by Rob Gunther
The best part about the first part of a trilogy is that nothing ever has to be settled. Coming up with a satisfying ending is the hardest part of any storytelling task. You could have the best idea for the coolest story on the planet, but if you don’t know how to end it, if you can’t think of a convincing way to answer all of those giant questions and gaping plot holes that you’ve posed to your audience, everyone will be pissed, nobody’s going to let you do anything else ever again. Like that TV show, Lost. J.J. Abrams couldn’t deliver on the finale, and since then, his career has been total garbage. Didn’t he have some prison show? I have no idea because I’ve completely written him off. Maybe if he limited Lost to only three seasons, the laws of the trilogy would have worked in his favor. But no, seven years on the air. Great job, buddy.
What was I saying about not having to wrap things up? Keep reading to find out the answer to this questions, and even more questions, and even more hints at possible answers, and hopefully enough distracting nonsense that you won’t remember all of the bad parts about this first part, you’ll just be looking forward to part three, but that’s not until even further down, because right now, right after this, it’s part two.
The Trilogy: Part two of three
Part one left you breathless. Even though you knew this was a trilogy, you still got to the end and couldn’t believe that was it. I left you completely enthralled, but just as you thought it couldn’t get any more exciting, it was over. The end. To be continued. You couldn’t wait. You didn’t really have to, because this is a collected volume, and so it was just a matter of continuing to the next page. But still, the comedown from the excitement was almost too much to bear.
Don’t worry, this is part two. You’re shaking. You can’t read straight. Even though you’re reading these back-to-back, you’re imagining what it would have been like to have had to wait in between parts. It’s like when I was a kid and I watched the Star Wars trilogy. All three films were already available on VHS before I was even born. All I had to do was pop in the second tape and I was ready to see Han Solo cut open a mountain yak’s stomach and crawl inside with his buddy Luke so they could survive the nighttime’s subzero temperatures on the ice planet Hoth.
Actually, I don’t even remember ever seeing Star Wars for the first time. I have fleeting memories of being a little kid and watching some of the tapes at my grandparents’ house. But I was too young to really get anything, or to understand what was going on, or to sit still for two whole hours. By the time I really watched Star Wars, I already knew basically the entire story. My brain started to become conscious, and it was already preloaded with Star Wars. It’s like you don’t remember meeting your mom and dad, you just think back as far as you can and they’ve always been there.
Unless you’re an orphan, of course.
What would it have been like to walk out of the movie theater in 1977 and say to yourself, “Wow! That was so cool! I can’t believe I’m going to actually have to wait a bunch of years to see how this story continues!” And you have no idea about Yoda or Jabba the Hut or Luke kissing his sister or Luke, I am your father.
A lot of people make the case that part two of a trilogy is always the best part. I can see the arguments. There’s no wasted time setting everything up. All of the characters have already been introduced. There’s no laying out any story, no big exposition about who’s doing what and why they’re doing it. It’s just jumping right into the action. It’s ready, set, go, except they don’t even say that. They just start right at go.
Look at the Back to the Future trilogy. Part II is easily the best movie. Why? Well, there’s obviously a hoverboard, and that’s just sick. But more importantly, you don’t have to spend so much time setting everything up. Who are you? I’m the Doc. What’s this? It’s a time machine. A time machine? I don’t believe it. Well, believe it kid. I still don’t believe it. OK, meet me at the mall. Oh no! Terrorists. Oh no! I’m dead. Oh no! I’m in the car. Oh no! I’m in the past. The movie’s been on for like half an hour and we’re just finally getting to see some actual time travel, which, if I’m not mistaken, that’s the whole point of the movie.
Part II starts with the time machine automatically flying out of nowhere, ready to take them on another adventure. No nonsense this time. In fact, Part II is so ready to roll, it doesn’t even wait for the beginning of the second movie, it starts at the end of the first. Genius. By the way, if I remember correctly, the Doc got the plutonium from the Libyans, right? And Qaddafi was in charge then, right? So if it weren’t for Qaddafi, Marty would’ve never gone back to the past and his dad would still be a huge loser and Biff would still be giving him noogies and making him wax his car. Is Qaddafi the secret hero here? What does it all mean?
Sorry, I’m getting distracted. But there’s no better place to get distracted, to run your mouth, to set up some truly crazy shit than in part two. Seriously, not only are you jumping head-first into the action, but you’re heightening the suspense, the drama. You have to escalate based on your fans’ expectations. So throw in everything you’ve got. A crazy twist that you haven’t even begun to think of a logical solution to? Go ahead. Just write it in. Write in everything. Don’t hold back. This is part two we’re talking about here. You’ve got plenty of time after it’s out there and after everyone reads it and scrutinizes it to think, OK, I’ve really done it this time. I have no idea how I’m going to end this, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to think about that. I’m not going to try to work out an ending, not yet. I’m just going to milk part two for everything it’s got. Sure, there’s no way I’m going to be able to top all of this, but who cares? Let it ride. Luke, I am your father. Why so serious? Whatever they say in the Godfather Part II.
Khan!
Check back tomorrow for the epic conclusion. Which doesn’t really apply here, because it’s already been written. But when I put it up on my blog originally, you had to wait a day. But like I said, that doesn’t make sense in this collected format, it’s right here. Part three. Read it immediately.
The Trilogy: Part three of three
And then you get to part three of your trilogy and you probably realized you bit off a little more than you could chew. What happened to the beautiful optimism of part one? If only there were some way to go back and maybe make the ending of part two a little less sensational, a little easier to write or explain your way out of. But it’s too late. And your audience is expecting something huge. They’ve lined up around the block for the better part of a day just so they can experience your grand conclusion, in IMAX, and those tickets cost close to twenty bucks, and it’s a midnight showing, like people are basically giving up their Friday so they can stay up until four in the morning just to say that they saw your finale first. Gulp.
That’s the problem with trilogies. The wrap-up. It better be good or else it cheapens the success of the first two parts. Whereas part two is your constant high, ever upward, oblivious to the fact that even this story is going to have to reach some sort of a conclusion, by the time part three shows up, it’s obvious that there’s going to be a letting down of sorts. From the moment part three starts, we’re already in the business of having our expectations lessened, maybe gently, maybe not as delicately, but it’s plain to see what’s going on. Even the most successful trilogies suffer from this inevitability.
Let’s look at Star Wars again. Empire starts out with this crazy ice planet battle and culminates with the big reveal, with Luke getting his hand cut off, and with Han Solo trapped in carbonite. And how do they pick up where they left off? Back in space? Nope, we’re right back on the desert planet, right where we started, right back with the droids, a really slow build up to, let’s be real here, a half-assed Jabba the Hutt scene. Leia’s in a gold bikini. Boba Fett’s there. OK, fine. But it doesn’t really have anything to do with anything from part two. What about the Empire? What about Darth Vader? Where’s Lando?
And they try to reconnect with whatever made the first two so magic
al, but nothing sticks. Luke goes back to Degobah and it’s not the same. There’s another Death Star, but it’s not the same either. Lando’s back, finally, but totally not as cool as he was in part two. “Luke, I am your sister,” doesn’t even come close to packing the same wallop as “Luke, I am your father.” I could go on and on, but then I’d have to start mentioning Ewoks and I’m afraid everything would just spiral out of control and I’d have to finish up with some sort of a weird musical number.
But whatever, I mean, this is part three of The Trilogy. I’m being honest, it’s going to be a letdown, it just has to be. You make a trilogy and you’re bound by certain laws. Unfortunately, the third part of any trilogy is going to invariably disappoint on some level. I could go emo for a little bit, maybe have a jazz dancing scene like in Spider-Man 3, but everyone hated that. I could go back to the Wild West and turn an old locomotive into a time machine, but everyone knows Back to the Future Part III was pretty awful. Whenever a TV station airs an entire trilogy, nobody sits around to watch the last part. It’s always such a waste. And I can’t even talk about The Matrix - that guy in the white suit, or whatever the hell happened at the end. I wish Neo and I could have switched places, so I could’ve had my eyes gouged out, so I wouldn’t had to have actually seen such a disappointing finish.
I’m obviously not talking about Batman here. The Dark Knight Rises was sick, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the only exception to this rule. But I don’t think mentioning Batman is going to help me out much here.
Hmm. What else can I do to wrap things up? Is it too early to start thinking about how I’m going to package all three together as a whole? Maybe draw up some cool artwork? How am I going to market this trilogy now that it’s all but complete? Maybe I should actually finish first. Hmm.
Well, I guess that’s it. Trilogy complete. That was kind of fun. Part two was definitely the best.
The Trilogy: Part four of three
Please, I hope nobody tries to tell me they saw this one coming, because nobody did. I’m catching everybody completely off guard here. I’m pretty sure this was already the world’s first ever appendix trilogy. Well, now I also have the distinct honor of writing history’s first ever four-part trilogy. Right here in this book. It’s incredible. I feel so special, writing it, putting it in here for dozens of people that I tricked into buying this.
I’ve talked all about the roles of each part of a trilogy. It’s all very formulaic. Part one: setup. Part two: action. And part three: the inevitable disappointment. (Again, to clarify, I’m not talking about Batman. And you know what? If they make an Inceptiontrilogy, I’m going to call that not applicable either. Because Inception was sick. Avatar, on the other hand, that’s definitely going to follow the trilogy formula to a T. I wouldn’t be surprised if the N’avi also wound up having to get rescued by Ewoks at the end.)
I was so excited about my trilogy, but looking it over, I realize all too well that even I was susceptible to the limits of the genre. I’m no Chris Nolan. How do you do it, Chris? Tell me the secret to your powers! Just as things got going, I looked back at my part three and thought … eh. So I did what I always do when I look back at something I’ve written that I’m not happy with: I cry a little on the inside but just publish it anyway because trying to get to the end here, it’s pushed my standards super, super low. But I thought to myself, how can I fix this? Specifically, how can I fix this without having to go back and rewrite anything? And part four seemed like the perfect solution.
I’m considering this part four to be like a cast for the broken leg that were my parts one through three. We’ll just leave it on and six weeks later, yeah it’ll smell a little funny, but … yeah, I don’t know where I was going with this whole cast metaphor either. Is it metaphor or analogy? I always get those two confused. And by always, I mean only when I had to take that one English test in high school where one of the multiple-choice questions asked the difference between a metaphor and an analogy. I think I got it right. I can’t remember.
The thing is, I keep writing sentences, but I don’t feel like anything’s really happening. I was so excited by my idea of a trilogy, excited that I would call it Trilogy, capital T, excited about this part four nonsense. Ha! Trilogies don’t have four parts! Haha! But the further along that I get, I’m coming to see that all I’ve done is taken my idea, thrown in a ton of filler sentences, like this one right here, with a lot of commas, unnecessary words, more words, a few more, and I’ve just kept stretching everything out. I think I could have actually and more appropriately condensed all four of these chapters into one paragraph:
I love trilogies. Trilogies are made up of three parts. Remember Star Wars? I liked Empire the best. Remember Back to the Future? I liked Part II the best. I don’t like Ewoks. I did like Inception, but I didn’t like Avatar. Actually, that’s not true, I loved Avatar, I’m just anticipating not liking their sequels. But I’ll probably see them anyway. And I like Batman.
Man, that wasn’t even a full paragraph. I mean, I guess technically it met all of the requirements of a paragraph, but my paragraphs are never that short. And it’s not even that well written. But what can I do? Man, this is going to ruin me. I’m trying to ground everything I write here based on universal appeal, but I feel like I’ve somehow sunk myself lower than your average Internet fanboy.
I’m so screwed. I’ve already invested a lot of time and words into this. You know what? I’m not that screwed. This can’t be that big a deal. I’ll just write something even funnier next, funnier than anything I’ve ever done before. A five-part trilogy. Is that funny? No, no, forget it, it’s not going to happen. Unless … No, I can’t allow myself to even think about this any further. Wait, unless …
The Trilogy: Part five of three
It had to happen.
That’s the line that’s been haunting me ever since I finished my award winning trilogy, The Trilogy: The World’s First Four Part Trilogy. I kept fighting the urge to exploit my past success, to phone it in for a day and write the fifth part of what is already one of the most successful four-part three-part sagas in all of history. But I can’t put it off any longer. I knew that sooner or later I’d have to return, to continue the journey. And why the hell not? Let’s see how many parts this trilogy is really made of.
Let me do a really quick recap for those who somehow missed out on parts , and . That’s it. That’s the recap. I made links to all of the other parts, so you can just click on them and read them. Linking is the toughest part of writing. I naturally assume that eventually society is going to collapse and the servers that sustain our Internet will stop running and the only thing left of my writing will be the hard copies I’ve instructed my readers to religiously print out and store away in case of said inevitable collapse. And these sacred texts will get passed down from generation to generation, and finally, somebody will be like, “I didn’t get this part. What was he talking about when he said that was the recap? And why are some of the words blue and bold?” because hyperlinks don’t show up on regular paper. And people might start to doubt me. So for any readers studying this text generations from now, I was just linking. The words showed up blue and you clicked on them and the earlier text I was referring to automatically popped up. But since you don’t have computers anymore, please see The Trilogy, parts one, two, and three, and four.
That was so funny right? The four-part trilogy? And I ended it with this big joke that it was going to continue as a five-part trilogy. And then I was like, “just kidding. But am I? I am.” At least that’s what everyone thought. But I kept writing and the months piled up and one day I was so bankrupt for ideas so I thought, what the hell? And much like Rocky VI, there’s really nothing new being done. This is a huge victory lap. I’m seriously taking a break between each paragraph and patting myself on the back, laughing lightly, murmuring stuff like, “You funny devil, Rob.”
One of my readers sent me an email after part four, telling me, “You didn’t do the first
four-part trilogy. Indiana Jones did. Ha.” And I know I’ve put off the response for a while, but Indiana Jones? I’ve never seen any of his movies. They all seemed kind of boring. Even when I was a little kid and all of my friends would have sleepover parties and whoever’s parents were hosting rented a ton of movies and we’d stay up all night watching them, I’d always fall asleep as soon as I heard that boring Indiana Jones theme song start up.
And then someone would wake up me up, saying, “Rob, Indiana Jones is over. Wake up. We’re putting on Terminator.”
I loved Terminator. “I’ll be back,” classic. And I’d be sitting there on the edge of my sleeping bag, totally gripped with suspense and terror, thinking to myself, why are all of my friends laughing? This is a crazy thriller. Why am I not getting any of the comedy? And it wasn’t until I went to the bathroom later that I realized my friends weren’t laughing at the movie, they were laughing at me, because while I was lost in my Indiana Jones induced coma, everybody brought out some permanent markers and drew penises all over my face.