We know we don’t need to be the ones to tell you this, but it’s important to watch a long movie series in the right order. You don’t want to skip any of them, because you might miss important plot details or character introductions that will become crucial to later story events. This is usually pretty simple: just watch them in the order they appeared, whether in theaters, streaming, on video, or however you can find them. It’s easy enough when they’re digitized – everyone knows how to watch Harry Potter Movies or Mission: impossibles in chronological order. They were photographed that way!
But this is not necessarily the case for every media franchise, as their engagements were not necessarily planned in advance, or were meant to happen one after the other. You can certainly watch it that way, but for those of us who prefer to follow the rules of time, we’ll have to find a more chronologically accurate timeline. Some of the most popular film series with the most dedicated fans are an absolute mess of sequels, prequels and mid-plots that require some dedication to unravel. So we’ve done all the heavy lifting for you.
We’ve highlighted ten of the biggest film series with the most complex timelines, and film series that may have started out making sense but lost track of the timeline along the way, or even abandoned it entirely. These film series range from trilogies with two misplaced sequels to entire franchises that are constantly reshaping themselves. We’ve done our best to explain how they fit together and provide the exact viewing order where needed. The rest is up to you.
10 Most Confusing Movie Series Timelines
Do you know how to watch these movies in the correct order?
Gallery source: Emma Stefanski
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10 times suspiciously similar movies came out at the same time
No, you won’t go crazy: these are all different movies.
Gallery source: Emma Stefanski