Every Film Franchise, Ranked

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – August 9, 2018

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!

17 of 64 photo by Walt Disney Studios

47.4 #46: Herbie the Love Bug

Disney's live-action, family friendly film series about an anthropomorphic VW Beetle who finds himself in adventures (and races) around the world spanned four theatrical films from 1968-80, followed by a quickly canceled, five-episode CBS television series in 1982. Two disappointing reboots followed, one for TV in 1997 starring Bruce Campbell (not included here), and another that reached theaters in 2005.

The latter, Herbie: Fully Loaded, was a Lindsay Lohan vehicle (literally), and it performed fairly well at the box office, though no further film sequels are planned. But Disney has tentative plans to revive the franchise with another television series, either for Disney XD or its new streaming service.

The films:
48 The Love Bug (1968)
49 Herbie Rides Again (1974)
38 Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977)
55 Herbie Goes Bananas (1980)
47 Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005)

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