Now more than ever, the motion picture industry runs on franchises. There’s no point, it seems, to making a big budget movie any more if you aren’t already planning to spin it into three, four, ten or twenty follow-up films. And although the old adage claims that “sequels suck,” audiences are discovering more and more that this doesn’t have to be the case. Some of the best films of the past few years have been sequels, prequels, spin-offs and reboots of beloved properties, proving that movie franchises can be as artistically valid as any other form of media.
With movie franchises now seemingly the norm in Hollywood, CraveOnline has decided to take this opportunity to determine which long-running series of films are the best ever produced. Our four film critics – William Bibbiani, Witney Seibold, Brian Formo and Fred Topel – each nominated 50 movie franchises, ranked from 1-50, which were then pooled together to come up with our cumulative 50 Greatest Movie Franchises of All Time.
Check Out: The 100 ‘Guy Movies’ Everyone Should See
What qualifies as a movie franchise? Each series must be at least three films long, either taking place in the same world or distinctly marketed as a thematically connected series of films. (Example: John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy” wouldn’t qualify, but Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Three Colors” Trilogy would.) If a reboot of a franchise has already produced more than three films set in an all-new continuity, then that qualifies as a new franchise. (Example: Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies are a new franchise, Marc Webb’s Spider-Man movies are not… yet.) Exceptions could be made for “soft” reboots, like the James Bond franchise, but those decisions were left to the critics’ discretion.
Most importantly, each franchise was judged based on the average quality of all the films within it; meaning that if a beloved series had three great installments and three terrible ones, it could average out to a lower overall ranking than you might expect.
Related: The 50 Greatest Vampire Movies Ever Made
Did your favorite movie franchise crack the Top 50? Find out here, and then scroll down to see the 49 other films which received votes from our critics, just not enough to make the final list.
Which franchises did we miss? Which ones should have ranked higher or lower? Let us know in the comments below!
Slideshow: The 50 Greatest Movie Franchises of All Time
–>
49 More Recommended Movie Franchises:
The Mick Travis Trilogy (Three Films)
M. Hulot (Four Films)
Mission: Impossible (Four Films)
Basket Case (Three Films)
X-Men (Seven Films)
Child’s Play (Six Films)
Yojimbo (Four Films)
Hammer Dracula (Nine Films)
Hammer Frankenstein (Seven Films)
Halloween (Ten Films)
George Smiley (Three Films)
Coffin Joe (Three Films)
The Ninja Trilogy (Three Films)
Death Wish (Five Films)
Rambo (Four Films)
The Marx Bros. (Fourteen Films)
George A. Romero’s Living Dead (Six Films)
Tetsuo (Three Films)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Four Films)
Police Story (Seven Films)
Lethal Weapon (Four Films)
The Howling (Eight Films)
Superman (Six Films)
Jason Bourne (Four Films)
The Matrix (Four Films)
The Naked Gun (Three Films)
The Stepfather (Four Films)
Shaft (Four Films)
Karate Kid (Five Films)
Honey, I [Blank] the Kids (Three Films)
El Mariachi (Three Films)
The Pink Panther (Eleven Films)
L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies (Twelve Films)
Paranormal Activity (Five Films)
Maniac Cop (Three Films)
Hannibal Lecter (Five Films)
Police Academy (Seven Films)
Beverly Hills Cop (Three Films)
Species (Four Films)
Psycho (Six Films)
Undisputed (Three Films)
Universal Soldier (Six Films)
Dario Argento’s Three Mothers Trilogy (Three Films)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Seven Films)
Highlander (Six Films)
The Love Bug (Six Films)
Resident Evil (Five Films)
American Pie (Eight Films)
The Omen (Five Films)
The 50 Greatest Movie Franchises
-
50. National Lampoon's Vacation
NUMBER OF FILMS: 4 (and a 5th in the works)
The Griswolds are a national treasure. You could literally send them anywhere and it would be funny. All of the current four Vacation movies are almost equally funny. Almost. Certainly Vegas Vacation doesn’t get enough love. I have every faith that the soft reboot with Ed Helms as Rusty Griswold will carry on the tradition, hopefully with significant inclusion of his parents. Nothing will top the first family trip to Wally World though, possibly because it’s a misadventure in full R-rated glory, but more likely just because it used up all the best jokes. Ever the travel bugs though, anywhere the Griswolds went, they made the dumb American tourist schtick an art form.
BEST SEQUEL: Christmas Vacation
Having the Griswolds stay home was not only a fresh take on the franchise, but including the whole extended family made it a Christmas perennial.
~ Fred Topel
-
49. Die Hard
NUMBER OF FILMS: 5
The first Die Hard rewrote the action genre with a perfect mix of high-octane action and character-driven drama. The sequels have been a mixed bag, with memorable action romps, clever team-ups and at least two stinkers throwing the whole average off. But our affection has never waned for John McClane, the unlikely action hero who won our hearts and our hard-earned money.
BEST SEQUEL: Die Hard with a Vengeance
The third film abandoned the claustrophobic locale for a sprawling mad bomber thrill ride throughout New York City, with a deliciously evil Jeremy Irons as the bad guy and another typical guy along for the ride, grounding the franchise in reality for the very last time.
~ William Bibbiani
-
48. Mad Max
NUMBER OF FILMS: 4
George Miller reinvented the car chase with his Australian post-apocalyptic action saga and made Mel Gibson an international star. The sequels became so iconic it’s hard to remember the original film didn’t have as many car chases, although it was the one where Miller invented the Mad Max shot. With the camera attached to the car shooting the road at high speeds, it’s been often imitated since, but that innovation gave the trilogy’s car chases a visceral energy that was fresh in its time. 30 years after Beyond Thunderdome, Mad Max: Fury Road may reboot the franchise again.
BEST SEQUEL: The Road Warrior
This is the one people think of when they think of Mad Max. Epic post-apocalyptic action with the outrageous leather costumes.
~ Fred Topel
-
47. The Apu Trilogy
NUMBER OF FILMS: 3
Imagine Italian neorealism transported to 1950s India, and you'll have a good idea as to what Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy is all about. The three films in the series – Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956), and The World of Apu (1959) – all follow a young boy named Apu as he grows up in a very impoverished area of India. He grows from a boy into a bitter young man, resentful of his family, but still very loving. This is a film about the ambivalence and struggles of life, all seen through a culture that most Westerners may not be familiar with. But, thanks to the film's gentleness and honesty, we still feel deeply entrenched in the emotions of the moment. The heroes are not heroes, but regular people who can be jerks one moment, and tender the next. There is a stirring universality to the Apu movies that is rarely matched in movies.
BEST SEQUEL: Pather Panchali
A must-see for all serious explorers of foreign film.
~ Witney Seibold
-
46. Antoine Doinel
NUMBER OF FILMS: 5
François Truffaut was the softy of the French New Wave. While Jean-Luc Godard made sure (almost) all of his films were narratively tidied-up by gunshots, you always felt that Truffaut's kept on making mistakes in love. Antoine Doinel is the only Truffaut character to get a multiple film treatment. The 400 Blows is his triumphant introduction.
Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud) gets in trouble in school, and his parents don't pay attention to him at home. He's consistently misplaced and misjudged, engages in petty theft, and runs away from home. It's the "on the run" portion that's the main thread of the Antoine Doinel series: on the run from school, from love, from police, from anything that's a potential noose around the neck of Antoine Doinel.
BEST SEQUEL: Bed & Board
Midway through Bed & Board and you'll question if you still like Doinel. It begins French-cute, as the couple Antoine and Christine (Claude Jane), set up their new life, by teaching violin lessons and dying flowers for a flower shop. But with the news of a baby on the way, Doinel, who's accustomed to running, begins an affair. Running from problems only stays cute so long.
~ Brian Formo
-
45. Cat People
NUMBER OF FILMS: 3
The original Jacques Tourneur film first introduced Irena (Simone Simon), an immigrant who believes she will turn into a panther if she gives into sexual desire; The Curse of the Cat People was the directorial debut of Robert Wise and features Irena (Simon again) as a ghost that befriends a day-dreaming young girl; Paul Schrader's film is a quasi-remake, quasi-prequel, quasi-original which fleshes out more of the origins of the panther-emerges-from-carnality connection via Irene (Nastassja Kinski) and her brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell).
All three films are great, and all three were made by distinctly different auteurs who color the fable very differently: Tourneur with shadows, Wise with imaginative innocence, and Schrader with blood, sex, and rock 'n roll.
BEST SEQUEL: Cat People
A part-prequel (including an otherworldly intro of a woman being sacrificed to a tree of lounging jungle cats who reside in some sort of amber-sand desert funnel), part re-make (with an incest proposal for species survival twist!) this Cat People is sexy, hypnotic, and goes overboard on the gore. But tie this story down to the bed, and Paul Schrader's Cat People is actually a visceral look at America's Jekyll and Hyde sex complex: a devouring, divergent desire to find someone who is both socially proper and down to fuck.
~ Brian Formo
-
44. Predator
NUMBER OF FILMS: 5
There are three films in the Predator series, and two films to feature the creatures from Predator fighting the creatures from Aliens. The “vs” films notwithstanding, the Predator series is one of the most unabashedly masculine series in the world. The first film was so manly, in fact, one can easily see that it was actually intended to be a satire of Hollywood machismo. Soldiers get lost in the jungle, and find themselves doing battle with an invisible alien who is hunting them down. In Predator 2, the setting was changed to a near-future urban wasteland. And in Predators, human criminals were shipped into an alien planet to be hunted down by several of the creatures. This is a series based on not common characters, but a common species. That species is silent and weird and violent, but intriguing and fascinating. They are intelligent and honorable hunters. As an audience we can get behind that.
BEST SEQUEL: Predators
The original remains the best by leaps and bounds, but I give a lot of credit to the underrated Predators.
~ Witney Seibold
-
43. Spider-Man
NUMBER OF FILMS: 5
The first superhero franchise to appeal to every single demographic, laying the final groundwork for the genre currently dominating the planet. Sam Raimi's first two films remain gold standards (a few minor kinks aside), and even the messy third installment seems well thought out compared to the two new awkward attempts to transform The Amazing Spider-Man into a sprawling series.
BEST SEQUEL: Spider-Man 2
A memorable villain and a deft dramatization of the world's most neurotic superhero personality crisis elevate Spider-Man 2 into one of the best costumed crime fighter flicks ever made.
~ William Bibbiani
-
42. The Tramp
NUMBER OF FILMS: 5 Features (plus shorts)
Charlie Chaplin probably wasn’t thinking about branding in the silent film era, but in pretty much every film he made, he played The Tramp. Chaplin debuted The Tramp in 1914 Keystone shorts, then directed his own short called The Tramp. He was probably The Tramp in many more, with his signature black suit, mustache and top hat. The Tramp was a silent, innocent slapstick pratfaller who could get into many misadventures, from prospecting gold in The Gold Rush to falling in love in City Lights. Chaplin continued making silent films with The Tramp, refusing to let him speak with the advent of “talkies.” Who knows how many more Tramp adventures we could have had if sound hadn’t taken over.
BEST SEQUEL: Modern Times
The last credited Tramp movie is also Chaplin’s piece de resistance, a timeless satire of corporate automation with classic set pieces like the feeding machine and the machine gears.
~ Fred Topel
-
41. Jurassic Park
NUMBER OF FILMS: 3 (and a 4th film in 2015)
Jurassic Park is a great film. The series is not up to par. But even though neither sequel had as many tense centerpiece moments (the original has the T-rex car attack, the water tremble, the velociraptors loose in the kitchen, and Samuel L. Jackson directing us to "hold on to your butts"), our inner boy dreams of being a paleontologist will always get re-kindled the moment John Williams' score ushers in the dinosaur wonders. And don't pretend you're not the least bit excited about what Jurassic World will look like.
BEST SEQUEL: Jurassic Park III
Story-wise, there's a reason why JPIII gets a bad wrap: it forces Dr. Grant (Sam Neill) to go back to the dino islands on pretty silly pretenses, and Dr. Saddler (Laura Dern) must have accrued a ton of governmental clout by film's end. But despite some ridiculous bookends, JPIII is a lot of fun. It introduces some new dinosaurs, it's breakneck in pace, and unlike The Lost World, it keeps all the action in the wilderness and understands that the velociraptors are the stars.
~ Brian Formo
-
40. The Orphic Trilogy
NUMBER OF FILMS: 3
The cinema is ideally suited for surrealism. The camera is a dreamer's eye, and the filmmaker can create whatever they want. Back in the 1920s and early 1930s, artists seemed to understand this, and an enormous spate of surrealist and experimental films ran through the underground. Playwright and artist Jean Cocteau started a three-film series in 1932 with The Blood of a Poet, a 55-minute meditation on creation, linked strongly to Greek mythology. In 1950, he made a thematically linked modern retelling of Orpheus, one of the most celebrated films in the nation's history. And then, in 1960, he put a cap on his own career with Testament of Orpheus, which is essentially a dream confession. These films are odd, off-putting, and wholly unique. They stir unknowable emotions that no other film can. Embrace them.
BEST SEQUEL: Orpheus
This is a film school film. Watch it. Enjoy it. But also study it.
~ Witney Seibold
-
39. Dr. Mabuse (Lang)
NUMBER OF FILMS: 4
I'm going to step aside from the "we" for a moment and say, I think that Lang's Mabuse should be closer to the top of this list. Why? Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) is every one one of your favorite Nolan Batman villains (The Joker, The Scarecrow, Bane) stuffed into the frail body of one crooked-nosed, bug-eyed lunatic. Mabuse desires to control Berlin by creating systematic chaos: pumping dope into the air, creating new currency to devalue governmental currency, committing crimes that have no monetary gain, creating murders that appear to be accidents; he desires that the public will live in fear of government and capitalism.
BEST SEQUEL: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
The first Mabuse double feature (Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler) made Lang the toast of German expressionism. His next Mabuse film (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse) was banned in Germany by the ascending Nazi power. Why? An unseen voice directs a regime to carry out atrocities from behind a curtain; one man (Gustav Diessl) questions who has the authority, and a flashback reveals the levels of unemployment that steadily brought desperate, unemployed folk to fill out his fascist regime. It's heady stuff, but told thrillingly, and inventively, with great early special effects and a foreboding, creepy atmosphere.
~ Brian Formo
-
38. The Thin Man
NUMBER OF FILMS: 6
Two bickering, lovable, alcoholic sleuths and their adorable dog solve one dastardly crime after another in the wonderful Thin Man comedies. William Powell and Myrna Loy are perfect foils for each other throughout the franchise, and the collection of memorable supporting characters - read: suspects - they encounter make most of the sequels a real treat.
BEST SEQUEL: After the Thin Man
None of the follow-ups are quite as brilliant as the original, but the first sequel is still a corker, and features an early supporting turn from James Stewart, before anyone knew who he was.
~ William Bibbiani
-
37. The Decalogue
NUMBER OF FILMS: 12 (10 from the original series, 2 expansion films afterwards)
The Bible is the biggest franchise of them all: as a book, it's the longest running best-seller, it's been translated into the most languages; indeed, it's the greatest story ever told.
Polish auteur Krzysztof Kieslowski made ten one-hour short films set in modern Warsaw that somehow revealed, through every day life, the reasoning of each of the 10 commandments. It first aired on Polish television as The Decalogue 1-10. Additionally, two of the hour shorts were expanded into feature-length films and distributed theatrically.
BEST SEQUEL: A Short Film About Killing
Kieslowski films two murders with vicious, harrowing detail. The first is a youth who horrifically bludgeons a taxi driver; there's a struggle, guttural fluids, awful sounds, and convulsions. The second is the punishment: carried out by the state, meticulously murdering the murderer; there's whimpering, soiled pants and precision. Should the state have the right to kill? A Short Film About Killing is immensely impressive, hard to watch, but also beautifully shot by cinematographer Slawomir Idziak (Black Hawk Down, Blue, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix).
~ Brian Formo
-
36. Batman (Burton/Schumacher)
NUMBER OF FILMS: 4
Tim Burton has openly said that he does not read comic books, which, I would argue, makes him ideally suited to make a comic book movie. Indeed, what he came up with brought comic books into the public consciousness in a way they had never been before, even with Superman in 1978. Burton transformed a dubiously credible costume vigilante like Batman and elected to make him into the bleak hero in a playfully film noir blockbuster. When he made Batman Returns in 1992, he also allowed his own tragic oddness to creep into the material. Thanks to those two movies, we're still talking about Batman today. Joel Shumacher turned that version Batman into something more playful and colorful, and while his films are often impugned (Batman & Robin especially), I would argue they are still entertaining.
BEST SEQUEL: Batman Returns
It’s oblique and weird. It’s almost an anti-superhero movie.
~ Witney Seibold
-
35. Harry Potter
NUMBER OF FILMS: 7
J.K. Rowling's teen fantasy saga doubles as a rich saga of good vs. evil and a potent allegory for adolescence. The films never quite held up to the books, but their exquisite casting and a string of wonderfully melodramatic moments made even the lesser entries special for fans of all ages.
BEST SEQUEL: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The Prisoner of Azkaban may be more popular, but Mike Newell's installment best captured the detailed world of the books, with tons of wonderful incidental details and plenty of attention paid to the characters and their pubescent angst when they weren't fighting awesome dragons or traversing a deadly maze.
~ William Bibbiani
-
34. Planet of the Apes
NUMBER OF FILMS: 8
Here's why Planet of the Apes endures: It's flipping ridiculous. Rod Serling (who co-wrote the original) managed to make the film a ripping sci-fi allegory about nuclear waste, prejudice, and ineffably distant futures – and the first five films are exhilarating as a result – but that seriousness is always tempered by the admittedly goofy central conceit of the series: These are talking apes, for goodness' sake. Planet of the Apes is, in many ways, a perfect sci-fi film. It's a mixture of brains, tech, philosophical postulation, and no small amount of campy humor (“Human see, human do”). As it progressed, the Apes movies became more and more portentous and hefty, but even in the two most recent films (considered a “soft reboot”), a bit of the raucous spirit is still alive. You can't see a chimp on horseback firing two machine guns into the air and not laugh heartily.
BEST SEQUEL: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
The bleakest in the series, but also features a wonderful ape uprising. It answers the central question of the series: How did apes come to be in charge?
~ Witney Seibold
-
33. Final Destination
NUMBER OF FILMS: 5
So far, Final Destination 5 (or as I call it Fivenal Destination) has been the final Final Destination, but it should be a limitless horror franchise. It doesn’t even require a killer to come back from the dead every time. The premise is just that the force of death itself comes after a group of people who survived a disaster that was supposed to kill them, but a premonition warned them. And we get to see the graphically violent deaths in the premonition too. Everyday instruments conspire to accidentally kill the cast of characters, making the audience as paranoid as the characters looking at every set piece as a potential death trap. Highlights include laser eye surgery, a Home Depot esque hardware store and gymnastics practice.
BEST SEQUEL: Final Destination II
David R. Ellis’s first sequel threw down the gauntlet for the series to keep topping itself, with a freeway chain reaction and deadly airbags, prosthetic limbs and wire fences.
~ Fred Topel
-
32. The Terminator
NUMBER OF FILMS: 4 (with a 5th coming in 2015)
James Cameron's original, horrific sci-fi thriller transformed into a big budget blockbuster series with groundbreaking visual effects, breakout characters and thoughtful reflections on fate and personal responsibility. If the fourth film hadn't sucked so much, the Terminator series would have ranked much higher.
BEST SEQUEL: Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Practically a remake of the original, but with the situation reversed, turning the original villain into an unlikely hero and letting James Cameron's imagination run wild with one superlative action sequence after another.
~ William Bibbiani
-
31. Friday the 13th
NUMBER OF FILMS: 12
If you were to watch all 11 of the extant Jason Voorhees movies in a (rather long) marathon (and include Jason’s crossover film with Freddy Krueger), you would find that the mythology of the Friday the 13th series is shaky at best. One of the films doesn't feature Jason at all, for instance, and his origins are a little unclear given what was established in the first film and immediately contradicted in the second. Once Jason goes to Hell in Jason Goes to Hell, he's just an outright demon for some reason. But Friday the 13th, in a very important way, codified the slasher craze of the 1980s better than any of his contemporaries. Halloween is better. A Nightmare on Elm Street is better. But Friday the 13th provided us with the baseline reading of the entire genre. That's not nothing.
BEST SEQUEL: Friday the 13th Part 2
It’s just a solid slasher, has the best backstory, and the scariest moments. It was also before the series started to go crazy.
~ Witney Seibold
-
30. Dirty Harry
NUMBER OF FILMS: 5
After becoming indelibly identified as a western hero, Clint Eastwood launched a new franchise for himself as rule-breaking cop “Dirty” Harry Callahan. I guess in the ‘70s, it was unusual for cops to eschew due process in favor of results. Now movie audiences expect it. Dirty Harry saw Callahan pursue a serial killer named Scopio. Subsequent adventures included a subset of cops even dirtier than Harry, a female partner, a vigilante rape victim and a Hollywood conspiracy. I have a soft spot for the final entry The Dead Pool with a rock n’ roll Jim Carrey, angry Liam Neeson, remote control car chase and harpoon. It wasn’t actually until the fourth film, Sudden Impact, that Harry said, “Go ahead, make my day.” His obsession with his .44 Magnum would be brilliantly spoofed in the ‘80s TV series “Sledge Hammer!”
BEST SEQUEL: Magnum Force
The first sequel asked a good question about where Harry himself draws the line, against a group of vigilante cops.
~ Fred Topel
-
29. Monty Python
NUMBER OF FILMS: 4 (officially)
The comedy troupe Monty Python brought their signature dadaist sense of humor to a series of insightful films lampooning the Middle Ages (The Holy Grail), organized religion (The Life of Brian) and life itself (The Meaning of Life). Always unexpected, always hilarious, always Pythonesque.
BEST SEQUEL: The Life of Brian
The Holy Grail may be more quotable, but The Life of Brian features Monty Python's most biting critiques of history, faith and the utter stupidity of the masses, with a closing musical number that ranks among the best scenes in cinema history. "And what have the Romans ever done for us?!"
~ William Bibbiani
-
28. The Samurai Trilogy
NUMBER OF FILMS: 3
Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai trilogy is simple: he revisits one training samurai character, Musashi Miyamoto (Toshiro Mifune), as he wanders from village to village, becoming better with his sword, better at maintaining justice, and better at living in isolation. For Inagaki, he also got better as a filmmaker with each film. He gives each duel a distinctive setting, with distinctive colors, to cover the entire terrain of Feudal Japan.
BEST SEQUEL: Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island
The final film in the Samurai trilogy is the most technically adept: the pace builds perfectly and, color-wise, everything is more lush. Gone are the forest battles in darkness. The sun reflects magnificently off of the water (In Kill Bill, Vol. 2, when Bill requests an "old school fight on the beach. At dawn" it's a reference to the final Samurai duel).
~ Brian Formo
-
27. Zatoichi
NUMBER OF FILMS: 27
The story of a wandering samurai - who also happens to be a gambling masseuse, and blind - may seem like an unlikely basis for a 27-film franchise (plus a TV series), but every single film in the Zatoichi franchise is a rock solid adventure, with many of them being genuinely great. Epic sword fights and high drama abound in one of the finest samurai sagas ever told
BEST SEQUEL: Zatoichi's Cane-Sword
The 15th film in the Zatoichi series may just be the best, with the deadly sword fighter learning that his sword will break if he ever uses it again. How can he save the day without resorting to violence? And what will happen when his enemy's army finally descends on our helpless hero? The most badass finale in the whole series, that's what.
~ William Bibbiani
-
26. The Universal Monsters
NUMBER OF FILMS: 28 (29, with the Spanish Dracula)
From the ‘30s-‘50s, Universal Studios had a monopoly on the best movie monsters, many from classic literature: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Mummy and The Invisible Man. They were all connected by 1948’s Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein, in which the comedians faced Drac, Frank and Wolfy, and more in later sequels. At some point Lon Chaney would play The Wolf Man, Dracula, Frankenstein and the Mummy, but of course Bela Lugosi originated Dracula and Boris Karloff was the original Frankenstein’s monster. The Invisible Man went through Claude Rains, Vincent Price and Jon Hall, but I guess it didn’t matter if you never saw him. Each subfranchise had amazing longevity with 4-6 sequels (though only 3 for the ‘50s Creature from the Black Lagoon) each and then all the mashups!
BEST SEQUEL: Bride of Frankenstein
James Whale’s sequel is the definitive Mary Shelley movie. Sure, Victor created life in the first film, but Bride addresses the real tragedy of living a second life.
~ Fred Topel
-
25. Saw
NUMBER OF FILMS: 7
When the mind-bender Saw was a surprise hit, I was worried that they wanted to make a sequel the immediate year later. That couldn’t be enough time to craft a real mystery. Surely they’d just do more deathtraps. But each annual sequel was a new mystery that further twisted into the backstory of John Kramer (Tobin Bell), a cancer patient who decided to make people sacrifice something they take for granted to survive morbidly clever games. Even if the later sequels stretched things a little thin, at least they were still trying to tell story. They never took the easy way out of just dumping an interchangeable set of characters into new traps. They all had something to say about morality too, giving all the horror a scary commentary on real life as well.
BEST SEQUEL: Saw III
The last film written by Leigh Whannell may be the most mature and tragic, with the juiciest role for Shawnee Smith too.
~ Fred Topel
-
24. Middle Earth
NUMBER OF FILMS: 6
Peter Jackson’s epic adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy was an unprecedented filmmaking feat that rightfully won the Best Picture Oscar for its culmination, The Return of the King. Even if you defend the Hobbit prequels, you’ve got to admit they lower the overall status of the franchise. Gone are the miniatures and practical New Zealand locations are minimized in favor of more green screen and CGI, not to mention it’s a major stretch to make the prequel to the trilogy its own trilogy. There’s always the Rings trilogy though, essentially one epic movie shot at once, but released in three parts, bringing to life what was believed to be an impossible task.
BEST SEQUEL: The Return of the King
The best action with the Pelennor Fields battle. We even like the neverending endings.
~ Fred Topel
-
23. The Marvel Cinematic Universe
NUMBER OF FILMS: 9 (with no sign of stopping)
It only seems obvious in retrospect, but producing a series of interlocking superhero movies was a real gamble when Marvel Studios first started in 2008. It paid off, producing some of the best superhero films around, full of memorable characters, high drama, social commentary and tons of Easter Eggs to keep all the hardcore fans happy.
BEST SEQUEL: The Avengers
Guardians of the Galaxy and The Winter Soldier may be better films, but The Avengers is the apotheosis of the franchise, bringing all the heroes together and somehow getting away with it in a witty, satisfying adventure as big as any ever put on screen.
~ William Bibbiani
-
22. Lone Wolf & Cub
NUMBER OF FILMS: 6 (plus Shogun Assassin)
An executioner (Tomisaburo Wakayama) is framed for disloyalty to the shogun (the state), and his wife is murdered. Vengeance is on his mind, but he's also got a baby to push around (the infant child would've been killed by his father if he hadn't've crawled to the sword over the ball; passing that test, the cub will eventually be trained as an assassin by his father). Lone Wolf and Cub takes the wandering Samurai series and adds a family element, and a lot more blood and hacked off limbs. Hey, it was the 70s. This was the era of blood-hose spray that greatly influenced Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill.
BEST SEQUEL: Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx /Shogun Assassin
Shogun Assassin was a super-cut of the first two films (Sword of Vengeance and Styx), and 75 of Assassin's 90 minutes comes from Baby Cart at the River Styx. But all the iconic lines, such as "I've always wanted to hear that sound ... but to have it happen to my own neck, is... ridiculous!" (featured on GZA's seminal rap masterpiece, Liquid Swords) are in the re-dubbed Assassin. Which is a great place to start – it's like a greatest hits album – you can get into the rest of the discography for the quieter Wolf and Cub moments.
~ Brian Formo
-
21. The View Askewniverse
NUMBER OF FILMS: 6
Kevin Smith's 1994 film Clerks, the first film in what came to be called the Askewniverse (after Smith's production company, View Askew), is easily one of the most important films of the 1990s. It was part of an indie boom that is still felt in the hearts of all '90s kids. It introduced the film world to Generation X's wry self awareness, but also the way they really talked. Popular culture, for instance, was going to be part of the conversation; obsession with Star Wars being the mask worn over a struggling emotional pseudo-adult. All of the subsequent film in the loosely-connected series (all featuring the supporting characters Jay and Silent Bob in at least one scene) featured that same frank sex talk and pop obsession bantered casually between undeniably smart deadbeats. It's a voice that, in many ways, encapsulated the language of a generation.
BEST SEQUEL: Chasing Amy
It’s crass and witty, but also very smart about romance and the male mind.
~ Witney Seibold
-
20. Star Wars
NUMBER OF FILMS: 9 (with no sign of stopping)
If the original Star Wars trilogy had been stayed unmarred by the choppy prequel trilogy (and those damned Ewok movies), George Lucas's sci-fi epic might have been at the top of the list. Instead it's a mixed bag, 1/3 of it compromised of undisputed classics and the others of sloppy follow-ups with some memorable moments between them.
BEST SEQUEL: The Empire Strikes Back
Irvin Kershner helped transform Star Wars from a rollicking yarn into a dramatic journey worth taking again and again with the second feature, which featured complex philosophy, heightened romantic chemistry and bigger stakes than audiences could have imagined. And oh, that twist at the end...
~ William Bibbiani
-
19. The Muppets
NUMBER OF FILMS: 8 (theatrically released)
The Muppet films themselves are, if we're honest with ourselves, only successful about 40-50% of the time. Sure, everyone loves The Muppet Movie or The Muppets Take Manhattan, but there's not much affection in the world for the likes of Muppets from Space or The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. But however much disliked any individual Muppet film may be (and there are anywhere between 12 and 15, depending on which TV specials you count), they all have the advantage of their character. The Muppets themselves are, despite their over-marketing and overexposure and familiarity, fathomlessly innocent. There is a purity and a sweetness to Kermit the Frog that no amount of crap movies can ever undo. So even when Kermit is being repurposed for the 6th time, we still kind of love him. The Muppets are warm and wonderful. Who cares if they make a stinker from time to time? We like this troupe.
BEST SEQUEL: Muppet Treasure Island
Underrated to be sure, but oh so enjoyable. It’s also easily the funniest.
~ Witney Seibold
-
18. The Up Series
NUMBER OF FILMS: 8
It was based on an old adage: “Give me a child until he is 7, and I will give you the man.” In 1964, a British documentarian named Paul Almond decided to test that hypothesis by making Seven Up!, a 39-minute TV show about a group of 7-year-old schoolchildren. Seven years later, Michael Apted continued the hypothesis with a follow-up called Seven Plus Seven, where we revisited the students at age 14. Apted has revisited those same people every seven years to make a new film about them. In 2012, he released 56 Up. Is is possible to capture an entire life on film? All the dramas, the growing, the changing, the false starts and unexpected paths? Is it possible to see a real person all the way through. The Up Series has been doing that.
BEST SEQUEL: All of Them
They are all equal, and better taken as an entire unit. Is that a cop out? Yes.
~ Witney Seibold
-
17. The Evil Dead
NUMBER OF FILMS: 4
By shifting the character of guys-guy slaughter survivor Ash (Bruce Campbell) to a newly announced television show, and turning Ash into Mia (Jane Levy) in the Evil Dead remake, The Evil Dead now has two new lives. Which makes sense because the series has always had a split personality. Equal guts, and laughter at the guts, The Evil Dead II was essentially a ramped up remake of itself, with better effects. The third installment, The Army of Darkness, was a time travel Jason and the Argonauts throwback.
It's this go-for-broke inventiveness that's kept fans clutching their chainsaws. Sam Raimi has held the book of the dead through all manifestations, and while he may fumble in some of his other ventures, he's yet to let down the Dead-heads.
BEST SEQUEL: Army of Darkness
We'll call this one the best because it is the most unlikely of sequels. But, I suppose, you can't keep sending Ash back to the cabin in rural Tennessee. So why not send him back in time? To 1300 A.D. And because he's got his chainsaw, his car, and his shotgun, he gets to go 20th century on their medieval asses.
~ Brian Formo
-
16. A Nightmare on Elm Street
NUMBER OF FILMS: 9
One of the greatest horror franchises started with an extremely creepy idea - an urban legend who kills you in your sleep - and evolved into an inventive slasher franchise with a likable villain... until Wes Craven turned the whole thing around and made Freddy Krueger terrifying again in the seventh installment. Then there was the enjoyably quirky Freddy vs. Jason, and that god-awful remake. But A Nightmare on Elm Street will always earn bonus points for originality.
BEST SEQUEL: Wes Craven's New Nightmare
The first great meta horror movie finds the makers of the original Nightmare face-to-face with their creation, whose popularity - and increasingly lame sequels - has brought him into the real world. The teens have become the disbelieving parents, and Craven himself becomes the sage, schooling audiences and filmmakers everywhere on what true horror is really all about.
~ William Bibbiani
-
15. Step Up
NUMBER OF FILMS: 5
The pure, unapologetic, unironic joy of the Step Up movies have made this underdog franchise into a crowd-pleasing bastion of cinematic sincerity. You can't fake the dazzling dance moves, you can't fake the gee-whiz melodrama. You can only take the Step Ups at face value, and succumb to their exquisitely straightforward pleasures. Even the worst film in the series (Step Up All In) leaves everyone with a smile on their face.
BEST SEQUEL: Step Up 3D
Step Up 2 The Streets was the breakout hit, but Step Up 3D is the franchise at its over the top best, with Moose dance-fighting a samurai, joining a league of super dancers, keeping his identity secret from his girlfriend and teaming up with a robot in a final, laser-fuelled blowout. It must be seen to be believed.
~ William Bibbiani
-
14. The Fast and the Furious
NUMBER OF FILMS: 7 (and counting)
In 2001, no one would have thought the surprise hit The Fast and the Furious would become a franchise that spanned more than a decade. When Vin Diesel turned down the sequel, the sequels dabbled in focusing on Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) or even brand new characters. It was only when Diesel came back for Fast & Furious that the franchise became magical. The reunion of Dom (Diesel) and Brian let all the history of the characters sit unspoken below the surface of the generic revenge plot, and began the process of retroactively making each of the predecessors better, particularly developing a favorite character from Tokyo Drift. The action kept getting crazier with a flaming tanker rolling like the boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark, dragging a bank vault through the streets of Rio, and driving through the nose of a plane. With Furious 7 delayed due to Walker’s death, the latest rumors are that there might be a 2-3 part finale in the works. Really, there’s no reason this franchise couldn’t continue indefinitely with rotating cast members.
BEST SEQUEL: Fast Five
Everybody’s favorite is the one where they brought all the casts together, Dom met Brian’s other partner Roman (Tyrese), and Han (Sung Kang) still hadn’t made it to Tokyo yet. And The Rock.
~ Fred Topel
-
13. Rocky
NUMBER OF FILMS: 6 (with a spin-off in the works)
Sylvester Stallone bet on himself by writing and insisting he star in 1976’s Best Picture Oscar winner Rocky. It was a hit and became his signature character, so of course there was Rocky II, III, IV, and V. Then, when everyone thought Stallone was over, he brought Rocky back for one final round in Rocky Balboa. Now Ryan Coogler is writing and directing Creed, which will star Michael B. Jordan as Apollo Creed’s grandson and Stallone will appear as Rocky in a supporting role. The Rocky movies paralleled Stallone’s own career, with his underdog original setting up a tough act to follow, the sequel cementing his stardom and III exploring the possibility that he’d gone soft with fame. With IV he got political addressed the Cold War. While V is considered a failure even by Stallone, it was a valiant attempt to return to the series roots, which he did successfully with Balboa. If you watch them all in order, you realize that every Rocky movie is really about Rocky trying to do what he gotta do. People never just let him do what he gotta do, even Adrian in Rocky IV. But good old Rocky always does what he gotta do.
BEST SEQUEL: Rocky II
Picking up right after Rocky, Rocky finds he can’t hold down a real job or even do endorsements, so the only thing he can do is a rematch with Apollo, one of the most epic matches in cinema history.
~ Fred Topel
-
12. Godzilla
NUMBER OF FILMS: 31
Yes, I have seen them all. I defy you to watch a scene of a giant rubbery lizard ripping the head off his own robot clone, and not feel deep, refreshing ecstasy. The gleeful, chaotic, small-child pleasures of the Godzilla series cannot be matched by any other series, and I include stuff like Star Wars in that consideration. Godzilla himself is a wonderfully unlikely cultural icon, and his movies – especially through the 1960s and 1970s – were like a 10-year-old's imagination run amok. Mostly cheap, hardly ever deep (allusion to the atomic bomb notwithstanding), and possessed of an oblique playfulness (not to mention a healthy streak of outright monster insanity), the Godzilla movies are an infinite pleasure.
BEST SEQUEL: Destroy All Monsters
Because nothing has – or can – beat a puppety monster battle royale.
~ Witney Seibold
-
11. Toy Story
NUMBER OF FILMS: 3 (a 4th on the way)
"You've got a friend in me." That Randy Newman song certainly sums Toy Story, for a toy's only satisfaction comes from when his or her owner is playing with them. They're all loose-limbed and at service. Sometimes their owner forgets about them. Or they just grow up. But all the adventures that the toys have in the Toy Story series is either to compete for those smiles, or attempt to get back in the glorious light those smiles emit.
Toy Story understands that kids have a God complex with their toys. It's one of the only things they actually have control over. However, because most of the action in Toy Story is waiting for playtime, Toy Story often has fun playing on other movies, pop culture, and other adult things that aide in passing the time when there's less time to play.
BEST SEQUEL: Toy Story 3
The third installment of Toy Story finds the toys all dusty and unused in a while. Andy is getting ready to go to college. When they're incorrectly dropped off at a day care, the toys have to break out Great Escape-style to get back to the attic: a fate, though lonesome, that's better than being smashed by toddlers all over again.
~ Brian Formo
-
10. Alien
NUMBER OF FILMS: 7
"In space, no one care hear you scream" is the great tagline for the original Alien film. But the rest of the franchise could be labeled "Ripley: believer her (...or not, at your own peril!!)." How many times does Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) have to tell her present superiors, past superiors, and future superiors, don't study it, blow it up?! They even bring her back from the dead and made her part alien!
Alien had one great sequel, one studio-meddled misstep that's actually better in retrospect than you remember (Alien3), two additional middling properties with some great moments, and two spin-offs (the Alien vs. Predators). With another prequel in the works, it's not going to be blown up anytime soon. And despite the hatred of Prometheus, there were enough great moments that make us curious about another installment.
BEST SEQUEL: Aliens
One of the best sequels of all-time, Aliens, is the reason they took three more stabs at expanding the Alien world before Ridley Scott took it back in time with Prometheus. Where the first Alien was a tight trap of anticipating movement that'd indicated they're not alone; Aliens was non-stop, ferocious action. It's a perfect complementary double helix.
~ Brian Formo
-
9. Star Trek
NUMBER OF FILMS: 12
Of the 12 films to have been released under the aegis of “Star Trek,” only about half of them are good. We can all agree that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country are the best ones, and we can debate the merits of the remaining ten as we come to them. But even when the Star Trek movies aren't good, they are possessed of that one all important quality: it's universe. The future as envisioned by Star Trek is a placid place, where human prejudices and conflicts have been replaced with smart people working together to explore and to do their best to help people. Plus, the series if very tech-savvy, ensuring that the future machines at least sound plausible. Even when the series is bad, it takes place in a wonderful universe.
BEST SEQUEL: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Most people go to Wrath of Khan, but part Vi is more complex, more tightly written, and just more intriguing all around.
~ Witney Seibold
-
8. The Dark Knight Trilogy
NUMBER OF FILMS: 3
Since the Christopher Nolan Batman series is one of the few reboots to actually make it to three movies, all under the same director no less, CraveOnline granted it status as its own franchise separate from the Burton/Schumacher Batmans. After the embarrassing Schumacher Batmans, Nolan took Batman back to the beginning. He doesn’t even suit up until halfway through Batman Begins because it’s more about how Bruce Wayne dealt with the death of his parents. The complexities of taking on vigilantism were explored in the second half and each of the sequels. Nolan’s approach to make Gotham City and even its most colorful villains realistic was a revelation, and appropriate to Batman. But not EVERY superhero, mind you.
BEST SEQUEL: The Dark Knight
Just the perfect Batman movie with a visceral momentum and horrifying portrayals of The Joker and Two Face.
~ Fred Topel
-
7. The Godfather Trilogy
NUMBER OF FILMS: 3
As told by Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo's Godfather stories aren't just an involving crime drama, they're the story of America itself. Italian immigrants rise to power and struggle to balance their devotion to family with their devotion to capitalistic ambition, leading a sprawling cast of characters to make one unforgettable decision after another.
BEST SEQUEL: The Godfather Part II
The Godfather Part II embraces a daring dramatic structure, cutting between the origin of the Corleone crime family with its increasingly uncertain future, and pitting brother against brother in as genuine a tragedy ever caught on film.
~ William Bibbiani
-
6. The Three Color Trilogy
NUMBER OF FILMS: 3
What do Steven Spielberg and Krzystof Kieslowski have in common? According to CraveOnline they are the best franchise builders. However, Kieslowski's "franchises" are a series of films with themes that he already defined as being connected from the outset of the project. There are no Kieslowski happy meals.
Kieslowski released 16 films between 1988 and 1994. Three were a part of the "Three Colors Trilogy." The colors in questions are Blue, Red, and White. They each represent something different on the French flag, with definitions from the French Revolution. Blue is "liberty" and stars Juliette Binoche as a woman who's lost her husband and child to a car accident and attempts to live anonymously, but she finds human connections to be necessary. White is "equality" and concerns an immigrant (Zbigniew Zamachowski) who's sent back to Poland after his French wife (Julie Delpy) humiliates him in a divorce case that Binoche entered in Blue. And Red is "fraternity" and connects a number of seemingly unconnected individuals, including four individuals from the previous films.
BEST SEQUEL: Red
All three films are equally good in story, dialogue, and execution. What makes Red perhaps the best is that it has the most stark eye-catching color. As each film is heavy on the titular color Red has red rooms, red billboards, red lipstick, red bubblegum etc. which, being the color of blood, creates an uneasy environment that eventually connects all the main characters in a union of survival.
~ Brian Formo
-
5. Indiana Jones
NUMBER OF FILMS: 4
When George Lucas created his answer to James Bond and hired his buddy Steven Spielberg to direct Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, it was the collaboration of two creative geniuses at the height of their powers. Archeologist Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) went on globe trotting adventures to recover supernatural artifacts from the Ark of the Covenant to the Holy Grail. Raiders was a tough act to follow, and while none of the sequels were quite as flawless, Temple of Doom had mind-blowing set pieces (left over from Raiders actually). Last Crusade introduced Henry Jones, Sr. (Sean Connery) and brought back the the Nazis only to crush them under tank treads. Even if you hate Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it’s still a Steven Spielberg movie and a testament to the first three that we all continued asking for another film for 19 years.
BEST SEQUEL: The Temple of Doom
As a kid it was Last Crusade, but these days the mine cart and rope bridge sequences have stood the test of time, and the child kidnapping, heart-ripping cult seems refreshingly dark.
~ Fred Topel
-
4. The Back to the Future Trilogy
NUMBER OF FILMS: 3
The Back to the Future is all about growing up. The first film, is full of spunk, guitar solos, lame parents, and fashion awareness (Calvin Klein). Having a date to the school dance is the biggest worry. Oh, that's because two people gotta hook-up to keep the future on course, but in movies, the only place youth hooks up is at the dance. The second gets more mean-spirited, cutthroat and corporate. School's over. Don't let the western setting of the third one fool you, it's about homesteading, because what's the last Earthly frontier? The suburbs.
For all the time traveling back and forth and back again, Back to the Future follows the same path that most Americans take. And it's fitting because Back to the Future is our most sci-fi Frank Capra-esque franchise ever.
BEST SEQUEL: Back to the Future Part III
It's a very tidy and sweet way to wrap up the series. It began with hope and vision, and ended as a TV sitcom. But after the corporate battling of the second film, what's better than coming home, and watching some familiar characters on the boob tube?
~ Brian Formo
-
3. The Man with No Name Trilogy
NUMBER OF FILMS: 3
Technically, The Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood), the common protagonist in Sergio Leone's Platonic Ideal Westerns, does indeed have a name. In A Fistful of Dollars (based on Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo), he is nicknamed Joe. In For a Few Dollars More (based on Kurosawa's Sanjuro), he was Monco. And in the apex of the series, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, he was Blondie. These films are boldly stylistic and artificial, but came to redefine how we think of Westerns. The aesthetic, the characters, and the tone of the entire genre (often called “spaghetti westerns”) are all now inextricably linked to these three films from the late 1960s. It's a series so familiar to the world, we all kind of know it, even if we haven't seen it.
BEST SEQUEL: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Epic, man. Just epic.
~ Witney Seibold
-
2. The Before Trilogy
NUMBER OF FILMS: 3
The most surprising trilogy comes from a great American innovator of independent film: Richard Linklater. And its the only franchise that continues to get better with each film. That's because Linklater and stars (and co-authors) Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy continue to gain more life experience and familiarity with each other.
Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy), who spent one night together in Paris, discussing music, love, and politics in Before Sunrise, are more fully formed by the time they meet in Before Sunset. Because they've lived more. They speak less in platitudes, and more personally. But their attraction is still just a distant fantasy; they might leave a significant other for each other, but it'd be a roll of the dice, on a feeling, because they've only spent the flirtatious moments together. And that's what keeps the fantasy going. By the time they are a couple in Before Midnight, they actually have to live with each other. Which means it's harder, but more rewarding, not just a flicker of a thought of "what if?" that occurs from spotting at a bookstore.
BEST SEQUEL: Before Midnight
What began as a hipster tourist fantasy evolved into one of the best portraits of a marriage of these modern times: dealing with divorce, kids living on other continents, career balances, and still trying to maintain a level of attraction to one another. The Before series is able to just exist with discussions, arguments, and apologies, because the beats have been established: one day. But it's only by Before Midnight that their actual relationship is established. So we hope there's even more to come.
~ Brian Formo
-
1. James Bond
NUMBER OF FILMS: 23 (officially, with 2 unofficial films and a 24th coming in 2015)
The ultimate movie franchise. Blockbuster thrills, sex appeal, alluring fantasy and the whole history of the second half of the 20th Century encapsulated in one wicked fun spy thriller after another. The rise and fall of the Cold War, the slow march towards gender equality, the gradual re-evaluation of the masculine identity, and all the great monsters of the modern age: political radicals, corporate tycoons and dastardly middle men who make all the world's evils possible. And also, the gadgets, the explosions and the sex.
BEST SEQUEL: Casino Royale (2006)
Goldfinger was the gold standard for the James Bond franchise until Martin Campbell took the series back to its roots, faithfully adapting the Ian Fleming's original Bond novel and making cinema's most idealized hero seem human again. He's everything he used to be - suave, dangerous and sly - but now all of that actually makes sense.
~ William Bibbiani
