10 Action Movie Franchise That Totally Went Off The Rails

Some of Hollywood’s biggest action franchises have gone completely off the rails, getting crazier and harder to justify with each new movie. This has a major overlap with movie franchises that got too big for their own good, as studios contrive ways to keep the franchise going, or too many ongoing storylines too strange to exist are already included. It would have been best for the franchise and its legacy if it had ended after two or three movies.

Movie franchises have been ruined by an actor’s exit, or one particularly bad installment. On the other hand, a select few movie franchises came roaring back after a hiatus with their best movie yet, making the rest of Hollywood believe it can achieve the same thing with series that have been in decline. Yet the weirdest later storylines in some of the most popular action franchises ever demonstrate that this is often a pipe dream, and there is no returning the franchise to its former glory.

10 Terminator

Most Recent Movie: Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Terminator has repeated itself too many times, leading to some bizarre results grasping at originality.

The Terminator franchise has struggled with repeating its genre-defining time travel adventure many times, where a Terminator and a protector are both sent back in time to fight over the life of someone important to the future resistance. This has given rise to one of the messiest timelines in pop culture, although Terminator Zero managed to somewhat clarify things.

Counted among the best action movies ever made, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day are still easily the best Terminator movies, from before the franchise had worn out its main gimmick. However, aside from the timeline getting progressively worse, Terminator has sadly turned to poorly conceived action concepts to fuel the plots of later movies.

The later Terminator installments’ faults include the not-entirely-explained origins of Sam Worthington’s hybrid character, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator settling down with a family, and the notorious evil John Connor. Terminator has repeated itself too many times, leading to some bizarre results grasping at originality.

9 Jurassic World

Most Recent Movie: Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

The foundational theme of Jurassic Park, when it kicked things off, was a cautionary tale about redirecting the course of nature. This drove Steven Spielberg’s groundbreaking movie, which left some valid concepts to be developed into sequels. The dinosaurs’ breeding, despite human scientists’ efforts, is an interesting subplot with consequences to be explored. However, the original Jurassic Park trilogy does not escape strange, unnecessary moments, like a dream of a raptor talking to Dr. Alan Grant.

The Jurassic World movies abandon Jurassic Park‘s main theme, becoming more of an environmentalist and animal rights narrative. They demand that the audience accept things like raptor training, which *might* be possible. On the other hand, aspects like dinosaur auctions, cloned humans, an unrealistic amount of cooperation between humans and dinosaurs, and simply releasing dinosaurs into the wild of the mainland being treated like a good idea derail the movies.

8 Mission: Impossible

Most Recent Movie: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

The first Mission: Impossible movie starring Tom Cruise was a comparatively grounded action flick with classic vibes that established many espionage tropes looked upon with fondness. The stakes and action build with each passing movie, which jumps back and forth in the supposed timeline of Ethan Hunt’s life. However, if the audience watches each installment as a standalone and judges it on its own merits, it works. The upcoming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two is the obvious exception.

However, the problem with mounting stakes and each movie trying to outdo the last one is the feeling of the franchise reaching a breaking point. Cruise has become famed for doing his own stunts, and it seems like each new Mission: Impossible movie shows him doing something even more death-defying just for the sake of it. Meanwhile, the action becomes ludicrous in taste from the perspective of the audience, while the espionage plots are now just too complicated.

7 Fantastic Beasts

Most Recent Movie: Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore (2022)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them‘s job was so easy: stick to the Harry Potter canon, while showcasing more action and places with a stellar cast, and the movies would all be hits. Yet the franchise contradicted what fans knew about the books’ timeline, namely with the contested McGonagall Fantastic Beasts plot hole. Meanwhile, instead of sticking to a predictable but visually spectacular take on the war with Grindelwald, the series contrives awkward sub-conflicts.

The Wizarding World suddenly adhering to the word of a baby magical creature called a Qilin makes no sense; the lost Dumbledore plot is just as misaligned. No one knows how Yusuf managed to trick Grindelwald or how a Muggle is able to use a wand either. Fantastic Beasts 4 is looking increasingly unlikely in light of HBO’s Harry Potter reboot plans, which might be a relief if it had led to even more bad subplots.

6 Ice Age

Most Recent Movie: The Ice Age Adventures Of Buck Wild (2022)

As Ice Age becomes more arguably an action franchise, the weirder it gets. The first movie was a pleasantly off-beat take on anthropomorphic prehistoric animals, with a lot of walking and folksy music and only a few beats that could loosely be considered action. The Ice Age franchise then dives into the claim that essentially every major prehistoric event that drastically altered life on Earth happened within a few years, so it can be shown in this franchise.

A massive flood and dinosaurs are a little wacky, but at least these movies maintain the feel of an animal-centric setting with nothing too modern. However, Ice Age gets bolder with its claims about its comic side character causing continental drift and a collision course in minutes, and this somehow does not instantly kill all the main characters. As of the latest movies, it is just another cash-grab goofy talking animal franchise rather than the gritty and tragic but still family-friendly originals.

5 Pirates Of The Caribbean

Most Recent Movie: Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

The supernatural half of Pirates of the Caribbean doesn’t truly go off the rails until the most recent movie.

The first Pirates of the Caribbean executed a perfect blend of classic swashbuckling adventure and supernatural intrigue. The supernatural elements got bigger and wilder with the second and third movies, but at least feel like they have a place in the story. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End‘s depiction of Davy Jones’ Locker is weird, but this surrealistic adventure was promised as the main event.

The character arcs are handled with less finesse in each additional Pirates of the Caribbean movie. The biggest offender in this regard is the storyline of Captain Jack Sparrow himself, who worked better as a mascot rather than a grounded character. Revealing more elements of his backstory and giving him a serious love interest was to the detriment of his freewheeling persona.

However, the supernatural half of Pirates of the Caribbean doesn’t truly go off the rails until the most recent movie. A meaningless new ghost storyline and contradictions of established Davy Jones lore make it the most bogged-down movie yet.Margot Robbie’s Pirates of the Caribbean spinoff can only hope to do better.

4 Die Hard

Most Recent Movie: A Good Day To Die Hard (2013)

John McClane being an intrepid everyman is a major part of Die Hard‘s selling point. John and his wife Holly get caught up in a terrorist attack and do their best to protect everyone in the building, making the movie thrilling by invoking a sense of reality. It is plausible that they are real people who act this way under pressure. Alan Rickman’s brilliant performance as Hans Gruber is also an amazing element the franchise lost after the first movie.

Like many action franchises that go on for too long, Die Hard gets caught up in trying to outdo itself with the action. By the time of A Good Day to Die Hard, the franchise is another empty spectacle with a bunch of plot points that make no sense for John’s character. Flamethrowers, crashing vehicles, and intergenerational CIA missions are a long way off from one average police officer finding himself in unfortunate circumstances.

3 Indiana Jones

Most Recent Movie: Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny (2023)

The first three Indiana Jones movies share the trait that supernatural or technical marvels are isolated incidents. Indy goes on an adventure into a temple where there are some impressive but technically possible traps; he discovers an interesting artifact that has a specific, contained effect. None of them are the biggest cinematic spectacles, serving the movies’ semi-realistic aesthetic. This changed with the two most recent Indiana Jones movies.

First was the highly ridiculed claim that a refrigerator would offer the protection needed to survive a nuclear blast. The discovery of aliens and the sequence of their flying saucer taking off feel distinctly out of place in the established tone of the franchise. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is at least better than the last movie, but still takes things to bizarre places with literal time travel and Indy meeting Archimedes.

2 Fox’s X-Men

Most Recent Movie: Dark Phoenix (2019)

Although not as successful or acclaimed as Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy or the best MCU movies, Fox’s X-Men movies did relatively well in the early 2000s. Later on, they recast many of the characters with admittedly great actors for a prequel, moderately scrambling their canon with some contradictions. In their own right, X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past are good movies.

X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix are where things start to fall apart, just before Disney acquired the rights to the characters. The former repeats Magneto’s tragic backstory before launching into a strange investigation of Apocalypse’s powers, which is partially the fault of the source material.

After this, Fox tried and failed again to do a good adaptation of the famous Dark Phoenix storyline. The movie is weighed down by multiple laughable elements that were traded for a good character arc for Jean. Aliens invading this movie was the final straw before Disney bought out the franchise, enshrining its best standalones and ignoring the worst parts in the future.

1 Fast & Furious

Most Recent Movie: Fast X (2023)

The car stunts in the first Fast & Furious movie are relatively plausible when considering the most ridiculous scene in every Fast & Furious movie. The premise was essentially crime concerning people with a passion and affinity for cars and racing. Yet the Fast & Furious movies became notorious for their wild, completely ludicrous action sequences and stunts, which get crazier with each passing movie.

Audiences can take their pick of which one they think is the worst: the tower jump, the zombie cars, the space voyage, or Dom driving almost straight down into a dam (with his son in the car). Meanwhile, the movies become more entrenched in global espionage threats and faked deaths, leaving behind the realistic underground racing setting. When pondering movie franchises that went completely off the rails (or the highway), many moviegoers will immediately think of Fast & Furious.