The Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King was found to be the king of the franchise in a new survey measuring ratings and revenue.
Sometimes sequels can be better than the original movies, while sometimes they fail to live up to their predecessors, and separating franchises into these two categories was the subject of a new study by Uswitch. The highly successful Lord of the Rings franchise was one of the 20 highest grossing franchises in history covered by the site, and one of the many to have a sequel score higher in its system than the original.
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The study's results came from combining a film's ratings on IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic for an average score out of 100 (IMDb's scores out of ten converted to be out of 100 to match, e.g. 6.8 becomes 68/100), along with the box office revenue for the film, and the "profitability score," calculated by dividing the box office takings by the budget. Box office revenue is often higher for later movies in franchises, as a series acquires more fans, but this scoring system was designed to account for that by weighting it with audience and critical reception.
The highest scoring Lord of the Rings movie, with an impressive 9.08, was the third film in the franchise and final part of the original trilogy, The Return of the King. Its score before adjustment for box office and profitability was an even more impressive 92.33 out of 100. The movie, which was released in 2003, grossed over $1.1 billion worldwide and was the second-highest grossing film ever at the time. It was also very well received by critics, and was nominated for and won 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture.
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The scores between The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers were very close, but the first of the series, Fellowship, just edged out Towers with a score of 8.59 to 8.32. The two movies had even closer scores before adjustment for box office and budget, with Towers narrowly winning with 90.67 over Fellowship's score of 90.00.
The three Hobbit movies were also analyzed as part of the franchise, with all three scoring lower than all three original films. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was the high scorer, with 5.48, while An Unexpected Journey took second at 5.09, and the lowest score of the franchise overall went to final installment The Battle of Five Armies, with 4.28. All three scores were higher before their budget-to-box-office ratio brought them down, with critical scores of 72.69 (Smaug), 66.67 (Journey) and 64.00 (Five Armies).
Source: Uswitch