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!

47 of 64 photo by MGM

62.4 #16 (tie): Terminator

First emerging as a noir-ish, relatively small-scale sci-fi action-thriller in the early 1980s, the Terminator franchise helped launch director James Cameron (who helmed the first two films) to stardom, while giving star Arnold Schwarzenegger his "I'll be back" catchphrase. (So, thanks?)

The series clearly faltered after losing Cameron, while a TV spin-off (The Sarah Connor Chronicles) also failed to catch on despite fairly good reviews. Recent years have brought the franchise to new lows, with the series seemingly reaching its end with Alan Taylor's 2015 dud Terminator Genisys, a film so bad that its distributor Paramount immediately gave up on plans for two sequels.

But now a sixth film, intended as a series reboot with Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton returning alongside newcomers Mackenzie Davis and Gabriel Luna, is in production under the guidance of Deadpool director Tim Miller.

The films:
84 The Terminator (1984)
75 Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
66 Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
49 Terminator Salvation (2009)
38 Terminator Genisys (2015)

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