The Wizarding World is back with the latest film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, and it's the latest follow-up to the eight original Harry Potter movies that came out in 2001 through 2011 – here's how they all rank on 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 film seeing mostly positive reviews. The Fantastic Beasts movies, however, haven't performed quite as well at the box office. The Harry Potter movies ranked relatively high on Rotten Tomatoes, with great reviews and the numbers never dipping below 75%. Outside of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the FB movies haven't been quite so lucky.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore holds a decent audience score on Rotton Tomatoes, however, critics weren't as kind. Nonetheless, it still performed somewhat better than The Crimes of GrindelwaldHarry Potter is a completely different story in terms of both scores and movie reviews. The Fantastic Beasts movies are loosely inspired by a guidebook written in the style of an in-universe textbook penned by Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) (with J.K. Rowling actually writing the real-world version). The series follows Newt, No-Maj Jacob (Dan Fogler), and a young Dumbledore (Jude Law), as they try to take down the villainous wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp/Mads Mikkelsen) Unlike HP, the FB franchise doesn't have a literary basis, besides the short Hogwarts "textbook".

Related: How Much Did Fantastic Beasts 3 Cost To Make (& What Box Office It Needs)

This could be a reason why the Fantastic Beasts movies haven't performed as well. Along with breaking canon, J.K. Rowling packs the prequel series to the brim with extraneous information. Though Harry Potter had a lot of mythoi to work with, the films managed to include everything important, and maintain a certain digestibility for those who weren't familiar with the books.

Every Harry Potter Movie On Rotten Tomatoes, Ranked

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Ranking all nine Harry Potter movies (including Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledorein 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 Secrets of Dumbledore - 51%
  • 11- Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald - 36%

What Fantastic Beasts 3 Got Right That Fantastic Beasts 2 Didn’t

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One of the biggest victories of Fantastic Beasts 3 was recasting Johnny Depp's Grindelwald with Mads Mikkelsen. Critics agree that Mikkelsen should've been cast in the role right from the start, as he drops Depp's cartoonish facade for a subtler villain. It works well for the character, who mainly does his dirty work in the realm of manipulation. Another way that Fantastic Beasts 3 ranks better than its predecessor is through its characters. Other than Professor Lally Hicks, there aren't too many new faces in the movie, which works for the better. Audiences were used to Newt, Jacob, Tina, and Queenie come Fantastic Beasts 2, but the movie's story became convoluted with the introduction of Leta Lestrange and Yusuf Kama's strange subplots. Finally, an original Harry Potter screenwriter, Steve Kloves, was brought on to help pen the third movie. This definitely assisted in bringing back some of the magic from the originals, as J.K. hasn't proven to be the best screenwriter.

What The Next Fantastic Beasts Movie Needs To Do To Save The Franchise

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A lack is focus is the Fantastic Beasts series' main pitfall, and the same criticisms can be leveled at The Secrets of Dumbledore. Both Fantastic Beasts 2 and Fantastic Beasts 3 were lambasted on Rotten Tomatoes for including far too much exposition that inevitably leads to chaos. The strongest point of the Harry Potter series was the relationships formed between Harry and those around him. The FB franchise has little of these heartfelt moments and focuses more on expanding J.K.'s universe. Harry Potter set the stage for Fantastic Beasts, and the prequel series would do well to stop breaking canon and stick to what made the original franchise great. The future FB movies should find their focus in the relationships between the characters and stop introducing too much information into the, already heavy, exposition.

Related: Fantastic Beasts' New Documentary Will Make Harry Potter Better

It's unfortunate that the Fantastic Beasts series hasn't fared well critically. The average critics score between Fantastic Beasts 3 and the rest of the movies comes in at a low 53%, making the entire franchise certified rotten. While there's quite a disparity between the top and bottom-ranked Harry Potter movies, the majority of the franchise actually scored very well, coming in with a 79% average across the board, split between an 85% average for the original eight Harry Potter movies. Interestingly, in the Harry Potter movies, only three actually scored higher than the average. The average including the Fantastics Beasts movies sees a more equal split with five movies coming in below average and the other six scoring above average.

Despite poor reviews for the Fantastic Beasts movies (and the three 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 Hallows: Part 1. The major dud is Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, coming in at 36 percent. At least Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore ranked higher than the previous movie, and the audience score was also far better (54% and 83%, respectively). 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 notched up a perfect 100 percent.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore was released in April 2022, with two more Fantastic Beasts movies due after it (so long as Warner Bros. bankroll them after the weakest opening weekend of the franchise's history). However, 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, it seems the live-action universe of Harry Potter isn't going away anytime soon. Hopefully, future Fantastic Beasts movies can learn from their parent franchise and zero in on forming meaningful characters with interesting relationships.

Next: All Harry Potter & Fantastic Beasts Movies Ranked, Worst To Best