8 Movie Franchises With Excellent Fifth Installments

While many movie series have struggled to go beyond a trilogy, there are a surprising number that have actually produced fantastic chapters with their fifth installments. Among some of the longest movie franchises of all time, most premises tend to run out of steam, which often causes them to produce weaker chapters as they go on.

That is not so for many others. Some of the best sequels in recent years have shown the immense potential in adding to a larger story with additional chapters. Sometimes this has resulted in spinning off the series or rebooting it to some extent. Other times, it has simply executed on the original premise in the best possible way.

Many other strong fifth installments did not make this list. The Empire Strikes Back may be the fifth chapter of the Skywalker Saga and one of the best sci-fi sequels of all time, but it was produced as the second film.

Others, like Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, may be considered the fifth chapter in the Monsterverse series, but it is also the 13th King Kong film and the 38th Godzilla film, making its classification a little messy.

Instead, these eight fantastic fifth installments delivered on the potential of the franchise, providing one of the strongest entries in the whole series. And while creating strong and memorable fifth chapters is certainly a Herculean task, it has actually been achieved a surprising number of times, as seen with these films.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

Mission: Impossible is a series that really hit a new stride with its fourth installment, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and built upon that momentum with fantastic subsequent chapters. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation immediately followed, delivering a powerful sequel with one of the best series villains in Solomon Lane.

Lane’s shadow would persist throughout the series, leaving a mark on Ethan and the franchise as a whole. The film also introduced Ilsa Faust, who would go on to be one of the series’ most beloved characters.

The Mission: Impossible series may have come to an end, at least for now, with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning on streaming, but the effectiveness of this fifth entry cannot be denied. It remains among the best Mission: Impossible movies.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Image courtesy of Everett Collection

This fantastic Mad Max prequel was a box office bomb upon release in 2024, but regardless, everyone who saw it has tended to agree that this fifth installment in the series is one of the best Mad Max movies ever made.

Growing off the story presented in Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa brought the focus to the title character, played here by Anya Taylor-Joy. Seeing her life presented in a thrilling origin, clashing against Chris Hemsworth’s fantastic villain Dementus, crafted an unforgettable post-apocalyptic action film like no other.

There was hope for more Mad Max stories, but unfortunately, the box office failure of Furiosa has made those unlikely. Regardless, this is a film that absolutely must be seen, featuring some of the best action filmmaking of the past decade.

Captain America: The First Avenger

While most movie franchises are slowing down once they hit their fifth chapter, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was only getting started with Captain America: The First Avenger. Now part of a franchise with 37 films, The First Avenger feels like an important setup to the larger universe.

Introducing Chris Evans as Captain America went on to become one of the most iconic superhero castings ever seen. His strong performance here created a dependable figure upon which much of the MCU could rest, bringing deep resolve and conviction to one of the universe’s pillars.

Since then, audiences have gone on a long journey with Chris Evans’ Captain America. Looking back, it is incredible to see how much of that characterization came out fully formed in this fantastic World War II period piece, packed with excellent characters and enormously entertaining set pieces.

Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the fifth installment in the series, but it is also where the Wizarding World found its stride, bringing in director David Yates, who would go on to helm the rest of the series as well as the Fantastic Beasts films.

An exciting entry that introduced a terrific villain in the detestable Dolores Umbridge, Order of the Phoenix brought in much of the darkness that would hang over the rest of the series. A more adult tone, with greater stakes, Phoenix expanded the world into something much more grounded and thrilling.

The film did a great job with the longest novel in the series, and continued the larger story with a great eye for character and dramatic tension. It remains among the best films in the franchise.

The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug

The Lord of the Rings movies aren’t over, although nothing has yet lived up to the fantastic execution of the original trilogy. While those films are considered just about perfect, Peter Jackson’s next major return to the series faltered a bit with The Hobbit being split into three films.

With that said, the second of those films, and the fifth of the larger franchise, was by far the best. Featuring a fantastic showdown between Bilbo and Smaug, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug executed perfectly on some of the book’s best sequences, and created one of the most memorable fantasy monsters ever put on screen.

While The Hobbit isn’t perfect, it is hard to deny that The Desolation of Smaug is a strong addition to the larger series. With great action, and a fantastic cast of characters, it is only brought down by a bit too much padding on the other films surrounding it.

Fast Five

Without Fast Five, the Fast & Furious movie franchise would likely have spun out. Following a small start to the series, with the tightly executed stakes of The Fast and the Furious, the series had a hard time building up. 2 Fast 2 Furious did not feature Vin Diesel, and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift felt almost entirely disconnected.

Fortunately, Fast & Furious found the importance of having a greater focus on the relationship between Brian and Dom, and Fast Five upped the stakes and the scale. The fifth film featured some of the best Fast & Furious action scenes ever seen, and transformed the series into a blockbuster juggernaut.

It is rare that the fifth film in a series is the best one, but that is widely agreed to be the case with Fast & Furious. Adding Dwayne Johnson to the mix, Fast Five is enormous, exciting, imaginative without being unbelievable, and just an all-around fun time at the movies.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Iceman, Colossus and Kitty Pryde stand together in Days of Future Past X-Men

The X-Men franchise has a bit of a caveat, because if X-Men Origins: Wolverine is included in the count, X-Men: First Class is actually the fifth film in the series. Fortunately, both it and the excellent X-Men: Days of Future Past, the fifth mainline X-Men movie, are fantastic additions to the franchise.

Days of Future Past is an incredible achievement in blockbuster filmmaking that tied all the disparate threads of the franchise together so adeptly. Bringing in time travel, and drawing loosely from one of the most popular X-Men comics, the film naturally weaved together two distinct versions of these characters.

This was a satisfying endeavor, and allowed Days of Future Past to become arguably the best X-Men movie ever made, as the crowning achievement in Fox’s cinematic universe.

Toy Story 5

Even though every installment in the Toy Story franchise is fantastic, it still somehow feels surprising that Toy Story 5 is as good as it is. While the film’s Rotten Tomatoes score is a series low, reviews for Toy Story 5 make it clear that it delivers emotion and humor even more effectively than some of the previous chapters.

Woody, Buzz, and the rest of the gang will certainly return in future sequels, but Pixar has shown that they will only add to the Toy Story series when they have an idea that will live up to the brand’s legacy. With brilliant animation and incredible craft, Toy Story 5 is already one of the best sequels ever made.

Even though Pixar has made it look easy with Toy Story 5, making a good sequel is an incredibly difficult task. Reinvigorating the franchise with a fantastic fifth installment is even harder, and has only been done by some of the best film franchises ever produced.