10 Great Movie Franchises That Lost It By The End

10. Die Hard

Die Hard is arguably the best action movie ever made, and to some the greatest Christmas movie ever made. It's strange to think it now, but it was a transgressive, transformative genre addition that flipped the idea of traditional heroism on its head, starring a comedy actor as a loveable, inventive rogue rather than a muscle-bound superman.

We loved it - and continue to - for its rough edges.

The sequels, on the other hand, are something of a different story. The first two are pretty solid and actually extend John McClane's story, but you can start to see the problems in With A Vengeance, because it was never actually intended to be a Die Hard movie in the first place. The studio saw an opportunity though and the franchise moved on.

From there, the fourth and fifth chapters go from bad to worse and ended up completely losing what made the first movie great. McClane is almost unrecognisable and it's just not pleasant to watch.