Every Major Cinematic Universe Ranked From Worst To Best

Hollywood loves nothing more than jumping on a successful bandwagon and in case you hadn't noticed, cinematic universes are all the rage these days.

Ever since Marvel Studios' game-changing business strategy set the studio on the path to eighteen consecutive box office hits and tens of billions of dollars at the box office, their rivals have been rushing to play catch-up with wildly varying degrees of success.

Of course, the concept of multiple characters and movies crossing over is hardly a new one and has existed for decades (because few things in the industry these days are genuinely new ideas), but only recently has it become Hollywood's preferred method of fast-tracking their way to financial gain.

Plenty of franchises have thrown their hat into the ring when it comes to building a shared mythology over the years, but very few of them are guaranteed to be successful. The Marvel Cinematic Universe may currently be the biggest game in town, but is it really the best ever?

Sprinting before it could even crawl, the Dark Universe is the textbook example of how not to build a shared universe. Instead of organically creating a wider mythology, Universal decided to recruit a roster of A-list talent, announce multiple projects and create a pre-credit ident for the entire endeavor before The Mummy had even hit theaters, which turned out to be a hugely misplaced show of confidence on the studio's part.

Packed with bland action beats and tedious levels of exposition, The Mummy was a colossal disappointment on every conceivable level. Star Tom Cruise allegedly strong-armed control of the production from Alex Kurtzman, who was woefully out of his depth directing a studio blockbuster. Once the vitriolic reviews and disappointing box office numbers were in, the Dark Universe had signed its own death warrant with its very first movie.

Kurtzman and producer Chris Morgan hastily jumped ship, Bill Condon's Bride of Frankenstein was canned just three months before shooting was scheduled to begin while the Johnny Depp-starring Invisible Man and Javier Bardem-led Frankenstein were quietly swept under the rug. For a studio that had already f*cked up launching a shared universe before with Dracula Untold, doing it twice in the space of just three years is unforgivable.