10 Movie Franchises That Started Great And Then Fell Off A Cliff

10. Middle-Earth

The Lord of the Rings is without a doubt one of the greatest movie trilogies ever made, and if it had been left alone then it could hold a legitimate claim to being named the best multi-film series in history, but then The Hobbit came along and showed that not even a legendary franchise is immune to the law of diminishing returns.

Peter Jackson clearly and very evidently poured his heart and soul into Lord of the Rings, but you get the feeling that he made The Hobbit because he had to after Guillermo del Toro walked away, matters that weren't helped by unnecessarily stretching the slim source novel into almost eight hours of cinema.

Despite a decade of technological advancement, the visual effects were ten times worse than the first trilogy and made suspension of disbelief a whole lot trickier, and despite the best efforts of the cast there were very few redeeming features of The Hobbit, which even at its best moments couldn't come anywhere close to recapturing the magic of The Lord of the Rings.