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!

6 of 64 photo by Davis Films/Impact Pictures (RE5) Inc. / Constantin Film International

39.0 #57: Resident Evil

There's no such thing as a good movie based on a videogame, so it would be impossible to have a good film series based on a game franchise. That said, the Resident Evil films—written by Paul W.S. Anderson and starring his wife Milla Jovovich as a character created specifically for the big screen—are especially bad, though they'll keep making them as long as you keep seeing them. And you are seeing them: The series has grossed over $1.2 billion to date.

The next film, however, is likely to be a series reboot without the involvement of Anderson and Jovovich, though it is still in the early stages of development.

The films:
33 Resident Evil (2002)
35 Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
41 Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
37 Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
39 Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)
49 Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)

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