10 Movie Franchises That Set The Bar Too High For Themselves

With nine Skywalker saga movies, a couple of feature spin-offs and a vast array of television shows, comics, games and novels, George Lucas' brainchild Star Wars has gone on to become one of the most cherished collection of stories in all of human history.

Yet, there's an argument to be made that the franchise actually peaked back 1980.

A New Hope inspired a whole generation to dream a little bigger and was unlike anything anyone had ever seen when the space opera first landed back in 1977.

This epic feat of cinema was then followed by arguably the greatest sequel ever in The Empire Strikes Back (1980). This darker, richer follow up left us on the mother of all cliff hangers and gifted us with one of the most iconic lines in all of cinema.

1983's Return of the Jedi then successfully concluded the initial trilogy, but it wasn't quite as adored as the aforementioned Empire or even A New Hope.

Despite Jedi not being quite on par with its fellow original trilogy entries, it looked like a masterpiece when compared with the soulless The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005) prequels which later followed. The Force Awakens (2015) threatened to restore some of the former joy and heart to the series, but The Last Jedi (2017) and Rise of Skywalker (2019) all but murdered any remaining hope of an original trilogy standard Star Wars film becoming a reality.

It appears that Disney have now realised there's no sense in constantly trying to recapture the Skywalker saga's untouchable early spirit (and acclaim) and have therefore shifted their focus towards new stories away from the group of heroes we've grown to know (and gotten a little tired of, in all honesty).