While reviews are obviously still a very important factor in their success, all anyone seems to care about these days is how much a movie ends up making. Box office receipts have of course always been important, but as more and more releases manage to earn upwards of $1 billion worldwide, that’s become the figure to hit in order to truly be considered a success by the majority of analysts.
Five movies managed to do that in 2015 in what proved to be the biggest year in history for the worldwide box office (and one of those releases is expected to sail past the $2 billion mark any week now). The ten most financially successful films of last year are certainly a unique bunch anyway, with only a single comic book adaptation, plenty of action blockbusters, and even one great and one pretty terrible animated feature.
Of those ten box office hits though, which was the best? If there’s one thing which the success of the Transformers franchise has made abundantly clear, it’s that a movie doesn’t need to be good for it to make a lot of money, and so the ones that earned the most aren’t necessarily going to be the greatest thing cinemas had to offer in 2015…