IMDB Top 250 films

[Maria]

I missed years of pop culture, too, yov, when my parents built their little cabin in the woods and didn't have electricity or running water. During all my teen years until I left home, the only time I saw any TV shows was when I'd stay over at a friend's house- and those instances were few and far between.

Mostly, the only movies I had a chance at seeing were the ones that came to the little theater in the nearest town. They only showed one movie on the weekends, and most of what they ran was not of interest to me. Or was forbidden by my parents. They absolutely refused to let me go to horror movies. They did, however, take us to the nearest town that was showing "Young Frankenstein" when it was released and we actually stood in a long line waiting for it. So, it kind of evened out.

It was a while after Star Wars had been released before the movie finally made it to the town where I went to high school. I'd been a science fiction and fantasy fan practically from the time I started reading on my own, so I'd already read the novelization. Actually getting to finally see the movie was a high point of that year, and I managed to get my parents to take me to see it twice more before they quit showing it.

It wasn't until the mid 80s when my husband and I bought our first VCR that I got to see the first movie again. The second one came out my junior year of high school and those of us who had bonded over love of Star Wars were good friends by then. We managed to see "The Empire Strikes Back" as soon as it came out and one of my fondest memories of that era was during study hall in late spring right after we saw Empire. It was hot. The window was open. A wasp came slowly flying into the classroom, longish legs dangling under it. My friend David whispered "Probe Droid!" and everyone in earshot busted out laughing. (The way the wasp moved really did resemble the probe droid.)

OK... you have to have been there. It was funny to teenagers.

[Dave_LF]

(Don't underestimate the contribution of John Williams to the Star Wars legacy)

Star Wars minus Williams:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-GZJhfBmI

[yovargas]

Legit LOL at Chewy there.

[Lalaith]

[yovargas]

As I've noted before, I find that this IMDB list is overstuffed with a lot of gangsters, criminals, cowboys, and other varieties of "tough guy" protagonists that I often find really boring. Lots and lots of "machismo". This has had me wondering for some time now if the list would look significantly different if we could see how each gender was voting. Would women in general find all this machismo less exciting than men do? Would they be more keen on other kinds of stories, perhaps ones movies that *gasp* have cool women as the protagonists instead? (Crazy talk!)

Unfortunately, IMDB doesn't have a way to look at a "Men's Top 250" or a "Woman's Top 250" lists, but I was excited to discover this morning that you can click into individual movies and see the demographic breakdown of the voting. For example, men rate the Batman movies notably higher than women do (3 points on their 100 point scale):
The Dark Knight

But men and women rate all three The Lord of the Rings movies equally well.
The Fellowship of the Ring


So, because I'm a giant nerd, I threw the main top 250 on a a spreadsheet and went one by one noting the male and female ratings. One major thing of note is that for whatever reason, there are FAR more male votes than female votes on imdb. I haven't the slightest idea why (are women generally less interested than men in ranking stuff??) but it obviously skews the list very heavily towards male tastes. The numbers I got do indeed show that a true "Woman's Top 250" would look very different than the "Men's Top 250", which is essentially what the IMDB list is since it's so male skewed.

For example, here are movies that men put in the top 20 that women do not:

men20.JPG (30.66 KiB) Viewed 9232 times

Compare with movies that women put in the top 20 that men do not:

wmen20.JPG (28.45 KiB) Viewed 9232 times

As you see, the male's list is FAR more action & violence oriented, with the exception of The Silence of the Lambs which has an excellent female protagonist. That's not to say women didn't also love movies like Pulp Fiction or Goodfellas, just that the men are far more enamored of them. I also noted that women consistently rate animation higher than men which is a bit surprising to me. Also of note - I enjoy the women's top 20 pic FAR more than the men's (though I haven't seen Intouchables yet).

Here's another interesting comparison - here are movies that men rate significantly higher than women (at least 6 points) in blue vs movies that women rate significantly higher than men (at least 4 points) in orange:

high.JPG (90.27 KiB) Viewed 9232 times

This one shows again that women favor animation but also that women do indeed like seeing good movies about women (All About Eve, Gone with the Wind, The Help). Interesting stuff!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Fascinating, yov. Thanks for sharing.

(Interesting that women significantly liked the final Harry Potter film more than men. I wouldn't have guessed that.)

[Frelga]

Very interesting, yov. I wish we could fund you to do the polling yourself so you can have reliable source data.

For myself, I love action movies, although only up to a certain level of violence. I do need the movie to contain an interesting set of characters. I also highly prefer a movie that includes women as subjects rather than objects of the story.

And I didn't get Seven Samurai, so that proves yov's point.

[Telithri_Ellerion]

I have watched the original Star Wars trilogy. I think they are kind of crappy movies don't hurt me!!

Hi. I'm not sure how, but I stumbled into this thread on Google. I see the conversation has moved on, but I wanted to just address the comments by Yov because while I agree with several others here on some points about why the SW movies have been popular and Yov makes several valid points, I simply must add my two cents. Ready? Here's the answer:

You had to be there.

We can talk a lot about how different Star Wars was from everything else before it, how wonderful the music was, how imaginative and creative the SW universe appeared, but in the end you simply had to be there.

I'm afraid I cannot express enough what it was like to grow up in the seventies in a borderline suburban-rural American community when this movie appeared in theaters. It's always easy to look back at those who went before and judge them by our current standards. What is most difficult is to go back and see them through the eyes of their contemporaries. I want you to go watch 3 straight hours of Superfriends cartoons, followed by another 5 hours of Godzilla movies from the sixties and seventies. Then compare the standard children's entertainment of the day to Star Wars IV. I want you to toss out all of the technology you're familiar with except a television, radio, car, and the most basic household appliances. I want you to forget about Internet anything, all the filth and cynicism of this decade, and the idea that geek is chic. I want you to forget about HIV, ebola, and zika. I want you to go back into my life as a child when magic was still real and watch the first movie without having seen any of Lucas' other garbage that he released. When you can do that, then you are welcome to tell everyone what a crappy movie it is, and it is assuredly poorly written, but until you can step into the shoes of those who dream of a far horizon under Tatooine skies, with a landspeeder and a couple of intelligent droid companions for friends, you really can't understand why it means so much to so many.

I was born in the year we first walked on the moon. Soon I will have half a century under my belt. I can tell you that in those days, people dreamed more of reaching to the heavens than they do today. Do I disagree with you about it? No. Lucas is a hack. But I understand why and what and how. I'm not sure, but I hope that helps you get a part of it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

What a great first post!

No, what a great post, period. I couldn't agree with you more, Telithri_Ellerion.

And welcome!

[Telithri_Ellerion]

What a great first post!

No, what a great post, period. I couldn't agree with you more, Telithri_Ellerion.

And welcome!

Thank you so much for the kind words. I hope to make more appearances here. Tolkien..... *sigh* Love the idea behind what you're doing here.

[yovargas]

Hello there, Telithri, and welcome! That was indeed an excellent first post. And of course I get and understand all of that to some degree. But the problem with the "you had to be there" argument is that Star Wars has proven so amazingly enduring, still having one of the most passionate fanbases anywhere nearly 40 years after it's initial release. I don't think that kind of loyalty can just be attributed to how big an impact it made on kids and youths!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's true, yov, but I do think there is a difference. I can say categorically that I have never had a cinematic experience like going to see the first Star Wars as a wide-eyed 13 year old. Which is not say that it is the best film that I have ever seen, but it may well be the most impactful.

[Maria]

What movie had the most impact on your young teen life, yov?

[yovargas]

Movies? Nothing I can think of. As I said earlier:

This got me thinking, friends are often surprised by how much 80s pop culture I don't know. Stuff like never having watched Goonies or ET either. Thing is, though I was born in 1980, I didn't come to the US till 86 and didn't know English till 87. So that's most of that decade of US pop culture I wasn't really around for. I can imagine that if Star Wars had hit me within that period, I could've loved it. (It's certainly better than the Thundercats my 7-year old self loved....) But my parents were (and still are) totally uninterested in pop culture so they never took us to the movies or hardly ever rented any for us. So even after Americanizing, I was still pretty oblivious to a lot of movies in particular.

But - I did fall in love with The Simpsons pretty much from minute one. It landed when I was seven or eight years old and I watched it religiously until it got crappy 10 or so years later so I pretty much grew up with it. I'd say it's pretty easily the single most influential piece of pop culture for me. I still adore and watch those 90s episodes to this day.

[Beutlin]

But - I did fall in love with The Simpsons pretty much from minute one. It landed when I was seven or eight years old and I watched it religiously until it got crappy 10 or so years later so I pretty much grew up with it.

I have never been a fan of The Simpsons but the difference in quality between 90s episodes and 10s episodes of the series is mind-boggling. Fans have a tendency to ignore the flaws of the stories with which they grew up with and denigrate the later versions of said films/shows but with The Simpsons this phenomenon is entirely justified. I recently watched an episode featuring Lady Gaga and it was atrociously bad.

[yovargas]

Me watching new Simpsons episodes must feel like what others felt like watching the Star Wars pre-quels.

[Maria]

That was a whole different level of *bad*.

Maybe it's equivalent to watching the Star Trek Enterprise series. "Ok, it's Star Trek. We have to watch it. We should like it. We ought to like it..... Noooooooooooo!"

[yovargas]

Time for another update. More ratings on the extreme ends then usual this time including the rare F (boy, I really do not like Chaplin). Of particular note is American Beauty, which I declined to rate for much the same reason I did Taxi Driver - it was emotionally devastating in a way that made me pretty sure I don't ever want to watch that one again.


Back to the Future A
The Elephant Man A
Braveheart A-
La dolce vita A-
Donnie Darko B
The Wages of Fear C
Notorious C-
Let the Right One In C-
Million Dollar Baby D+
La Strada D
Life Is Beautiful D-
The Great Dictator F
American Beauty N/A

[axordil]

it was emotionally devastating in a way that made me pretty sure I don't ever want to watch that one again

Those are always hard to grade. I can't imagine sitting through Schindler's List--or Seven, for very different reasons, or Pan's Labyrinth, for still different reasons--again, even as I acknowledge they're good, possibly great movies.

[Lalaith]

I can understand that. I've never seen American Beauty, for good reason. I don't do "emotionally devastating" well. Life gives me enough of that; I rarely want to see it on the screen.