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!

33 of 64 photo by Warner Bros.

56.0 #30: Superman

Created in the late 1930s, the enduring comic book hero has subsequently appeared in virtually every form of mass media, including a radio serial, multiple television series (dating back to the 1950s), and, of course, film, including several movie serials in the '40s and '50s as well as the hour-long B movie Superman and the Mole Men in 1951 (basically a glorified pilot for the first TV series, sharing that show's star, George Reeves).

The Superman feature film franchise kicked off in earnest in 1978 with the Christopher Reeve-starring Superman, at the time the most expensive film ever produced. The gamble paid off: Superman was both a major critical and commercial success, and kicked off a series of films. Reeve returned for three sequels, but only one (Superman II) was good—despite the fact that it was stitched together out of scenes shot by two different directors (Richard Donner and Richard Lester) over a three-year period. (An alternate version of that film featuring mostly footage shot by Donner but excised from the original theatrical release was released on disc in 2006.) That era also saw a lackluster spinoff (Supergirl) and the only truly dreadful Superman film, the low-budget dud Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

Several subsequent projects failed to come to fruition, and the franchise seemed doomed until Bryan Singer rebooted it in 2006 with Brandon Routh as Superman. The result was actually praised by critics but underperformed at the box office, leading Warner Bros. to abort plans for a sequel. In 2013, the franchise was rebooted yet again with Henry Cavill in the lead role, and he continues to play the character as part of the DC Extended Universe.

Note that the '40s/'50s serials are not included in the average score. Nor is the recent DCEU film Justice League, in which Superman appears as a character (but which we are excluding because it isn't really a Superman-centered film).

The films:
80 Superman (1978)
87 Superman II (1981)
44 Superman III (1983)
42 Supergirl (1984)
24 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)
72 Superman Returns (2006)
55 Man of Steel (2013)
44 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

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