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!

58 of 64 photo by Lucasfilm, Ltd.

69.6 #5: Star Wars

Despite attracting plenty of online criticism, the four films of the current Disney era have averaged 73.3—more than the George Lucas-guided releases, which average 67.2(thanks in no small part to the middling scores for the prequel trilogy). While the second film (fifth in the story's chronology), Empire Strikes Back, remains the fan favorite, the original Star Wars (aka A New Hope) is still the highest-scoring title in the series. (Note that since we are only including live-action films, the low score for the animated Clone Wars feature doesn't hurt the franchise's overall average.)

Though Disney may eventually slow its film-a-year pace, many more Star Wars titles are in the works—after all, the series has generated nearly $9.5 billion in box office receipts to date. Up next is the J.J. Abrams-directed Episode 9 at the end of 2019, followed by another stand-alone film in 2020 and potential new trilogies (!) from Rian Johnson and the Game of Thrones duo of David Benioff and D. B. Weiss.

The films:
90 Star Wars (1977)
82 The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
58 Return of the Jedi (1983)
51 Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
54 Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
68 Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
81 Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
65 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
85 Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
62 Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

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