The movies in the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts franchise are almost all Fresh in Rotten Tomatoes, but how do the scores compare for each movie?
There were eight Harry Potter movies between 2001 and 2011, and now Wizarding World is back with the Fantastic Beasts movies, here’s how they all rank in Rotten Tomatoes. The Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone book was published in 1997 and it wasn’t long before the movie adaptation came along, with each movie seeing mostly positive reviews.
While there was a four and a half year gap between the book being published and the release of the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone movie, the gap had shrunk to three-and-a-half years between the publishing of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book and the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 movie. Even though the movies don’t focus on Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), the franchise is being continued with the Fantastic Beasts prequels, which are loosely inspired by a guide book written in the style of an in-universe textbook written by Newt Scamander (with J.K. Rowling actually writing the real-world version).
Ranking all nine movies in order of Rotten Tomatoes score, the results are:
- 1- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 – 96%
- 2- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – 90%
- 3- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – 90%
- 4- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – 84%
- 5- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – 82%
- 6- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – 81%
- 7- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – 78%
- 8- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 – 77%
- 9- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – 74%
- 10- Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald – 36%
While there’s quite a disparity between the top and bottom-ranked Harry Potter movies, the majority of the franchise actually scores very well, coming in with a 79 percent average across the board, split between an 85 percent average for the original eight Harry Potter movies versus 55 percent for the two Fantastic Beasts movies. Interestingly, in the Harry Potter movies, only three actually scored higher than the average, while the average including the Fantastics Beasts movies sees a more equal split with four movies coming in below average and the other six scoring above average.
Despite the far lower average Rotten Tomatoes scores for the Fantastic Beasts films (and both of them falling at the bottom of the overall ranking), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them doesn’t score that much lower than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow: Part 1, it’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald coming in at 36 percent (and the only movie in the whole franchise without a “Fresh” score). Like most franchises, the average score for Rotten Tomatoes’ “Top Critics” is a little lower than the Tomatometer score for “All Critics,” however, in one interesting twist, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 doesn’t merely have a higher Top Critic score, but actually scored a perfect 100 percent.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is set to release in April 2022, with two more Fantastic Beasts movies after that, but with constant talk of a revival for Harry, Ron, and Hermione as adults such as an adaptation of the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play and plenty of other opportunities in the Wizarding world, the live-action world of Harry Potter isn’t likely to go away any time soon.
- Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)Release date: Apr 15, 2022
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