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Dave Thomas is the online editor-in-chief of E-Gear. When he's not tracking online trends he likes to make movies, eat pasta or just sit around watching Doctor Who.Silver's Screen
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Why the IMDB Top 250 Is Better Than the AFI Top 100 (or Most Film Lists)
As of this writing, July 24, 2008 at 3:22 PM EST, The Dark Knight is #1 on the IMDB Top 250.
For my money, this is a greater achievement than breaking multiple box office records. For as long as I can remember, The Godfather has dominated that spot. This is the Internet’s way of saying, “The Dark Knight is better than The Godfather.” (.3 points better, to be exact.)
This statement is, of course, heresy to film buffs. And yet, it’s the regular IMDB voters, some of the most invested film buffs around, who create this list.
And this is why the IMDB Top 250 holds more resonance for me than most Important Film Lists. It allows you to put today’s films into context with the sum total of film history.
And not just American film history. Though the list is clearly dominated by U.S. titles, 16 percent of the list is foreign language (at last count). In fact, if you break it down by genre, you’ll find that films you’ve likely never heard of hold top positions, like the number two, four and five slots on the comedy list.
But in the case of current U.S. releases, you get to see the real time evolution of a film’s status in a canon. 19 days after its release, Wall-E held a position at #20 on the list. As of this writing, nine days after that, it sits at #25. The board is always shifting.
That’s only one of the advantages the list has over, say, the AFI Top 100, which gets updated every ten years instead of every ten minutes. The other advantage is that anyone anywhere can influence the IMDB. Some might say that’s actually a disadvantage. In theory, you want the experts to be the only ones who contribute to the canon. On the other hand, my experience has been that I’ve preferred the films I’ve seen on the IMDB list over the AFI’s. I find the random voter to be more discriminating than the experts.
Of course, these are not random voters. These are the Invested. These are the fans who not only spend two hours watching the movie, but then then another five minutes (or five hours if they get a good rant going) to hop online and do something about how they feel about the movie. In a sense, this is a stronger vote than simply paying for (or downloading) a film. As a result, a Top 250 position becomes a weightier metric than a spot on the list of all-time highest grossers, another canon which puts modern films in context with their history.
But it’s a slightly more informative metric as well. The gross tells you roughly how many people saw a film, but not how many of them liked it. Not how many saw the opening weekend grosses, went to see a film the following weekend, and thought, why did people like that? The grosses equate dissent and approval.
It is, of course, an imperfect list. You can cheat like crazy. There’s no guarantee anyone who voted ever actually saw The Dark Knight, much less liked it. And there’s nothing to stop the studio releasing the film from saying it’s good any more than there’s anything to stop a rival studio from saying it sucks. All you really have to go on is a sense of how your personal opinions (and those of your friends, etc.) do or do not reflect the overall content of the canon. And in my case, it’s pretty dead on.
For my money, this is a greater achievement than breaking multiple box office records. For as long as I can remember, The Godfather has dominated that spot. This is the Internet’s way of saying, “The Dark Knight is better than The Godfather.” (.3 points better, to be exact.)
This statement is, of course, heresy to film buffs. And yet, it’s the regular IMDB voters, some of the most invested film buffs around, who create this list.
And this is why the IMDB Top 250 holds more resonance for me than most Important Film Lists. It allows you to put today’s films into context with the sum total of film history.
And not just American film history. Though the list is clearly dominated by U.S. titles, 16 percent of the list is foreign language (at last count). In fact, if you break it down by genre, you’ll find that films you’ve likely never heard of hold top positions, like the number two, four and five slots on the comedy list.
But in the case of current U.S. releases, you get to see the real time evolution of a film’s status in a canon. 19 days after its release, Wall-E held a position at #20 on the list. As of this writing, nine days after that, it sits at #25. The board is always shifting.
That’s only one of the advantages the list has over, say, the AFI Top 100, which gets updated every ten years instead of every ten minutes. The other advantage is that anyone anywhere can influence the IMDB. Some might say that’s actually a disadvantage. In theory, you want the experts to be the only ones who contribute to the canon. On the other hand, my experience has been that I’ve preferred the films I’ve seen on the IMDB list over the AFI’s. I find the random voter to be more discriminating than the experts.
Of course, these are not random voters. These are the Invested. These are the fans who not only spend two hours watching the movie, but then then another five minutes (or five hours if they get a good rant going) to hop online and do something about how they feel about the movie. In a sense, this is a stronger vote than simply paying for (or downloading) a film. As a result, a Top 250 position becomes a weightier metric than a spot on the list of all-time highest grossers, another canon which puts modern films in context with their history.
But it’s a slightly more informative metric as well. The gross tells you roughly how many people saw a film, but not how many of them liked it. Not how many saw the opening weekend grosses, went to see a film the following weekend, and thought, why did people like that? The grosses equate dissent and approval.
It is, of course, an imperfect list. You can cheat like crazy. There’s no guarantee anyone who voted ever actually saw The Dark Knight, much less liked it. And there’s nothing to stop the studio releasing the film from saying it’s good any more than there’s anything to stop a rival studio from saying it sucks. All you really have to go on is a sense of how your personal opinions (and those of your friends, etc.) do or do not reflect the overall content of the canon. And in my case, it’s pretty dead on.
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Why does everyone say The Godfather is in the Top Spot. As far as I am aware The Shawshank Redemption has been #1 for a while. The Godfather is in at #2 and Dark Night at #3.
"It allows you to put today?s films into context with the sum total of film history."
Actually, no. "The Godfather" is still there after decades (well, not in the IMDB list specifically, but it's not considered a classic for nothing). "The Dark Knight" is #1 today after only weeks of premiering, which doesn't mean at all that it will keep its status. There's a clear difference between movies that passed the time test and movies that might be good but are there solely due to initial excitement.
Fascinating. I think the article sums it up nicely. I'm reading The Wisdom of Crowds right now, and it agrees that conformity kills the wisdom. I'm not sure what safeguard you could put in place to avoid this. One person I know recommended a year delay before a movie can appear on the top 250, although then you lose the immediate context. In any case, a year from now, I'm pretty sure the system will self correct like so much Wikipedia. Though, DK will probably stay in the top ten.
Though I generally agree with you on preferring the IMDB lists to the AFI lists, how do you respond to the Batman Fanboys (batboys?) intentionallly rating The Godfather 1 star and Batman Begins as 10 just to raise the rankings? Citation here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13515_3-10000650-26.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Another fine (but important) point, stated at the bottom of the IMDB top 250: "for the Top 250, only votes from regular voters are considered." So, saying they're "the fans who not only spend two hours watching the movie, but then then another five minutes [writing a review]" undersells the significance the average, since in actuality it's the fans who love films/cinema enough to do so on a _regular basis_. The result of which is a good _relative_ (not fan boy) score.