Every Film Franchise, Ranked
Well, maybe not every franchise. But most. We have taken every film franchise for which we have data, calculated an average Metascore for each one, and then ranked the results in the gallery above from worst to best. To be eligible, a franchise must have a minimum of four films with Metascores. That rules out trilogies, obviously.
What else is excluded? A few things:
* Horror film franchises. There are so many of those that we will gather them in their own separate list, which we'll publish later this year. (A few franchises that span multiple genres, like the Alien films, will appear in both lists.)
* Animated films. We are only including live-action movies in this list (mainly to keep the list a somewhat reasonable size—sorry to all you Pokemon and Shrek fans). Note that if a franchise is mostly live-action but has one animated release, the animated film is not included in the average Metascore for that franchise.
* Made-for-TV movies.
* A few franchises where most of the releases were mainly straight to video
* Some very old franchises for which there aren't many reviews still available.
Don't worry: That still leaves over 60 film franchises to rank. Happy browsing!
Sean Connery was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000, so it seems fairly safe to assume that Her Majesty has never seen Highlander or its first sequel (both of which featured Connery, marking the only recurring role for the star aside from the 007 series). Those two films launched what now is our lowest-ranked film franchise in history, thanks to an average Metascore of 26.
The fantasy series about a group of immortal warriors (led by Christopher Lambert's Connor MacLeod) developed a cult following despite terrible reviews and little initial moviegoer interest, and that was enough to sustain the franchise for four feature films, six seasons of a syndicated television series, a TV movie (2007's Highlander: The Source), and an anime film (Highlander: The Search for Vengeance). A franchise reboot has been in development for the past decade.
The films:
24 Highlander (1986)
31 Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
28 Highlander: The Final Dimension (1995)
21 Highlander: Endgame (2000)