Hollywood is addicted to sequels. We looked at dozens of major franchises and their audience scores to find out if they ever live up to the original.
Published March 23, 2026
Hollywood is addicted to sequels. Why take a risk on an original idea when you can just make Fast & Furious 10? But as consumers, we often feel a sense of dread when a sequel to a beloved movie is announced. We know deep down that it probably won’t be as good.
But does the data back this up? We looked at audience scores across dozens of major franchises to answer the ultimate question: Do sequels ever match the original?
The short answer: Almost never. Across the major franchises below, sequels consistently score lower with audiences than the original film. The reasons are predictable — the novelty is gone, the plot is usually a rehash, and the stakes feel artificially inflated.
But the data reveals something more specific: the longer a franchise runs, the steeper the decline. A second film might hold steady. By the fourth or fifth installment, audiences are checking out. Here is the franchise-by-franchise breakdown.
Jaws — The textbook case of sequel erosion.
Jaws (1975): 83% → Jaws 2 (1978): 74% → Jaws 3-D (1983): 63% → Jaws: The Revenge (1987): 60%
A 23-point freefall. The original is a masterclass in tension. By the fourth film, the shark follows the Brody family to the Bahamas for personal revenge. The audience erosion tracks perfectly with the escalating absurdity.
The Matrix — Lightning does not strike four times.
The Matrix (1999): 89% → The Matrix Reloaded (2003): 86% → The Matrix Revolutions (2003): 88% → The Matrix Resurrections (2021): 59%
The original trilogy actually held together reasonably well with audiences. But the 18-years-later legacy sequel dropped 30 points. Nostalgia has a ceiling.
Jurassic Park — Diminishing returns over three decades.
Jurassic Park (1993): 90% → The Lost World (1997): 83% → Jurassic Park III (2001): 82% → Jurassic World (2015): 82% → Fallen Kingdom (2018): 81% → Dominion (2022): 68% → Rebirth (2025): 63%
A 27-point drop from original to the latest entry. Jurassic World briefly stabilized the franchise by soft-rebooting it, but the subsequent entries bled audiences steadily.
Terminator — One legendary sequel, then a long slide.
The Terminator (1984): 91% → T2: Judgment Day (1991): 95% → Rise of the Machines (2003): 87% → Salvation (2009): 80% → Genisys (2015): 73% → Dark Fate (2019): 75%
T2 is one of the rare sequels that surpassed the original (more on that below). But everything after it has been a downward slide, with four different studios trying and failing to recapture the magic.
Transformers — The slow bleed of a blockbuster machine.
Transformers (2007): 80% → Revenge of the Fallen (2009): 76% → Dark of the Moon (2011): 79% → Age of Extinction (2014): 71% → The Last Knight (2017): 71% → Rise of the Beasts (2023): 74%
The audience dropped 9 points over five sequels. These films made billions at the box office regardless, but the audience satisfaction tells a different story.
Pirates of the Caribbean — Remarkably stable until it wasn’t.
Curse of the Black Pearl (2003): 91% → Dead Man’s Chest (2006): 90% → At World’s End (2007): 90% → On Stranger Tides (2011): 86% → Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017): 86%
Only a 5-point drop across five films. Captain Jack Sparrow’s charm carried audience goodwill further than almost any other franchise character. But the scores plateaued, never coming close to matching the original’s peak.
Fast & Furious — The franchise that ran out of road.
The Fast and the Furious (2001): 85% → 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003): 86% → Tokyo Drift (2006): 82% → Fast & Furious (2009): 83% → Fast Five (2011): 78% → Fast & Furious 6 (2013): 79% → Furious 7 (2015): 78% → Fate of the Furious (2017): 79% → F9 (2021): 74% → Fast X (2023): 70%
Ten films. A 15-point decline. The early entries actually held steady, but once the franchise went from street-racing movies to physics-defying action spectacles, the audience started to disengage.
Star Wars — The original trilogy holds, then the floor drops out.
Star Wars (1977): 89% → Empire Strikes Back (1980): 94% → Return of the Jedi (1983): 94% → The Phantom Menace (1999): 85% → Attack of the Clones (2002): 87% → Revenge of the Sith (2005): 92% → The Force Awakens (2015): 78% → The Last Jedi (2017): 68% → Rise of Skywalker (2019): 69%
The original trilogy actually improved with each entry. The prequels held surprisingly well. But the sequel trilogy saw a 21-point collapse from The Force Awakens to its nadir with The Last Jedi, one of the most audience-divisive blockbusters ever made.
However, there is a very specific type of sequel that does beat the original. We call it the “Universe Expander.”
When a sequel abandons the exact plot structure of the first movie and instead focuses on expanding the mythology and deepening the characters, audiences reward it. The data proves this is not just a theory — these sequels measurably outperformed their originals.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) — 95% vs. the original’s 91% (+4)
James Cameron turned a low-budget horror-thriller into a massive sci-fi action epic. The villain became the hero, the scope went global, and the stakes became existential. The genre shift from slasher to blockbuster is the textbook Universe Expander move.
The Empire Strikes Back (1980) — 94% vs. the original’s 89% (+5)
The original Star Wars was a self-contained adventure. Empire deepened the mythology, darkened the tone, and ended on a cliffhanger that changed what audiences expected from franchise filmmaking. It is the highest-rated entry in the entire saga.
The Dark Knight (2008) — 92% vs. Batman Begins’ 82% (+10)
Christopher Nolan shifted from an origin story to a crime epic. Heath Ledger’s Joker elevated the material from superhero movie to something that felt like a Michael Mann thriller. A 10-point jump over the original is nearly unheard of for sequels.
Aliens (1986) — 90% vs. Alien’s 87% (+3)
Ridley Scott made a haunted-house horror film. James Cameron made a military action movie with the same creature. The genre shift gave audiences something entirely new while expanding the world. The sequel scored 3 points higher with 10,600+ votes.
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) — 86% vs. Spider-Man’s 80% (+6)
The original Raimi Spider-Man launched the modern superhero era at 80%. Twenty years and two reboots later, No Way Home pulled characters from all three Spider-Man timelines into a single story. The multiverse concept gave the franchise its highest audience score ever.
Toy Story 2 (1999) — 92% vs. Toy Story’s 85% (+7)
The original Toy Story was groundbreaking animation. The sequel added emotional depth (Jessie’s abandonment story), higher stakes, and a villain who was genuinely sympathetic. It jumped 7 points and became the highest-rated entry in the franchise.
The pattern in the data is clear. When a studio just wants to cash in on a recognizable property, the audience score drops — sometimes gradually, sometimes off a cliff. But when a director uses the sequel as an excuse to tell a fundamentally different story in the same world, audiences respond.
Every “Universe Expander” example above shares the same trait: the sequel changed genres. Alien to Aliens went from horror to action. The Terminator to T2 went from slasher to blockbuster. Batman Begins to The Dark Knight went from origin story to crime thriller. The genre shift forces the filmmaker to rethink everything, and that creative pressure produces better results.
The franchises that decline the fastest — Jaws, Transformers, late-era Fast & Furious — are the ones that try to make the same movie again, just bigger. The audience data says that “bigger” is not the same as “better.”
Find the originals worth watching
Browse the Best Movies by Audience Score →