Harry Potter Movies Ranked: All 11 Films, My Honest Tier List
All 11 Wizarding World movies ranked — Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts included — plus where to start if you're new. See my full tier list breakdown.
Hannah 7.5 min read
Ranking every Wizarding World movie, from Harry Potter to Fantastic Beasts
My Wizarding World tier list
Here's how all 11 films landed, S to D:
- S-tier: Prisoner of Azkaban, Deathly Hallows – Part 2
- A-tier: Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, Goblet of Fire, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
- B-tier: Sorcerer's Stone, Deathly Hallows – Part 1
- C-tier: Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
- D-tier: Chamber of Secrets, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
S-tier: the two that stuck with me the most
Prisoner of Azkaban follows Harry's third year, when an escaped prisoner tied to his parents' past starts closing in on Hogwarts. What gets me every rewatch isn't the plot, though — it's the mood. The colors get darker, the score gets moodier, and it's the first film where I actually felt like I was watching these characters grow up in real time instead of just aging on screen.
Deathly Hallows – Part 2 covers the final battle at Hogwarts and everything that comes with actually ending this story. I still tear up at Snape's memories every single time, no matter how many times I've seen it. It's rare for a franchise finale to genuinely earn the emotional weight it's going for, and this one does.
A-tier: films I'd happily rewatch anytime
Order of the Phoenix deals with the Ministry's denial about Voldemort's return and Dolores Umbridge taking over Hogwarts. It gets called the "boring" one a lot, but I find something genuinely unsettling about Umbridge that stuck with me more than most of the flashier villains. Half-Blood Prince is slower and quieter, centered on Harry uncovering Voldemort's past — the cave scene near the end is one of the few moments in the whole series that actually made me anxious watching it. Goblet of Fire throws Harry into the Triwizard Tournament, and even though it moves fast trying to cram in a huge book, the underwater lake sequence is one of my favorite set pieces in the franchise.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the outlier here — a 1920s New York prequel about magizoologist Newt Scamander. I went in expecting a cash grab and came out genuinely charmed. It felt fresh in a way the later Harry Potter films didn't have room to be anymore.
B-tier: good, but not where it peaks for me
Sorcerer's Stone introduces Harry, Hogwarts, and this entire world for the first time. Watching it again this week on a real screen instead of my laptop, I noticed how much slower it feels now — but there's also something about seeing the Great Hall and Diagon Alley on the big screen again that hit me harder than I expected. Deathly Hallows – Part 1 follows the trio camping in the woods while searching for Horcruxes, and I'll admit that stretch drags for me on rewatches — but the Godric's Hollow scene and the animated Tale of the Three Brothers sequence are genuinely some of the best moments in the entire series.
C-tier: I wanted to like this one more than I did
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore follows Dumbledore recruiting Newt to stop Grindelwald from seizing political power. It's not bad, and Mads Mikkelsen is a big upgrade in the role, but by this point I'd lost track of what the spinoff trilogy was even building toward. It felt like a course-correction after the second film rather than a movie with its own clear identity.
D-tier: the two I'd rank lowest, no hard feelings
Chamber of Secrets isn't a bad movie, it's just the one I reach for least. It retreads a lot of the same "mystery at Hogwarts" structure as the first film, and the Basilisk climax takes a long time to actually get moving. I know a lot of people love the flying car scene enough to fight me on this, and honestly, fair.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the one that lost me the most. The political plotting between Newt, Dumbledore, and Grindelwald is hard to follow, and I remember leaving the theater in 2018 genuinely unsure what had actually happened. It's the film most fans point to as the moment the spinoff trilogy stopped feeling essential.
New to the series? Here's the order I'd actually recommend
If you've never seen any of these and the 2026 rerelease has you curious, start with the eight core Harry Potter films in release order — Sorcerer's Stone straight through Deathly Hallows – Part 2. That's the emotional backbone of the whole franchise, and it's designed to be watched as one continuous story. I'd treat the three Fantastic Beasts films as optional. They're technically set decades earlier, but they were made as a spinoff for existing fans, not an entry point, so watching them first won't give you extra context — it'll just slow you down before you get to the story everyone actually talks about. Save them for after Deathly Hallows – Part 2 if you're curious, or skip them entirely with zero guilt.
Turning my ranking into something shareable
Once I had my tiers sorted out, I wanted an actual visual instead of just a list buried in a group chat, so I used a Wizarding World movies tier list template with all 11 films already loaded in — took maybe five minutes to drag everything into place and export the image. If you want to build your own version, or argue with mine, the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts template on TierMakerPro already has the posters ready to go.
So, where do you land?
Where would you put the Fantastic Beasts films — do you think I'm being too harsh on Crimes of Grindelwald, or too generous with the first one? And is Chamber of Secrets really the weakest Harry Potter film, or am I missing something? Drop your own tier list in the comments, I'd genuinely love to compare notes.
FAQ
Q1: Is Chamber of Secrets really the worst Harry Potter movie? "Worst" is probably too strong — all eight core films are well-reviewed. Chamber of Secrets is commonly cited by fans as the least essential entry mainly because it repeats the "mystery at Hogwarts" structure of the first film without adding as much new.
Q2: How many Wizarding World movies are there in total? There are eight core Harry Potter films (2001–2011) plus three Fantastic Beasts spinoff films (2016, 2018, 2022), bringing the total to eleven movies set in J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World.
Q3: Do I need to watch the Fantastic Beasts movies before Harry Potter? No. Although the Fantastic Beasts trilogy is set decades before Harry Potter, it was made as a spinoff for existing fans rather than a starting point. Most first-time viewers get more out of watching the eight Harry Potter films first.
Q4: Are more Fantastic Beasts movies coming? The trilogy was originally planned to run five films, but after The Secrets of Dumbledore underperformed at the box office compared to the first two entries, Warner Bros. has not confirmed a fourth installment, and its future remains uncertain.
Q5: When are the Harry Potter movies playing in theaters in 2026? All eight core films returned to AMC, Regal, Cinemark, and other major U.S. chains from August 27 through September 3, 2026, as part of Warner Bros.' 25th anniversary "Back to Hogwarts" celebration, with Sorcerer's Stone including newly added behind-the-scenes footage.
Q6: Do I need an account to use the TierMakerPro Wizarding World template? No — you can open the template, drag the movie tiles into your own tier order, rename or recolor the tier labels, and export the finished graphic directly.