Why are there so many trilogies? Why the combination of exactly 3 books/movies is so common? Why we don’t hear much of duologies, quadrilogies etc.?
In: Culture
You set the characters up in the first book, go through traumatic experiences and hype the villain up in the second book, and beat the bad guy in the 3rd book. Really easy format basically
It’s like how music has a lot of songs that go 1-3-5 in terms of chord progression. Overtime people just discovered that that’s an extremely effective story telling method. The first movie generally acts as an introduction, the second as a build up and the third as a climax / resolution. Going longer than that is just where you’ll usually start to lose people. You’d in many cases be better off starting a new trilogy in that case or just doing multiple separate movie industries kind like the Harry Potter movies. That way each movie sort of stands on it’s own and isn’t too heavily link to the other movies despite them all together forming a a bigger picture.
The reason is because of the 3 Act Structure. The 3 Act Structure is the most common narrative you have probably encountered.
While each movie goes through the 3 Act Structure, with a trilogy, each movie can also be an act of a larger meta story.
That’s why you see so many trilogies.
In movies you have the first movie.
If it does well a second is made called a sequel not a “duology”.
Typically the sequel rarely does better than the first one but if it does do well then a third may be made.
Third movies rarely ever do well enough to warrant a fourth.
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