Endings Matter: Ranking the Action Franchise Finales That Delivered (and the Ones That Didn't)
There's a particular kind of heartbreak that comes from watching a beloved action franchise stumble across the finish line. You've invested years — sometimes decades — in these characters, these worlds, these increasingly improbable set pieces. And then the final film arrives and it's... fine. Or worse, it's a mess. Or, in the rarest and most satisfying cases, it's genuinely brilliant.
At Operation Oz, we've sat through all of them so you don't have to make the same mistakes. Here's our definitive ranking of action franchise finales, with special attention to the Australian fingerprints — directors, performers, and filming locations — that helped shape the genre's most memorable (and most catastrophic) conclusions.
The Gold Standard
1. Mad Max: Fury Road — Not Technically a Finale, But Hear Us Out
Okay, technically Fury Road (2015) was a reboot-slash-continuation rather than a concluding chapter. But George Miller's masterpiece deserves the top spot in any conversation about Australian action cinema's relationship with franchise storytelling, because it demonstrated something the genre desperately needed reminding of: that a film can honour what came before while completely reinventing itself.
Miller, a genuine Aussie legend, returned to the Wasteland after thirty years and delivered what many critics consider the greatest action film of the 21st century. The practical effects, the visual language, the stripped-back narrative — it was everything that had gone wrong with bloated franchise filmmaking turned inside out. If you want to understand why Australian creative sensibility matters in this space, Fury Road is Exhibit A. The subsequent Furiosa confirmed that Miller still has more to say in this world, which is a gift the genre doesn't deserve but absolutely needs.
2. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Christopher Nolan's conclusion to his Batman trilogy splits audiences, but we're going to defend it here. Yes, there are plot holes you could drive the Batmobile through. Yes, the third act strains credulity even by superhero standards. But as a piece of operatic franchise storytelling, it swings for something genuinely ambitious — a meditation on sacrifice, legacy, and what it costs to be the symbol a city needs rather than the human being you actually are.
The Australian connection? Marion Cotillard and Tom Hardy's presence aside, the film's Australian theatrical reception was enormous, and it sparked the kind of pub debate about franchise conclusions that we still have today. Sometimes a finale's legacy is measured not just in quality but in the conversation it generates. Rises generated plenty.
The Honourable Mentions
3. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Say what you like about Marvel's increasingly unwieldy cinematic universe — and there's a fair bit to say — but Endgame pulled off something that should've been impossible. It delivered a genuinely satisfying emotional conclusion to an eleven-year, twenty-two film saga. When portals opened and everyone came back, even the most cynical viewer felt something.
For Australian audiences, the significance of Endgame was partly about watching Cate Blanchett and other local talent's contributions to the broader MCU get honoured in a narrative sense, even if not all of them appeared in the finale itself. The film understood that endings need to pay off emotional investments, not just plot threads.
4. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One — A Cautionary Tale in Progress
We're including this one as a work-in-progress verdict. The Mission: Impossible franchise has Australian DNA running through it — portions of various instalments have filmed in Sydney and Melbourne, and the series has long been a favourite among local audiences who appreciate its commitment to practical stunt work over CGI spectacle.
The first part of the finale set up enormous promise. Whether the second part delivers remains to be seen, but it's a reminder that splitting a finale into two films is a high-wire act. You're essentially asking audiences to sit through half an ending, which requires extraordinary goodwill. The MI franchise has earned that goodwill. The question is whether it'll spend it wisely.
The Disappointments
5. Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
This one hurts, because the ingredients were there. The return of Linda Hamilton. James Cameron back in a producing capacity. A genuine attempt to course-correct after the franchise's disastrous mid-period stumbles. And yet Dark Fate couldn't quite stick the landing, delivering a film that felt simultaneously overstuffed and emotionally thin.
The lesson here is one that Australian filmmakers and audiences understand instinctively: nostalgia is not a substitute for story. Bringing back beloved elements from earlier chapters only works if those elements are serving a narrative purpose, not just triggering Pavlovian responses in long-term fans.
6. Die Hard 5 (2013) — Please, Let's Never Speak of It Again
The Die Hard franchise gave us one of action cinema's most enduring heroes in John McClane — an everyman who survived on wit, stubbornness, and spectacular bad luck. The series had already been declining before A Good Day to Die Hard, but the fifth instalment managed to strip away everything that made the original special and replace it with generic action mechanics.
For Australian fans who grew up with these films — and there are millions of us who consider Die Hard essential Christmas viewing — watching the franchise end this way was genuinely painful. It's the cautionary tale that every action franchise producer should be forced to watch before greenlit a follow-up: know when to stop, and if you can't stop, at least remember what made the thing worth loving in the first place.
The Underrated Gem
7. The Raid 2 (2014) — An International Benchmark
Not an Australian production, but absolutely worth including because its influence on how Australian action filmmakers and performers approach franchise storytelling has been immense. Gareth Evans' Indonesian martial arts sequel demonstrated that a franchise conclusion (or continuation) could be both a technical showcase and a genuinely tragic character study simultaneously.
Multiple Australian stunt coordinators and action choreographers have cited The Raid films as transformative viewing. When you watch the best Australian action content today — and there's more of it than most people realise — you can often trace a direct line back to the visual grammar Evans pioneered.
What Makes a Great Franchise Finale?
After sitting through this lot, a few principles emerge pretty clearly. The best endings honour the emotional journey without being enslaved to continuity. They're willing to let characters fail, age, or make irreversible choices. They understand that audiences want resolution, not just more action.
Australian creative talent, when it's at its best in this genre, tends to understand these principles instinctively. There's a storytelling culture here that values consequence and earned emotion over spectacle for its own sake. When that sensibility gets applied to franchise filmmaking — as it did with Fury Road, as it does in the best Australian action productions — the results are genuinely special.
The franchise finale is one of Hollywood's most difficult creative challenges. Getting it right requires courage, clarity, and a willingness to prioritise story over franchise maintenance. The Australians who've shaped this genre, in front of and behind the camera, have shown they're more than up to the task.
