British action star Scott Adkins has been part of several martial arts movie franchises, but how do they rank from weakest to strongest? Adkins has been amazing audiences for over twenty years in action films like Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, Hard Target 2, Eliminators, and Triple Threat. As Adkins built up more and more of a following over the years, Hollywood and Hong Kong alike also began taking notice.
This success led to him being cast in big blockbusters like The Expendables 2 and Doctor Strange, along with facing Donnie Yen in Ip Man 4: The Finale. When he's not making action films, Adkins can also frequently be found on YouTube, giving tutorials on his spectacular kicking skills, or interviewing others in the action movie world on his series The Art of Action. A look at Adkins' upcoming films, along with different roles he's taken on in The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud and One Shot, also show just how far he's come from the early days of his career.
Some of Scott Adkins' most popular hits have also become franchises, and even the weaker ones still run circles around their counterparts with higher budgets. Indeed, more often than not, subsequent installments in an Adkins-led series tend to outdo each other. Here's every Scott Adkins franchise ranked, from worst to best, along with a few that are on the way.
The two Isaac Florentine-helmed Ninja movies sit in a bit of a weird spot on Scott Adkins' filmography. The first Ninja was Adkins first time as a leading man, with his American-born protagonist Casey Bowman tasked with defending a priceless chest of Ninjutsu weaponry known as the "Yoroi Bitsu" from assassin Masazuka (Tsuyoshi Ihara), who was banned from the pair's Ninjutsu dojo. Ninja didn't fully hit the mark on what the duo of Florentine and Adkins typically pull off, and its finale in particular feels a bit like two action scenes intended to be separate fused into one. Still, even with the elements where it was a bit underdeveloped, Ninja came out well ahead of most theatrical action movies.
The 2013 sequel Ninja II: Shadow of a Tear learned from where the first Ninja could've been a bit improved, and was essentially 95 minutes of everything that was great about the first film, making for one amazing ride of a ninja movie. This time, Casey's on a mission to avenge the murder of his pregnant wife Namiko (Mika Hijii), and while the movie makes little effort to throw viewers off from guessing the identity of her killer, it's impossible to be particularly perturbed as Casey goes to war on his vendetta. Shadow of a Tear's action scenes are what ninja movie fans live for, including a one-shot dojo battle, Adkins' showdowns with fight choreographer Tim Man and Kane Kosugi as fellow Ninjutsu master Nakabara.
As Scott Adkins began gaining more mainstream recognition, he started dabbling more and more in black comedy roles, and the Debt Collector films bring his well-known talent in action movies to a buddy comedy romp, both directed by longtime stunt expert Jesse V. Johnson. In The Debt Collector, Adkins plays French, who is on the verge of losing the lease to his martial arts school, leading him to team up with local L.A. "mediator" Sue (Louis Mandylor) to earn some emergency income. The comedic quipping between French and Sue, and the likable buddy chemistry between Adkins and Mandylor is half the fun of The Debt Collector alongside its fight scenes, and while it ends on what would appear to be a downer, a casual retcon undid that two years later in 2020's Debt Collectors.
For the sequel, French and Sue are at it again, doing their best to collect from a trio of defaulters in the casino-filled Las Vegas. Like the first film, the action scenes are less life-and-death struggles than comedic headaches for French and Sue to wade through to just fulfill their task, though the best of both films is a They Live-esque alley brawl when French and Sue finally can't hold each other's frustrations off with mere verbal sparring. While Ninja II is better than both Debt Collector films, French and Sue's two adventures had a stronger start that they've been able to maintain. Unlike The Debt Collector, Debt Collectors ends without needing the supposed deaths of its two protagonists to be undone later, so viewers can look forward to cutting right to the chase of French and Sue's buddy movie antics if there's a Debt Collector 3.
The role that was Scott Adkins' big break, Yuri Bokya aka The Most Complete Fighter in the World, also came in a sequel that seemingly sprung out of nowhere in Undisputed: Last Man Standing. Directed by Isaac Florentine, Undisputed 2 sees Michael Jai White as former World Heavyweight Boxing champion George "Iceman" Chambers—White replaces Ving Rhames from the first Undisputed—railroaded into a Russian prison in order to set up a fight with the champ behind bars, Yuri Boyka. Taking the series from boxing to MMA, Undisputed 2 is a tornado kick of amazing martial arts, and one that was able to get viewers as invested, if not more so, in the story of its antagonist as its protagonist.
After Adkins reinvigorated the Undisputed series, the Florentine-helmed 2010 sequel Undisputed 3: Redemption paid that off, shifting Boyka into an anti-hero role and placing him in a prison tournament where the victor will win his freedom. As Bokya points out to fellow competitor Turbo (Mykel Shannon Jenkins), the real enemies are outside of the ring, with the prison officials pulling strings to ensure the victory of their chosen fighter, Dolor (Marko Zaror). Boyka also has the challenge of his bad knee after his loss in Undisputed 2, which heightens the stakes of the incredible fight scenes of Undisputed 3, including a ring battle with Adkins and Capoeira ace Lateef Crowder dos Santos. Undisputed 3 still saves the best for last in Boyka's showdown with Dolor, with the painful ending of Undisputed 2 inverted to the tenth power.
2017's Boyka: Undisputed continued to show the now free Boyka wasn't a static character after he accidentally kills an opponent in the ring, and enters a series of fights to pay off the debts to the mob the fighter's widow is saddled with. Boyka: Undisputed, directed by Todor Chapkanov with Florentine producing, is as jam-packed with jaw-dropping martial arts fights as its two predecessors, pitting Boyka in his first two-on-one ring match with Andy Long Nguyen and fight choreographer Tim Man, and giving Boyka his most challenging foe ever in the towering Koshmar (Martyn Ford). However, the movie is just as concerned as Boyka himself is in atoning for his past sins, and completes Boyka's transition from the man he was to a genuine hero. An Undisputed TV series has been talked about, while there's plenty of directions a more straightforward Undisputed 5 could go in, but with as much of a mark as Scott Adkins has made on martial arts films, the Undisputed series is the greatest Scott Adkins franchise - or, perhaps more fittingly, the Most Complete one.
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Aside from the various action movie franchises he's already been a part of, Adkins is also jumping into a few more, starting off with 2022's Accident Man 2. Based on the strip from British comic book title Toxic!, 2018's Accident Man featured Adkins as professional assassin Mike Fallon, known for masking killings as accidents, and his efforts to find out who ordered the killing of his pregnant ex-girlfriend. The plot of Accident Man 2 will see Fallon trying to rescue a friend while protecting the son of a mob boss from assassins, all while reconnecting with an estranged father-figure of his. Adkins had significant writing and creative input on both films, for which he was also producer, and Accident Man brought his talents for black comedy more into play than ever, so viewers can expect Accident Man 2 to be the same blend of action and irreverent comedy.
Additionally, Adkins will also join the John Wick universe in 2022's John Wick: Chapter 4. Joined by his fellow martial arts stars Donnie Yen, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Marko Zaror, Adkins' role in John Wick 4 is unknown, but with the cliffhanger ending of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, it's sure to involve John's war with the High Table, and a villain role would fit Adkins perfectly. Depending on the nature of his role in the movie, Adkins could also be seen in later entries in the series, but either way, the John Wick franchise is now the latest to join the filmography of Scott Adkins.
