So, we’re all agreed then, Spider-Man 3 is a stinker. Not much of a surprise there. The key, you see, was in the title. More accurately, it was in the lone numeral placed next to the name Spider-Man, just hanging there ominously like an albatross next to a doomed blockbusting galleon.

The digit is a signifier of creative ineptitude, corporate greed and bad film-making. For there can be few things more dispiriting today than the existence of so-called “threequels”, bloated cash cows that promote nostalgia and brand awareness but deliver only a numbing simulacra of jaded characters and derivative thrills. To put it simply, there’s just nothing left in the basement any more.

We, and presumably the Hollywood pinheads who sanction this brain-numbing pablum, have decades of threequel duds to hide from. The third helpings of Jaws, Rocky, Rambo, The Godfather, Back to the Future, Crocodile Dundee, Alien, Jurassic Park, Lethal Weapon . . . the list is agonisingly long, and points to a movie archetype defined by overblown budgets and a lazy regurgitation of mood and theme, with little attention paid to plotting or character.

The threequel is invariably the point at which the creative team behind the original movie – the Spielbergs and the Ridley Scotts – have officially departed, leaving just a conceptual husk to be manipulated and rehashed for maximum profit. Here the goal is not about storytelling or aesthetics. It’s simply about getting audiences into theatres. Thus the Hollywood rubric for sequels, “Make it the same, but different”, becomes, in threequels, “Whatever, just get them in.”

There is, indeed, something slightly offensive about the exploitative nature of the threequel, and audiences can sense it a mile off. Hence the box-office returns for threequels is rarely higher than the previous offerings – and in some cases, such as Crocodile Dundee 3, barely managed to scrape even.

The threequel is also often a cause of outrage among fans of the original. In the winter of 1990 the release of The Godfather: Part III was seen by mobster movie fanatics as the low point of what was originally a groundbreaking genre. Similarly, more than a decade later The Matrix 3 (aka Matrix Revolutions) sent the internet faithful into a tailspin when they realised that their beloved sci-fi franchise had ended in a big cacophonous mess.

And yet still they do it. Still the Tinseltown bean-counters argue that a beloved movie series that crashes and burns in the hell of critical ignominy and public opprobrium but snags $400 million at the worldwide box office (the take for Matrix 3) is worth it. Hence this summer’s crush of Shrek The Third, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, The Bourne Identity 3 etc.

The greatest irony, however, is that the threequel can occasionally be a thing of beauty. While Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King were undoubtedly the best movies of their series, the real threequel crown belongs to the late Krzysztof Kieslowski for his 1994 classic Three Colours: Red, which concluded the sequence begun with Blue.

Here was a movie, a bona fide threequel, that referred back to the other films in the series, both with star cameos and plot references, but also luxuriated in a wholly satisfying story of its own (in this case, the friendship of a young model with a voyeuristic judge).

The acting was flawless, the script thought-provoking yet light, and the whole series came together in a final reel that left you in no doubt that you had witnessed the conclusion of a masterpiece.

Now, if only Spider-Man could take a hint.

Name your favourite threequel

Not all threquels are disaster: Peter Jackson's Return of the King, Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Kieslowski's Three Colours: Red stand out. Others are the final nail in the coffin: think Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles or Robocop 3. Then there are the the "oh-is-that-it?" finales such as The Godfather: Part III and Matrix Revolutions. This summer the Shrek, Oceans and Pirates triologies reach three. We want to know your favourite and least favourite conclusions to triologies. Have your say below

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