Quentin Tarantino reveals his pick for the best movie trilogy of all time, saying it “does what no other trilogy has ever been able to do.” Tarantino is the director of movies such as Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood with an undecided tenth and final film on the way. In addition to being an acclaimed auteur, Tarantino is also a certified cinephile who frequently shares his unfettered opinions, having recently written an entire book on film criticism called Cinema Speculation.
Now, during a recent appearance on Bill Maher’s Club Random Podcast, Tarantino revealed his pick for the best movie trilogy of all time – A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Watch the portion of the video below, starting at the 12:36 minute mark:
Tarantino says the Dollars trilogy, also known as the Man with No Name trilogy, “does what no other trilogy has ever been able to do” since it’s the vision of one director, Sergio Leone, and with each installment, surpasses the previous one in quality and scale. Read his full comments below:
I think there’s only one trilogy that completely and utterly works to the nth degree and that’s Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It’s one director vision, Sergio Leone, through all movies, but the thing about it is it does what no other trilogy has ever ever been quite able to do. The first movie is terrific, but the second movie is so great and takes the whole idea, For a Few Dollars More, is so great and takes the whole idea to such a bigger canvas that it obliterates the first one. And then the third one, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, does the same thing to the second one and that’s kind of what never happens. You’ll see this big jump from the first to the second, and they don’t really land the third one. You know, Mad Max, Road Warrior, and well, Beyond Thunderdome doesn’t dwarf Road Warrior.
How The Man With No Name Trilogy Improves With Each Installment
It Increases Its Quality & Scale
Tarantino acknowledges that Leone’s Dollars trilogy accomplishes what no other trilogy has done – improving with each installment. The trilogy accomplishes this by having each installment expand its narrative scope, scale, and depth while still maintaining the director’s distinctive style. A Fistful of Dollars is a relatively contained tale that introduced audiences to Clint Eastwood’s iconic Man with No Name and set the stage with a gritty, minimalist approach, its strength lying in its straightforward story of a lone gunman navigating a conflict between rival families.
While A Fistful of Dollars laid the foundation, For a Few Dollars More is where Leone’s trilogy began to elevate its ambition, expanding the narrative through the introduction of Lee Van Cleef as a bounty hunter who teams up with Eastwood’s Man with No Name to take down a notorious outlaw. The film’s plot is a little more intricate, involving a multi-layered revenge story and a deeper exploration of moral ambiguity. By the time The Good, the Bad and the Ugly arrived, Leone’s vision reached its zenith with a sprawling narrative set against the backdrop of the American Civil War.
Leone’s trilogy is a unique accomplishment since each installment surpasses the previous one in quality and scale. While many trilogies often see a significant improvement from the first to the second film, as Tarantino argues, they often fail to maintain or exceed that improvement with the third film, using the original Mad Max trilogy as a prime example of where the third film, Beyond Thunderdome, does not surpass the second, Road Warrior. Leone’s trilogy has accomplished what no other trilogy has, which is why it has earned such a historic place in cinematic history and become a favorite of Tarantino’s.