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!

26 of 64 photo by MGM

50.3 #37: RoboCop

Paul Verhoeven's original RoboCop is a minor 1980s sci-fi/action classic, kicking off a franchise that led to a pair of underwhelming sequels, including one that proved to be the final feature directed by The Empire Strikes Back's Irvin Kershner. Star Peter Weller returned for that film, but not for RoboCop 3, which found Robert John Burke stepping into the same role as the Detroit cop turned cyborg Alex Murphy.

A syndicated television series, this time with Richard Eden in that role, followed in 1994, joined by a miniseries in 2001. In 2014, Elite Squad director José Padilha helmed a remake of the original film, with The Killing's Joel Kinnaman taking the lead. While not good, that film was an improvement over the two sequels.

Despite less than stellar results for that recent reboot, the franchise isn't dead yet. Neill Blomkamp (District 9) has just been tapped as director for yet another reboot (which will simultaneously serve as a sequel to the original, ignoring the previously made sequels), titled RoboCop Returns.

The films:
67 RoboCop (1987)
42 RoboCop 2 (1990)
40 RoboCop 3 (1993)
52 RoboCop (2014)

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