One of the Best Movie Trilogies of All Time Is Headed to Paramount+

When people think about masterpiece movies there are usually several that come to mind. That isn’t to say that making movies of that level of quality and status is easy, just that Hollywood has put out some truly incredible movies over the years, films that are firmly considered some of the best and most important ever made. But when it comes to trilogies of films that meet that high standard, the list becomes a lot shorter, but when it comes to one such trilogy, and an absolute masterpiece of the crime genre, Paramount+ has an offer subscribers just can’t refuse in February.

Returning to the streamer on February 1st are all three films in The Godfather trilogy. That means that The Godfather, The Godfather Part II — films that are widely considered to be two of the best movies ever made — and the third film, The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone will all be streaming. You might note that the third film has a slightly different name than you might expect, especially if you are already a Godfather fan. While the third film in the trilogy was originally released in 1990 as The Godfather Part III, the film was not as critically well-received as the first two films. The version headed to Paramount+ is the recut version from 2020 that was met with much better response.

The Godfather Trilogy Is An All-Time Great (And It Still Holds Up)

Written by Francis Ford Coppola with Mario Puzo and based on Puzo’s novel of the same name, The Godfather was a massive success when it was released in 1972. Not only did it dominate the box office and was, for a time, the highest grossing film of all time, but it also brought home multiple Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Marlon Brando (who refused to accept the award). The film tells the story of the Corleone family under the leadership of patriarch Vito Corleone and follows the transformation of the family’s youngest son Michael (Al Pacino) from a reluctant family outsider to completely ruthless mafia boss. It’s follow-up, The Godfather Part II released in 1974, picked up Michael’s story as the new Don, while also tracing Vito’s origin story as well. The film was also a hit and also won several Academy Awards — including Best Picture which made it the first sequel film to ever win in that category. The third film, arriving almost two decades later, attempted to bring everything to a conclusion with a now aged Michael seeking to legitimize the family’s empire at last.

While The Godfather trilogy is very much a product of its time (largely the 1970s), it actually still holds up today. The story is, at its core, one of loyalty and honor as shown through the lens of how it can all be corrupted by greed and power. It’s a rich, human story that digs deep into the grey areas of morality and asks some very difficult questions about how far someone is willing to go both for family and for power and what those choices ultimately mean. That it’s wrapped in a crime saga makes it all the more intriguing and a great, if not somewhat heavy, binge watch now that all three films are together again on Paramount+.

The Godfather trilogy returns to Paramount+ on February 1st.

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