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!

57 of 64

69.0 #6: Bourne

The first three Bourne films, based on the novels by Robert Ludlum, marked the series as perhaps the action-spy franchise to beat in the 21st century, outdoing recent 007 releases (at least it terms of quality). Those three films, directed at first by Doug Liman and then by Paul Greengrass, and written (at least in part) by Tony Gilroy, improved with each new chapter.

But when it came time to make a fourth film, star Matt Damon opted out, leaving Jeremy Renner to star in a Bourne-less Bourne Legacy. Writer Gilroy returned (taking over directing duties as well), but the film barely eked out a positive Metascore, and was a clear step back from the previous film.

Though Damon and director Greengrass returned for 2016's fifth film—with Greengrass even co-writing the script—Jason Bourne is the franchise's major critical dud. That said, it grossed more than all but one other film in the series.

There are no definitive plans for a sixth film.

The films:
68 The Bourne Identity (2002)
73 The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
85 The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
61 The Bourne Legacy (2012)
58 Jason Bourne (2016)

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