Every Billion-Dollar Movie, Ranked Worst to Best
As we write this in the summer of 2022, there have now been 49 films to exceed $1 billion in worldwide grosses during their theatrical runs. Titanic was the first film to do so, in 1998, while the latest film to join the club is the recently released hit Spider-Man: No Way Home, which collected over $1.9 billion prior to a planned return to theaters later this year. (The most recent Doctor Strange looks like it could get close as it extends its run in some countries but will probably wind up a bit short of $1 billion.)
But how many of these megahits are actually good films in the eyes of critics, and which managed to dominate the box office in spite of lackluster reviews? In the gallery on this page, we rank all 49 billion-dollar grossers in order from worst to best by Metascore, which reflects the consensus opinions of top professional critics for each film.
All box office data from Box Office Mojo.
Release year: 2011
Worldwide gross: $1.124 billion
All-time box office rank: #28
The first Transformers film to cross the $1 billion mark and still the highest-grossing entry in the franchise, 2011's Dark of the Moon actually grossed less than its predecessor (Revenge of the Fallen, the second film in the series) in North America but made up for it with huge overseas grosses. No, that Metascore isn't at all good, but critics actually liked Dark of the Moon better than Fallen, though they still had plenty of complaints about director Michael Bay's soulless, brain-dead style.
“An improvement on Transformers 2, but then what isn't? To paraphrase the Bard, it's a tale, full of sound and fury and extremely stupid dialogue and nonsensical plotting and preposterous stunts and robots punching each other's heads off, signifying nothing.” —Chris Hewitt, Empire
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