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!

61 of 64 photo by New Line Cinema

76.0 #2: Middle-earth (LOTR/Hobbit)

Peter Jackson's three feature films based on J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy were massive successes on every level. The trilogy grossed nearly $3 billion, averaged an astounding 91, and collected 30 Academy Award nominations, with the final film winning all 11 Oscars for which it was nominated, including best picture. (The number of fantasy films that had won a best picture Oscar before The Return of the King? Zero.)

The franchise's legacy, however, was tarnished slightly by Jackson's decision to turn Tolkien's slighter prequel novel, The Hobbit, into another full trilogy. While the three Hobbit films duplicated the financial success of the first trilogy by again grossing nearly $3 billion, they were a clear step down in quality, averaging a full 30 points lower (at 61).

The films:
92 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
87 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
94 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
58 The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
66 The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
59 The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

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