10) Troll

Did you know that the main characters from the first Troll were Harry Potter Jr. and Harry Potter Sr.? This original trilogy paved the way for crappy movies everywhere. Armed only with clever puns, poor child acting and hideous yet obviously fake costumes, Troll asked us to “Come closer” and we did… three times. Troll II, obviously the strong point in the trilogy, follows a family on vacation to the town of Linbog (Goblin spelled backwards… the joke practically tells itself). You may only be familiar with the first two, aptly named Troll and Troll II, but little does everyone know that there was a third installment made, better known as Troll III: The Queen Latifah Story.

9) Tremors

The Tremors trilogy is a celebration of redneck culture. People learned after the Jaws trilogy (Honorable Mention) to stay out of the water, but after the powerhouse blockbuster smash Tremors, people learned to stay off of land, which is where rednecks generally tend to congregate. Rednecks love this movie for the same reason men love Baywatch.

8) Blade

Everytime I’m asked what my favorite movie is (which I get asked like every day!) I always respond with Blade II. Blade II is completely void of and romance, emotions (other than anger and rage) and any considerable plot development… easily the greatest movie ever made. Let me summarize the series for you: Blade is a half-vampire half human, and he goes around relentless killing vampires for 2 hours straight per movie with either a gun, sword, or sometimes with his fists (the best way to kill someone, I’ve found). Plus, Jessica Beil was in the third one, and she’s so hot it defies the laws of our physical world as we know it.

7) Austin Powers

The only intentionally funny movie on my top 10 list. Although the female lead slowly deteriorated in hotness movie by movie (but when Beyonce is at the bottom of the list, you got a good thing going), the number of characters played by Mike Myers gradually increased.

6) Land Before Time IX-XI

Although The Land Before Time movies 1-8 were pretty good, The Land Before Time IX: Journey to the Big Water changed the way we viewed cartoon dinosaur movies forever. Our heroes Little Foot, Spike, Cera, Ducky and Petrie kept the momentum going with Land Before Time X: The Great Longneck Migration and Land Before Time XI: Invasion of the Tinysauruses, but they really dropped the ball on Land Before Time XII: The Great Day of the Flyers… that was just stupid.

5) Mission: Impossible

People have mixed opinions about this trilogy. The first one was so confusing and had so many unnecessary plot twists that it was almost impossible to keep up with (the last time I saw this movie I was about 13… so that might have something to do with it). The second one (by far my favorite) completely destroyed the idea of creatively using a team to achieve an impossible mission and just had Tom Cruise running around doing gratuitous and unnecessary flips and beating the snot out of random bad guys. The third one was good, but everyone was creeped out by Tom Cruise suddenly turning into a psycho. Which brings me to one of my laws of movie going: There is absolutely no point in avoiding a movie because of one of the actors skewed belief system. There is no doubt that Tom Cruise is completely out of his mind, but I’m not going to skip out on his movies because I disagree with his lifestyle. That would mean I wouldn’t be able to watch movies at all, because just about every actor is either an alcoholic, a skank, or a nihilist.

4) Jurassic Park

Dinosaurs eating people.*

3) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

These movies defined my life. I actually thought I was a ninja turtle for about 6 years of my life, which inevitably lead to me losing every single fight I got into since I wasn’t actually able to block attacks with my “shell.” Running backwards toward your opponent has never been a good fighting technique. The first two Ninja Turtle movies were cinematic masterpieces, and even though the third one (where the turtles teleport back to shogun era Japan) was a total disaster, it wasn’t bad enough to knock the Turtles off my top ten list.

2) Rocky II-VI

Why not Rocky I-III? Three reasons: 1) Rocky loses the fight in the first one (if that spoiled the movie for you, you aren’t American), 2) Rocky IV is easily my favorite one and 3) These are the Rocky movies where Rocky actually wins the final fight. I don’t like underdog stories if the underdog doesn’t win. I don’t think it’s in our interest to celebrate “coming close.” Should a movie be made about how Ole Miss came surprisingly close to upsetting Auburn last year? It’s not an upset unless there is an upset. Anyways, Rocky owns Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang, Hulk Hogan and that Russian Dude gloriously in II-IV.

1) Final Destination

The well deserved king of trilogies. If you haven’t seen one of these movies, you haven’t lived… or maybe you just haven’t not died. The premise for this series is that at the beginning of the movie, a terrible accident occurs and somehow a group of twenty-somethings somehow escape death. The rest of the movie is about how the natural order of the universe attempts to create balance by making sure these kids die. In other words, it’s a bunch of wannabe models with no acting skill dying in freak accidents. The movies get better as the series progresses too, because the writers have to find new and creative ways for these poor struggling actors to die. Brilliant.

Not every movie can make the highly celebrated Auburner Top 10 Trilogies List, here is a list of movies that didn’t quite make the cut, but are Honorable Mentions:

Godfather

Matrix

Indiana Jones

Back To The Future

Naked Gun

Original Star Wars Trilogy

Spiderman

Shrek

Jaws

WAR EAGLE!

*Enough said.

email ryan at ryan@theauburner.com