Greatest Movie Franchises of All Time

[Brazoo]

Another futile attempt to rank the merit/worth of movies, though this list has a bit of an interesting twist:

Instead of asking reviewers or the general public to subjectively rank their favorites - this list attempted to objectively base it's results on Box Office and Critical Reviews.

They "adjusted the grosses for each film in every series for inflation" and then took the average gross for the series, then got the critical reviews number from Rotten Tomatoes' critic scores and did the same thing, averaging those two numbers out to rank each franchise. (More details in the linked article.)

I'm still skeptical about the value this list will actually hold for anyone - but it's kinda interesting and surprising in a few places:

Entertainment - Kevin Fallon - The Greatest Movie Franchises of All Time - The Atlantic

(I should also note that this is a recent update of a previously existing list - so the older version might have come up before. The older article has more details about how the created the totals, so I'm linking it here too: Entertainment - Kevin Fallon - The Greatest Movie Franchises of All Time - The Atlantic)

[Earth 2 Chris]

I'm not buying Batman at number 13. With 7 movies in the pipeline, all of them opening huge (yes, even Batman and Robin), you can't tell me Back to the Future did better with 3 films.

I think that list is a lot of bunk, myself.

Chris

[Brazoo]

I'm not buying Batman at number 13. With 7 movies in the pipeline, all of them opening huge (yes, even Batman and Robin), you can't tell me Back to the Future did better with 3 films.

I think that list is a lot of bunk, myself.

Chris

I'm thinking that based on the system they're following it probably works out math-wise.

The "Box Office Rank" for Batman was 14, and Back to the Future was 16. The Critics' Rating dragged down Batman.

Is the first run of Batman movies the same franchise as the Nolan run though? I have no opinion - but that would help it's critical rating a lot if they were considered 2 franchises.

[jwyblejr]

With all of the movies he's had,James Bond is only 20th?

[toys2cool]

LOTR's baby

[emeraldknight47]

Bond does seem a bit low on the totem pole considering it's been a franchise that's been around since---forever! Also, where is the POTA franchise? You're telling me that the apes don't even rate a mention here? Something smells fishy to me....!

[madmarva]

Where's Tarzan? MGM/RKO made more than 20 from the 1930s through the 50s.

[Hector]

Spy Kids???

[torgospizza]

Where's Tarzan? MGM/RKO made more than 20 from the 1930s through the 50s.

In a day when lists pass as journalism, I'm not sure facts really matter, MM. One of their metrics was commercial gross, so you could probably add up the top ten films of the 1940s and they wouldn't touch a recent hit, because there are more actual dollars spent. If they would have adjusted for inflation--thereby showing a better glimpse of real popularity--Tarzan would have made the list. When Weissmuller began playing Tarzan in 1932, a movie ticket cost 29 cents, versus $9.00 now. That's a huge gap they're overlooking.

[Brazoo]

Where's Tarzan? MGM/RKO made more than 20 from the 1930s through the 50s.

Yeah - that's one thing I thought right away; there must be a gap in the data for so many older series to be off this list, but I'm also guessing Tarzan movies didn't rank well enough overall to make this list. For example, the movies might have been making less money than a blockbuster hit, but been very profitable because they were cheap to make. I'm assuming the series because less profitable near the end - because why else would they stop making them? So that would bring down the average too. Also - I don't know if Tarzan movies were ever a critical hit.

Bond does seem a bit low on the totem pole considering it's been a franchise that's been around since---forever! Also, where is the POTA franchise? You're telling me that the apes don't even rate a mention here? Something smells fishy to me....!

Yeah, but remember they're not comparing total earnings of each series - that's the twist of this list - they're looking more at consistency than overall earnings. They're taking the totals for each movie in a franchise and then calculating the overall average. That's key, because otherwise it would be 20 (or whatever) Bond movies vs. only 4 Indy movies.

I noticed POTA was on the 2010 list, at number 43 - I guess it got bumped out:
Entertainment - Kevin Fallon - The Greatest Movie Franchises of All Time - The Atlantic

[Brazoo]

To me, ranking movies in any way isn't that useful, but lists like this are fun as a conversation starter. I thought this list was interesting because it was so weird and they used a fairly unique way of calculating the rankings. Realistically though, this method is just as arbitrary and useless as any other method.

I think ANY attempt to rank movies - even if you're just trying to rank financial earnings to figure out which movie is most successful - is flawed.

For starters I think looking at box office gross is a horrible figure to look at, for the obvious reason that it's only gross, not net.

[Brazoo]

They DID adjust for inflation, by the way - so there might be something else skewing the list towards newer franchises - but supposedly that's not it.

[torgospizza]

They DID adjust for inflation, by the way - so there might be something else skewing the list towards newer franchises - but supposedly that's not it.

Did they? Well, sorry about that. For some reason, I just read the factors were gross sales and Rotten Tomatoes ratings. I totally missed that they adjusted for inflation. I wonder what kept Tarzan out of it? There's been almost 50 Tarzan movies made over the years, and a handful of TV series. That's huge.

[Thor]

The Star Wars trilogies?

[MIB41]

The exclusions in these lists always make for a head scratcher. When you talk about "greatness", that is so subjective. You would think the traditional measure would be weighed on their success and longevity. And if your going to talk about 'success', it seems you would have to weigh the actual gross against the expense to make and market these films. A film that grosses $100 million can be substantial if the cost was say $5 million to make. But if a film cost $260 million to make, that tally would be a disaster. And why do the opinions of critics get pulled into this when the popular consensus is to ignore them? That being said, why aren't the Halloween and Friday the 13th films in there? Halloween has had ten films made, while Friday the 13th have made 12. Sure their anything but darlings for the critics. But they don't cost alot of money and generate a huge profit and pull in even more in merchandise sales. Ask John Carpenter if he thinks Halloween is "great".