Top 10 Movie Franchises That Got Better With Each Sequel

Hollywood's dirty secret is that most sequels are worse than the original. But a rare few franchises defy the gravity of diminishing returns — each installment raising the stakes, deepening the characters, and proving that the story was not told in full the first time. These are not franchises that had one great sequel (Godfather Part II, Aliens); these are franchises where the trajectory went consistently upward across multiple films. The sequel skeptics hate them because they prove sequels can be art.