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!
By now, even casual moviegoers are probably aware that DC Comics—and studio Warner Bros.—has mostly failed in its attempt to compete with the juggernaut that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sure, the DC films have made less money (average worldwide gross for all five: $754 million; average for all Marvel films since 2013: $966 million). But they also haven't been very good.
In fact, only one of the five DCEU films has met with critical acclaim: 2017's Wonder Woman. (By comparison, all but three of the 20 Marvel films have received positive reviews.) Up next for the franchise is the Jason Momoa-starring, James Wan-directed Aquaman (due for a Christmas week release), followed by Shazam! (starring Zachary Levi) in April.
The films:
55 Man of Steel (2013)
44 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
40 Suicide Squad (2016)
76 Wonder Woman (2017)
45 Justice League (2017)