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!

25 of 64 photo by Disney

50.0 #38 (tie): Pirates of the Caribbean

Based, at least in name, on Disney's beloved theme park ride (which has since been tweaked to contain allusions to the films), the Johnny Depp-starring Pirates has turned into one of Disney's most lucrative properties, with box office grosses exceeding $4.5 billion worldwide. That said, while the first film mostly charmed reviewers, each subsequent outing has been worse than the one before it—a decline that began even before director Gore Verbinski departed after the third film.

The series reached its critical and commercial nadir last year with Dead Men Tell No Tales, and there are no firm plans for a sixth entry.

The films:
63 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
53 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
50 Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
45 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)
39 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

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