15 Highest Grossing Movies Of The Decade: Ranked Worst To Best

3. Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Worldwide Box Office: $2.053 billion

All-Time Ranking: #3

2010s Ranking: #1

The highest grossing movie of the decade so far, The Force Awakens, if anything, performed below expectations, with minimal appeal in China and a heavy opening weekend weighting meaning it reached the phenomenal landmark of $2 billion, but still fell short of James Cameron behemoths Avatar and Titanic.

Of course, raw box office success wasn't the only measure of Episode VII. A cynic would point out how ticket sales are insignificant next to all of the high-end merchandise available, but even bigger than that is how the film restarted Star Wars as an ongoing franchise. Being simply good would have been enough to wash away the lingering disappointment of the prequels, but what J.J. Abrams managed to do was not only rectify the mistakes of the past, but also open up the future.

To whit: the film spends a full forty minutes focused entirely on the new characters before reintroducing any of the classic cast, ensuring that when Han Solo bursts into the Millennium Falcon we're as much meeting him for the first time with Rey as we are reuniting with him ourselves. As such, the post-movie discussion has been dominated by theories and speculation for what Episodes VIII and IX hold, rather than simply getting lost in nostalgia. You can be sure that, by the end of the decade, there'll be more Star Wars movies in the top fifteen.