Almost since the opening of The Dark Knight (or the Dark Kitty, as I like to call it), there has been a small to-do raging in various sections and substrata of the internets. This ruckus centers on this list, the Top 250 Films on the Internet Movie Database, the compilation of hundreds of thousands of users’ ratings of movies.
The crux of the issue is that, shortly after its release, The Dark Knight has rocketed to #1 on that list, upsetting the longstanding favourites such as The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption, Casablanca, not to mention 247 other films. Battles of wit and will have raged on message boards, attacking and defending the idea that this newcomer, a comic book movie no less, deserves a place among these classics. Indeed, this sparked further wars, people ranking The Dark Knight a 1 out of 10, just to lower its rating. And now it seems as though Shawshank fans and Godfather fans are duking it out, with Shawshaking recently overtaking the Godfather.
In brief, it’s utter insanity, inanity, the best, the worst, and everything you could possibly hope for from the internets.
But it does bring up some interesting points. What it means to be a good movie, what rankings like this actually mean, flaws in the system and … stuff.
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