Top 10 Summer 2026 Blockbuster Movies You Can't Miss

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opens July 17, 2026, distributed by Universal Pictures in IMAX, and it may be the most technically audacious film ever made. With a $250 million production budget — the largest of Nolan's career — the film adapts Homer's ancient Greek epic into a widescreen event movie shot entirely on IMAX 70mm film cameras, using a newly developed, lighter, quieter version of the camera built specifically for this production. Over two million feet of IMAX 70mm film stock was consumed during a shoot that spanned seven countries: Morocco, Greece, Italy, Scotland, Iceland, Western Sahara, and Malta. Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, the legendary king of Ithaca, navigating the treacherous sea journey home after ten years fighting the Trojan War. Anne Hathaway plays Penelope, his faithful wife. The ensemble cast — which reads like a comprehensive list of every A-list actor working today — includes Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong'o, Zendaya, and Charlize Theron in roles that include Telemachus, Antinous, Athena, Circe, and Calypso respectively. The film chronicles Odysseus's encounters with the Cyclops Polyphemus, the sirens, the nymph Calypso, and the land of the dead — mythology brought to life at a scale and with a level of craft that Nolan's track record suggests will be genuinely unprecedented. Nolan's previous film, Oppenheimer, grossed over $950 million worldwide and won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture. The Odyssey arrives with that momentum and raises the technical stakes even higher. For the theatrical IMAX experience alone, this is the event film of summer 2026.

Toy Story 5, opening June 19, 2026, is Pixar's most thematically urgent film in years. Directed by Andrew Stanton — the same filmmaker behind Finding Nemo, WALL-E, and Toy Story 2 — and co-directed by Kenna Harris, the film confronts the existential crisis at the heart of contemporary childhood: what happens to toys in a world where children increasingly prefer screens? Bonnie, now around eight years old, has become obsessed with Lilypad, a frog-shaped smart tablet voiced by Greta Lee. Jessie, now the de facto leader of Bonnie's room with Buzz as her second-in-command, watches in alarm as the toys lose relevance one by one. The film reunites virtually the entire original voice cast: Tom Hanks as Woody (in what he has described as a cameo rather than a lead role, given the narrative shift), Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear, Joan Cusack as Jessie, Annie Potts as Bo Peep, and Tony Hale as Forky. New additions include Conan O'Brien, Craig Robinson, Bad Bunny, Ernie Hudson, and Alan Cumming. The runtime is a brisk 1 hour 42 minutes — tight by Pixar standards, which suggests Stanton has avoided the franchise bloat that weakened Toy Story 4. Box office tracking has the film at $130 to $160 million for its domestic opening weekend, with the midpoint projection of $150 million representing a new franchise record, topping Toy Story 4's $120.9 million opening in 2019. The film is budgeted at over $200 million. If the tracking holds, Toy Story 5 will be the biggest opening weekend of 2026 to date when it launches, surpassing the Super Mario Galaxy Movie's $131.7 million debut. For families, this is the summer's essential theatrical event.

Disclosure Day, opening June 12, 2026, marks Steven Spielberg's return to the science fiction genre that has defined his greatest work — E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, War of the Worlds — and his first theatrical release since The Fabelmans in 2022. At 78 years old, Spielberg has delivered what early screeners and journalists are calling his best film in at least twenty years. Emily Blunt stars as a Kansas City meteorologist who inexplicably begins speaking an unknown alien language, triggering a government response and setting in motion a race against time by a whistleblower determined to bring about the titular event: the public acknowledgment of extraterrestrial contact. Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo, and Wyatt Russell round out the ensemble. John Williams has composed the score — his thirtieth collaboration with Spielberg — and by all accounts it is among his finest late-career work. The film carries a $115 million budget and runs 2 hours 25 minutes. It is rated PG-13. Early first reactions from Variety called it "top tier Spielberg, as exhilarating as Raiders but with the emotional texture and increased ambition of his post-9/11 work." One critic described it as an X-Files mystery laced with winks at every film in Spielberg's canon. Box office projections sit at $45 to $59 million for the domestic opening weekend — modest by summer standards but consistent with Spielberg's recent theatrical performance with prestige films. For cinephiles, this is the most personally meaningful film of the summer.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu opened May 22, 2026, at TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, becoming the first Star Wars theatrical release since J.J. Abrams' The Rise of Skywalker in December 2019. Directed by Jon Favreau — who co-wrote the film with Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor — the film stars Pedro Pascal as Din Djarin, the bounty hunter turned adoptive father, alongside Jeremy Allen White and Sigourney Weaver in key supporting roles. Ludwig Göransson returns to compose the score, reprising his Emmy-winning work from the Disney+ series. The film carries a $165 million production budget, the cheapest of any Disney-era Star Wars theatrical release, and earned $98 million domestically over its opening weekend for a $167 million global debut. By the close of its theatrical run, the film had accumulated $181.4 million worldwide. Critics gave it a 64 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, with the consensus noting that it functions more like an extended premium television episode than a true cinematic event — an observation that is either a criticism or a compliment depending on how much you love the original series. Audiences were considerably warmer: the film earned an 88 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and CinemaScore results suggested strong legs with families. For Star Wars fans, this film represents the franchise's best opportunity to recapture the theatrical momentum it lost after The Rise of Skywalker. For casual audiences, it is a handsomely produced, emotionally satisfying adventure that requires minimal prior investment to enjoy — Grogu's expressive face does most of the heavy lifting.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is the animated sequel to 2023's The Super Mario Bros. Movie, one of the most profitable video game adaptations in cinema history. Released in April 2026 by Illumination and Nintendo in partnership with Universal Pictures, the film has emerged as the year's runaway box office leader through late May 2026, accumulating approximately $888 million worldwide and tracking toward the $1 billion milestone. Its domestic opening weekend of $131.7 million was the biggest of 2026 before Toy Story 5 opens in June, and its global launch of $373 million placed it among the all-time great animated opening weekends. The film takes Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Yoshi to outer space — specifically the galaxy-spanning adventure familiar to fans of the beloved Nintendo Wii game — with the same Saturday morning cartoon energy and videogame loyalty that made the first film a crowd-pleaser despite muted critical reception. The Illumination animation team has visibly leveled up their work for the sequel, with interstellar environments that give the animators room to demonstrate a scale impossible in the Mushroom Kingdom-centric original. The film scored second weekend gross of $69 million — a strong hold indicating excellent audience satisfaction and word-of-mouth. For families, it is the perfect summer outing: kinetic, colorful, funny, and packed with Nintendo fan service that rewards anyone who has spent time with the games. Critics have been warmer than they were on the first film, and the audience score reflects the kind of pure-joy response that animated sequels rarely achieve.

Minions & Monsters opens July 1, 2026, arriving at the perfect midpoint of the summer season from Illumination and Universal Pictures. The third installment in the Minions prequel series and the seventh film overall in the Despicable Me franchise, it takes the iconic yellow creatures approximately 40 years back in time from the events of 2015's Minions to the golden age of Hollywood monster movies — think Universal's classic creature features, Boris Karloff, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon era — and drops them into the chaos of a production studio where they attempt to make a monster movie of their own. The voice cast brings serious dramatic talent into the Minions universe: Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, and Zoey Deutch all join Pierre Coffin, who voices the Minions with his signature incomprehensible Minionese. The premise gives Illumination's animation team a visually rich period setting — the studio back lots, the black-and-white film stock aesthetic rendered in vivid color, the monster suit culture of 1930s Hollywood — and a comedic premise perfectly suited to the Minions' penchant for chaotic slapstick. The Despicable Me and Minions franchise has accumulated over $5.6 billion globally across six films, making it one of the most consistent animated box office performers in cinema history. Minions & Monsters arrives with significant commercial momentum and a premise that children find irresistible and adults can genuinely enjoy. The film was originally slated for a 2027 release before being moved up to replace Shrek 5's date.

Mortal Kombat II opened May 8, 2026, delivering the biggest Rotten Tomatoes score in the history of live-action Mortal Kombat adaptations. Directed by Simon McQuoid, who helmed the 2021 original, the sequel earns a 68 percent critic score — modest in absolute terms but a significant franchise record — and a stunning 90 percent audience score from over 500 verified Rotten Tomatoes ratings. The film opened to $40 million domestically and $63 million globally during its debut weekend, numbers that reviewers described as solid for an R-rated action property in a competitive spring frame. The returning ensemble — Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion, Joe Taslim as Sub-Zero, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden, Mehcad Brooks as Jax, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Chin Han as Shang Tsung, and Sanada also as Hanzo Hasashi — is joined by Karl Urban as the fan-favorite Johnny Cage, a character conspicuously absent from the first film's canonical storyline. Lewis Tan, Max Huang, and Josh Lawson all return as Cole Young, Kung Lao, and Kano respectively. Critics noted that the sequel fully upgrades its predecessor's action choreography and fan service while continuing to fall short in story and narrative stakes. For video game franchise fans, those priorities are entirely correct, and the 90 percent audience score confirms that Mortal Kombat II knows exactly who it is for and delivers accordingly. The film's red-band trailer notched record views before release, suggesting a passionate and pre-sold fanbase that the sequel has now fully satisfied.

Project Hail Mary, released March 20, 2026, by Amazon MGM Studios, technically opened before the traditional summer season but has earned its place on this list by virtue of its ongoing cultural presence and the scale of its commercial performance, which has made it the most significant original science fiction film of 2026. Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) from a Drew Goddard screenplay based on Andy Weir's 2021 novel, the film stars Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, an astronaut who wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of his mission, then gradually pieces together that he is Earth's last hope against an extinction-level solar dimming event. The film debuted to $80.6 million domestic and $60.4 million overseas for a $141 million global opening — Amazon MGM Studios' biggest opening ever. By late May 2026, it has surpassed $639 million worldwide and crossed $300 million domestically, an extraordinary hold for an original science fiction film with no pre-existing franchise. Its Rotten Tomatoes score sits at 94 percent from over 407 critics, with the consensus calling it "a near-miraculous fusion of smarts and heart" carried by Gosling at his most winning. The film's secret weapon is its alien character, Rocky — a spider-like extraterrestrial with whom Ryland develops an unlikely friendship across the language barrier of interstellar space. This relationship has been cited by virtually every reviewer as the emotional engine that elevates the film from technically impressive to genuinely unforgettable. Project Hail Mary is the summer's best kept secret for viewers who prefer their blockbusters with a brain.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, released May 23, 2025, by Paramount Pictures, anchors the tail of this list as both the most expensive film in the franchise's history and the one that definitively closes the book on Tom Cruise's portrayal of Ethan Hunt. Though technically a 2025 release rather than a 2026 summer entry, it is included here because its Memorial Day 2025 launch served as the pre-season opening of a multi-month blockbuster conversation that directly shaped audience expectations for summer 2026, and because Cruise himself explicitly confirmed at the New York premiere that this is his final entry in the franchise. With a budget estimated at $300 to $400 million — inflated by years of pandemic production delays — The Final Reckoning is one of the most expensive films ever produced. Its ensemble includes Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, Hayley Atwell as Grace, Simon Pegg as Benji, Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett as the President of the United States, Pom Klementieff as Paris, and Esai Morales as the recurring villain Gabriel. The film runs 2 hours 49 minutes — just shy of three hours — and was screened out of competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival before its wide release. It earned 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 427 critics, with an 89 percent audience score. Its domestic opening of $64 million over the Memorial Day four-day period gave it the franchise's best opening ever, but its worldwide total of $598.8 million was considered a disappointment against its colossal budget. Critics praised its action sequences and sentimental farewell energy while noting that its first act exposition drags. For fans of the franchise, it is an essential, emotionally charged finale.

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opens July 17, 2026, distributed by Universal Pictures in IMAX, and it may be the most technically audacious film ever made. With a $250 million production budget — the largest of Nolan's career — the film adapts Homer's ancient Greek epic into a widescreen event movie shot entirely on IMAX 70mm film cameras, using a newly developed, lighter, quieter version of the camera built specifically for this production. Over two million feet of IMAX 70mm film stock was consumed during a shoot that spanned seven countries: Morocco, Greece, Italy, Scotland, Iceland, Western Sahara, and Malta. Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, the legendary king of Ithaca, navigating the treacherous sea journey home after ten years fighting the Trojan War. Anne Hathaway plays Penelope, his faithful wife. The ensemble cast — which reads like a comprehensive list of every A-list actor working today — includes Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong'o, Zendaya, and Charlize Theron in roles that include Telemachus, Antinous, Athena, Circe, and Calypso respectively. The film chronicles Odysseus's encounters with the Cyclops Polyphemus, the sirens, the nymph Calypso, and the land of the dead — mythology brought to life at a scale and with a level of craft that Nolan's track record suggests will be genuinely unprecedented. Nolan's previous film, Oppenheimer, grossed over $950 million worldwide and won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture. The Odyssey arrives with that momentum and raises the technical stakes even higher. For the theatrical IMAX experience alone, this is the event film of summer 2026.

Toy Story 5, opening June 19, 2026, is Pixar's most thematically urgent film in years. Directed by Andrew Stanton — the same filmmaker behind Finding Nemo, WALL-E, and Toy Story 2 — and co-directed by Kenna Harris, the film confronts the existential crisis at the heart of contemporary childhood: what happens to toys in a world where children increasingly prefer screens? Bonnie, now around eight years old, has become obsessed with Lilypad, a frog-shaped smart tablet voiced by Greta Lee. Jessie, now the de facto leader of Bonnie's room with Buzz as her second-in-command, watches in alarm as the toys lose relevance one by one. The film reunites virtually the entire original voice cast: Tom Hanks as Woody (in what he has described as a cameo rather than a lead role, given the narrative shift), Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear, Joan Cusack as Jessie, Annie Potts as Bo Peep, and Tony Hale as Forky. New additions include Conan O'Brien, Craig Robinson, Bad Bunny, Ernie Hudson, and Alan Cumming. The runtime is a brisk 1 hour 42 minutes — tight by Pixar standards, which suggests Stanton has avoided the franchise bloat that weakened Toy Story 4. Box office tracking has the film at $130 to $160 million for its domestic opening weekend, with the midpoint projection of $150 million representing a new franchise record, topping Toy Story 4's $120.9 million opening in 2019. The film is budgeted at over $200 million. If the tracking holds, Toy Story 5 will be the biggest opening weekend of 2026 to date when it launches, surpassing the Super Mario Galaxy Movie's $131.7 million debut. For families, this is the summer's essential theatrical event.

Disclosure Day, opening June 12, 2026, marks Steven Spielberg's return to the science fiction genre that has defined his greatest work — E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, War of the Worlds — and his first theatrical release since The Fabelmans in 2022. At 78 years old, Spielberg has delivered what early screeners and journalists are calling his best film in at least twenty years. Emily Blunt stars as a Kansas City meteorologist who inexplicably begins speaking an unknown alien language, triggering a government response and setting in motion a race against time by a whistleblower determined to bring about the titular event: the public acknowledgment of extraterrestrial contact. Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo, and Wyatt Russell round out the ensemble. John Williams has composed the score — his thirtieth collaboration with Spielberg — and by all accounts it is among his finest late-career work. The film carries a $115 million budget and runs 2 hours 25 minutes. It is rated PG-13. Early first reactions from Variety called it "top tier Spielberg, as exhilarating as Raiders but with the emotional texture and increased ambition of his post-9/11 work." One critic described it as an X-Files mystery laced with winks at every film in Spielberg's canon. Box office projections sit at $45 to $59 million for the domestic opening weekend — modest by summer standards but consistent with Spielberg's recent theatrical performance with prestige films. For cinephiles, this is the most personally meaningful film of the summer.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu opened May 22, 2026, at TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, becoming the first Star Wars theatrical release since J.J. Abrams' The Rise of Skywalker in December 2019. Directed by Jon Favreau — who co-wrote the film with Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor — the film stars Pedro Pascal as Din Djarin, the bounty hunter turned adoptive father, alongside Jeremy Allen White and Sigourney Weaver in key supporting roles. Ludwig Göransson returns to compose the score, reprising his Emmy-winning work from the Disney+ series. The film carries a $165 million production budget, the cheapest of any Disney-era Star Wars theatrical release, and earned $98 million domestically over its opening weekend for a $167 million global debut. By the close of its theatrical run, the film had accumulated $181.4 million worldwide. Critics gave it a 64 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, with the consensus noting that it functions more like an extended premium television episode than a true cinematic event — an observation that is either a criticism or a compliment depending on how much you love the original series. Audiences were considerably warmer: the film earned an 88 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and CinemaScore results suggested strong legs with families. For Star Wars fans, this film represents the franchise's best opportunity to recapture the theatrical momentum it lost after The Rise of Skywalker. For casual audiences, it is a handsomely produced, emotionally satisfying adventure that requires minimal prior investment to enjoy — Grogu's expressive face does most of the heavy lifting.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is the animated sequel to 2023's The Super Mario Bros. Movie, one of the most profitable video game adaptations in cinema history. Released in April 2026 by Illumination and Nintendo in partnership with Universal Pictures, the film has emerged as the year's runaway box office leader through late May 2026, accumulating approximately $888 million worldwide and tracking toward the $1 billion milestone. Its domestic opening weekend of $131.7 million was the biggest of 2026 before Toy Story 5 opens in June, and its global launch of $373 million placed it among the all-time great animated opening weekends. The film takes Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Yoshi to outer space — specifically the galaxy-spanning adventure familiar to fans of the beloved Nintendo Wii game — with the same Saturday morning cartoon energy and videogame loyalty that made the first film a crowd-pleaser despite muted critical reception. The Illumination animation team has visibly leveled up their work for the sequel, with interstellar environments that give the animators room to demonstrate a scale impossible in the Mushroom Kingdom-centric original. The film scored second weekend gross of $69 million — a strong hold indicating excellent audience satisfaction and word-of-mouth. For families, it is the perfect summer outing: kinetic, colorful, funny, and packed with Nintendo fan service that rewards anyone who has spent time with the games. Critics have been warmer than they were on the first film, and the audience score reflects the kind of pure-joy response that animated sequels rarely achieve.

Minions & Monsters opens July 1, 2026, arriving at the perfect midpoint of the summer season from Illumination and Universal Pictures. The third installment in the Minions prequel series and the seventh film overall in the Despicable Me franchise, it takes the iconic yellow creatures approximately 40 years back in time from the events of 2015's Minions to the golden age of Hollywood monster movies — think Universal's classic creature features, Boris Karloff, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon era — and drops them into the chaos of a production studio where they attempt to make a monster movie of their own. The voice cast brings serious dramatic talent into the Minions universe: Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, and Zoey Deutch all join Pierre Coffin, who voices the Minions with his signature incomprehensible Minionese. The premise gives Illumination's animation team a visually rich period setting — the studio back lots, the black-and-white film stock aesthetic rendered in vivid color, the monster suit culture of 1930s Hollywood — and a comedic premise perfectly suited to the Minions' penchant for chaotic slapstick. The Despicable Me and Minions franchise has accumulated over $5.6 billion globally across six films, making it one of the most consistent animated box office performers in cinema history. Minions & Monsters arrives with significant commercial momentum and a premise that children find irresistible and adults can genuinely enjoy. The film was originally slated for a 2027 release before being moved up to replace Shrek 5's date.

Mortal Kombat II opened May 8, 2026, delivering the biggest Rotten Tomatoes score in the history of live-action Mortal Kombat adaptations. Directed by Simon McQuoid, who helmed the 2021 original, the sequel earns a 68 percent critic score — modest in absolute terms but a significant franchise record — and a stunning 90 percent audience score from over 500 verified Rotten Tomatoes ratings. The film opened to $40 million domestically and $63 million globally during its debut weekend, numbers that reviewers described as solid for an R-rated action property in a competitive spring frame. The returning ensemble — Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion, Joe Taslim as Sub-Zero, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden, Mehcad Brooks as Jax, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Chin Han as Shang Tsung, and Sanada also as Hanzo Hasashi — is joined by Karl Urban as the fan-favorite Johnny Cage, a character conspicuously absent from the first film's canonical storyline. Lewis Tan, Max Huang, and Josh Lawson all return as Cole Young, Kung Lao, and Kano respectively. Critics noted that the sequel fully upgrades its predecessor's action choreography and fan service while continuing to fall short in story and narrative stakes. For video game franchise fans, those priorities are entirely correct, and the 90 percent audience score confirms that Mortal Kombat II knows exactly who it is for and delivers accordingly. The film's red-band trailer notched record views before release, suggesting a passionate and pre-sold fanbase that the sequel has now fully satisfied.

Project Hail Mary, released March 20, 2026, by Amazon MGM Studios, technically opened before the traditional summer season but has earned its place on this list by virtue of its ongoing cultural presence and the scale of its commercial performance, which has made it the most significant original science fiction film of 2026. Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) from a Drew Goddard screenplay based on Andy Weir's 2021 novel, the film stars Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, an astronaut who wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of his mission, then gradually pieces together that he is Earth's last hope against an extinction-level solar dimming event. The film debuted to $80.6 million domestic and $60.4 million overseas for a $141 million global opening — Amazon MGM Studios' biggest opening ever. By late May 2026, it has surpassed $639 million worldwide and crossed $300 million domestically, an extraordinary hold for an original science fiction film with no pre-existing franchise. Its Rotten Tomatoes score sits at 94 percent from over 407 critics, with the consensus calling it "a near-miraculous fusion of smarts and heart" carried by Gosling at his most winning. The film's secret weapon is its alien character, Rocky — a spider-like extraterrestrial with whom Ryland develops an unlikely friendship across the language barrier of interstellar space. This relationship has been cited by virtually every reviewer as the emotional engine that elevates the film from technically impressive to genuinely unforgettable. Project Hail Mary is the summer's best kept secret for viewers who prefer their blockbusters with a brain.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, released May 23, 2025, by Paramount Pictures, anchors the tail of this list as both the most expensive film in the franchise's history and the one that definitively closes the book on Tom Cruise's portrayal of Ethan Hunt. Though technically a 2025 release rather than a 2026 summer entry, it is included here because its Memorial Day 2025 launch served as the pre-season opening of a multi-month blockbuster conversation that directly shaped audience expectations for summer 2026, and because Cruise himself explicitly confirmed at the New York premiere that this is his final entry in the franchise. With a budget estimated at $300 to $400 million — inflated by years of pandemic production delays — The Final Reckoning is one of the most expensive films ever produced. Its ensemble includes Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, Hayley Atwell as Grace, Simon Pegg as Benji, Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett as the President of the United States, Pom Klementieff as Paris, and Esai Morales as the recurring villain Gabriel. The film runs 2 hours 49 minutes — just shy of three hours — and was screened out of competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival before its wide release. It earned 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 427 critics, with an 89 percent audience score. Its domestic opening of $64 million over the Memorial Day four-day period gave it the franchise's best opening ever, but its worldwide total of $598.8 million was considered a disappointment against its colossal budget. Critics praised its action sequences and sentimental farewell energy while noting that its first act exposition drags. For fans of the franchise, it is an essential, emotionally charged finale.