They say the third time is the charm. But they also say bad things happen in threes. So, which is it?

Only the most successful and beloved film franchises get made into trilogies, yet we seem to unilaterally hate the third movie in every series. If you search any movie trilogy online, you will undoubtedly find limitless slander about the third installment. Of the 70 highest-grossing trilogies in the history of American film, Rotten Tomatoes rates the third film as the worst almost 65 percent of the time.

But is Movie 3 really that terrible, or are we just preconditioned to roll our eyes and make mean Tweets about them because it’s the low-hanging fruit?

As a culture, we hate to love sequels, and we love to hate sequels of sequels. It’s just a thing. Studios pump out an unending string of sequels, all under the guise of some overarching “universe” because it saves them the time, effort, and risk of coming up with completely new and original stories. And we begrudgingly eat them all up because the only thing we hate more than boring retreads of old stories is not knowing what happens to our favorite characters. It’s a vicious cycle best paired with a large bucket of popcorn, buttered once in the middle and again on top.

Admittedly, these third films are a mixed bag, which leads us to the first problem with grouping all the Movie 3s together: some are actually bad. These absolute stinkers give the rest of the bunch a bad wrap because humans are dumb and have a pack mentality. A more complex creature would be able to discern treasure from trash on an individual basis while we just look at trilogies and say, “Yeah but the third one sucks.” We need to be better. We should be able to distinguish Jaws 3, an actual steaming pile of hot garbage, from Toy Story 3, a cinematic masterpiece and Hall of Fame tearjerker.

Before repeating another tired trope and blaming the critics for setting a bad tone, it’s not them. It’s us. Look at Back To The Future Part III, shot at the same time as Back To The Future Part II and released six months after the second installment in 1990. The original gets stellar marks on Rotten Tomatoes from both critics and fans alike, scoring a 96 and 94, respectively. Huge score, an all-time classic, revered by all, blah blah blah, let’s get to the sequels. Here’s where things get wonky. Audiences rate the second BTTF an 85 — still pretty decent — while slapping a 78 on Part III like it’s the ugly duckling of the bunch. However, critics differed mightily with the Peanut M&M Gallery, blasting Part II with a paltry 66 rating while the third movie got a surprising score of 80.

And the critics were right. The third Back To The Future really is better than the second one. Sorry, Bobby. But Back To The Future Part III had everything stacked against it and still succeeded in everything the film set out to do. We always complain about sequels and show finales that don’t tie up enough loose ends or answer enough questions, but Back To The Future Part III nails the closure conundrum and gives us one of the most satisfying endings ever.

The audience will always say they like the old one more. We all know that person, the one who claps back with “their old shit was better” every time you tell them what music you’re listening to. They can’t let go of the past, stuck in a perpetual Groundhog Day of pop culture taste, only liking things from their senior year of high school and hating on anything that comes out after. But in Back To The Future Part III, Marty and Doc Brown go all the way back to 1885, so technically it is the oldest movie in the trilogy.

Somewhere, a Movie 3 hater’s brain just exploded.

Much of the backlash the film gets is simply due to its trilogy-ender status. The closer, if you will. A baseball team’s closer is put into an equally impossible position. While a starting pitcher can give up three earned runs in six innings and still get a Quality Start, a closer can’t make one mistake without losing the game and blowing the save. The closer walks a tight rope of doom where the margin for error is slim-to-none.

Being the third film in a trilogy comes with tremendous pressure, and almost everything is working against its success. First, it has to live up to the first two movies in terms of storytelling. We’ve already met all the main characters and gotten used to all their usual antics, so it’s incredibly difficult to catch a Movie 3 audience off-guard with a surprise. This makes the decision to turn the third installment of BTTF into a full-on Western even more incredible, as it was far from the safest bet.

Plus, the third movie has to make a lot more money than the previous two. All the actors are superstars by the time Movie 3 rolls around, so the budget is exponentially higher than the original, not to mention it’s harder to get the audience to buy tickets to something they think they’ve already seen before. This is where movies like The Hangover Part III lose the plot, having to transform from hilarious comedy to flashy action movie to get the juices going a third time. In cases like The Hangover, Blade, Meet the Parents, Terminator, the Sam Raimi Spider-Mans, Mission: Impossible, Silence of the Lambs, The Godfather and so many more, two movies would have sufficed.

But just because many Movie 3s are bad doesn’t mean all Movie 3s are bad. Stop the sequel-of-sequel slander. In many cases, time changes the tide on the public’s view of a piece of art, so always give Movie 3 another chance down the road. While audiences may be burned out on a franchise by the time a third movie hits theaters, the film can grow on people years later after the initial boredom has worn off and nostalgia sets in. I recently watched Matrix Revolutions when they were running a marathon on TV for the anniversary, and I’m happy to report I was wrong all the times I talked shit on it. Wasn’t that bad, really enjoyed it, actually. The same goes for Dark Knight Rises, Tokyo Drift, Die Hard: With a Vengeance, Skyfall, and of course, Back To The Future Part III.

Remember when I told you back in the first act that the third movie is almost always rated the worst of the franchise on Rotten Tomatoes? While that’s true, there are some rare cases where the third installment is the highest-ranked of the trilogy. So, let’s celebrate Movie 3 for once and raise a glass to underdog gems like Revenge of the Sith, Captain America: Civil War, Logan, Thor: Ragnarok, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, D3, and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Alright, I lied about D3: The Mighty Ducks. It’s one of the worst-rated Movie 3s of all time but I can still love it if I want to because all of this is subjective and movie ratings don’t matter.