thought, it came to me that part threes aren't always terrible. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was pretty damn good.

But the second one sucked. HARD. Steven Spielberg's idiot wife just screamed and broke a nail for the whole damn thing.

Maybe it's trilogies they suck at. And, since I brought up Superman, anything beyond a trilogy. The only thing worse than the Superman franchise is the Scary Movie one; somehow those disasters keep getting greenlighted, even though they're not funny and they have no new ideas. The Wayans brothers are simply the most brainless and sadistic bastards to pollute this Earth since the Khmer Rouge.

At this point, I'd like to take a quick break to tell you to shut the hell up. I bet the bulk of people who read this are readying some smug comment about how all three Lord of the Rings movies were good, not a weak link to be found. Well, you know-it-all cock, those may have been released as three separate movies, but they were filmed concurrently. That's right, wipe that grin off your face and deflate. Me 1, you 0.

Hollywood, heed my words. Stop making trilogies. Somehow, you're just not good at it. Yeah, Spider-Man 3 is already finished, there's not much we can do about that. But you can still stop Ocean's 13! Come on, deep down you know that Ocean's 12 was the worst A-list wankery since Robert Altman's last abortion, turning 2 minutes of cleverness into a two hour crime. Yeah, ha ha ha, Julia Roberts is playing someone who everyone thinks is Julia Roberts! How wacky! Whatever, piss off.

It's only going to get worse!

Of course, these damn fools won't stop making sequels as long as people pony up the dough for them.

You have the power to stop this! Do you really want to see Baby Geniuses 3? Or Bill and Ted's Tubular Quest?

I think we both know the answer to that.

SMUG UPDATE: as you'll note, I wrote this in November of 2006. Well, it turns out that the following summer was a barrage of filmic part threes, which, just to prove how prescient I am, almost all stank. Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, Ocean's Thirteen, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Rush Hour 3 and Resident Evil: Extinction were all universally panned. And yes, I'm aware of the Bourne Ultimatum. Well, there can be exceptions, can't there? Besides, that's one good part three out of a whole crappy avalanche of them that came out in 2007.