Some movie franchises take pride in sticking to one director for the entire franchise. Case in point, Steven Spielberg directing every entry within the Indiana Jones franchise or (to a much lesser extent, obviously) Brett Ratner directing every single Rush Hour movie. However, sometimes, movie franchises opt to shake things up a bit.
This often leads to movie franchises going into an entirely new direction behind the camera. Granted, this tends to lead to varying results. Sometimes, a new director can put the franchise in a worse place than where it started, but other times, the new director offers one of the best movies in the series.
10 Better: Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry Potter 3 Is Often Considered The Best In The Franchise
Chris Columbus directed the first two movies of the Harry Potter franchise but opted to merely produce the third movie as opposed to getting behind the camera because, per his words in a BBC interview, “physically I had put everything, blood, sweat, and tears into Chamber of Secrets. I hadn’t seen my own kids for supper in the week for about two and a half years…I have to give them some time now.”
Future Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón stepped in for the third entry and, really, it worked out for the best to the point that many still regard The Prisoner of Azkaban as the best movie in the franchise to this day.
9 Worse: Mike Newell’s Harry Potter 4 Is Poorly Adapted
As Chris Columbus directed the first two Harry Potter movies while David Yates directed the last four, the third and fourth movies respectively were the only ones who did not have a director return for at least one sequel. The Prisoner of Azkaban has the reputation of being among the best that the franchise has to offer, while The Goblet of Fire— directed by Mike Newell— is among the worst.
While not the outright worst movie of the franchise, it does get the most criticisms, particularly for fans of the book who say it poorly adapted some key moments. The most infamous being when Dumbledore discovers Harry’s name in the Goblet of Fire. In the book, Dumbledore approaches Harry calmly, while in the movie, he’s far more furious and erratic.
8 Better: Rogue Nation Gave Mission Impossible Its First Repeat Director In Christopher McQuarrie
For the longest time, Mission: Impossible had a track record of introducing a new director for every single entry of the franchise, to help freshen up the tone of each movie. Brian De Palma dealt with the first one, John Woo came in for the second, JJ Abrams had the third, Brad Bird the fourth, and surprisingly, Christopher McQuarrie had the fifth and sixth.
McQuarrie is still the only director to direct multiple Mission: Impossible movies and both also happen to be the highest-rated of the franchise according to Rotten Tomatoes— with the fifth, Rogue Nation, currently claiming the top spot.
7 Worse: John Woo Got In The Way Of Mission Impossible II
Meanwhile, John Woo has the distinction of giving the Mission: Impossible franchise the dreaded sophomore slump. Fans tend to unanimously rank the second entry as the worst of the franchise. This is a shame because the movie came with huge expectations, both as a follow-up to a surprise hit as well as Woo’s next film after his critically acclaimed Face/Off.
Unfortunately, it seems like the movie suffered most by a movie overborne by a director’s vision, which included a bland, stereotypical action romp plot made all the more excruciating when executed poorly— and ridiculously over-the-top, even for early 2000s action movie standards— by the director. And yes, there were inexplicable slow-motion birds, of course.
6 Better: The Russo Brothers Made Best The Avengers & Captain America Movies
The Russo Brothers taking a leap from television comedy to big-screen action cinema had to have been seen as a big risk at the time, just as it would seem risky for any director to pick up The Avengers franchise after Joss Whedon delivered two blockbuster movies.
Joseph and Anthony Russo exceeded expectations when they directed the last two Captain America movies and then exceeded further by directing two multi-billion-dollar juggernauts in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. These movies were not only praised better than Whedon’s Avengers movies but also have been ranked highly among the best that the overall MCU has to offer.
5 Worse: Joel Schumacher Killed The Batman Franchise
With all due respect to the dead, Joel Schumacher has often been credited with killing the Batman franchise during its late-’80s to early-’90s renaissance period on the big screen. When Tim Burton was politely asked to step down from the franchise once Batman Returns was essentially deemed too dark to sell as Happy Meals toys, Joel Schumacher stepped up.
To his credit, Batman Forever isn’t that bad. Silly? Yes. Kid-friendly? Yes. But not necessarily bad, especially when it committed to a tone and executed it well. Fans took offense when Batman and Robin arrived, which was such a critical and box office bomb that it put the series on pause until Christopher Nolan came around in 2005.
4 Better: Shane Black Provides A Perfect Blend For Iron Man
While no one is going to deny that Jon Favreau did a superb job at directing the first entry into both the Iron Man trilogy and MCU franchise, Iron Man 2 left something to be desired, and it’s not entirely his fault. It’s been well documented that creative differences between Favreau and the studio ultimately led to a lackluster effort.
However, when he was replaced with Shane Black for the trilogy’s epic finale, it would appear as though this movie was the perfect blend between letting a director be creative and giving the studio— as well as fans— what they want. Unless what they wanted was The Mandarin, then no one’s happy.
3 Worse: It’s All Downhill From Brett Ratner’s X3
The first X-Men movie has been credited with helping to spark the superhero movie craze of the early 2000s, while X2: X-Men United was quickly praised as the best of the genre back when the genre still felt like a fresh niche among comic book lovers. Both movies were directed by Bryan Singer, but for the third, he was replaced by Brett Ratner.
Ratner’s X3 received lukewarm mixed reviews upon release and hasn’t aged all that well since. It was immediately followed up by X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which was even more poorly received. It’s as if everything in the franchise went downhill as soon as Ratner took over.
2 Better: James Mangold Saved Wolverine
If saying that Brett Ratner ruined the X-Men franchise is a stretch, then one thing that everyone should be able to agree on is that X3’s follow-up, X-Men Origins: Wolverine nearly completely tarnished the onscreen legacy of the title character.
However, the follow-up to that movie, The Wolverine, was an improvement in the right direction when director James Mangold took over the reins. The Wolverine was so well applauded that Mangold was approved to receive the keys to yet another X-Men movie, Logan, which doubles as a great superhero movie and a great sendoff to Hugh Jackman’s character as it exists onscreen.
1 Worse: Richard Donner’s Exit Did More Harm Than Good To Superman
Richard Donner technically directed the first two movies in the original Superman film franchise. As tensions fumed between producers and Donner on the second movie over creative differences, he was kicked off of the set of Superman II and replaced by Richard Lester. Most fans tend to agree that whatever merit Superman II has comes from Richard Donner’s fingerprints, a theory confirmed by the release of The Richard Donner Cut.
The idea is even more confirmed by the reaction to Superman III, which entirely has Richard Lester’s fingerprints and received bad reviews once it hit theaters. And the less said about Superman IV, the better…
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