The Godfather Drops to #2 on IMDb!

I heard The Dark Knight was good, but this good??

Rank	Rating	Title	Votes
1.	9.4	The Dark Knight (2008)	104,906
2.	9.1	The Godfather (1972)	292,658
3.	9.1	The Shawshank Redemption (1994)	343,165
4.	9.0	The Godfather: Part II (1974)	167,313

[IMDb Top 250]

Send Luca!!

If you look at the demographic split, you will be surprised to see that it is very similar for both films.

You also have to take into account that so many votes have been received in just a week. After a few months, we can likely see the total votes for Dark Knight to be similar to The Godfather.

And Wall-E is 25, i dout they will be there for long..

Christian Bale is a pimp. He could have never outfought The Godfather, but until this day I did not know it was Heath Ledger all along.

I think maybe there was a lot of sympathy votes in for Heath Ledger..Ive not seen the film so i cant comment on how good it is, but it can't be better than the GF surely.

Times have changed. It's not like the Old Days -- when we can do anything we want. A refusal to enjoy another movie is not the act of a friend. If Don Corleone had all the movie critics in New York, then he must share them, or let us others use them. He must let us draw the water from the well. Certainly he can -- present a bill for such services; after all -- we are not communists.

That's an infamnia!

I have seen both the movies and I also personally find that The Godfather has much much more impact on me than Dark Knight. But your claim, as well as from other members that it cannot be better than The Godfather is vacuous.

The dumbing-down of America...

TB The Dark Knight is anything but dumb.

... and it's a "classic" already to boot according to some on the Board. It's been out a week and it's a classic already. Yes, it's stood the test of that week of time.

Dumbing down. For sure!

From the mouth of Rupert Murdoch in The Wall Street Journal:

“There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.”

Two peas in a pod; both filthy rich conservative morons.

Yeah it wouldn't surprise me if it got a lot of sympathy votes due to Heath Ledger. Wait until The Dark Knight has been out for 36 years and see how good people think it is. I have seen it and rest assured it's not better than Godfather, hell not even close.

WTF!!!!!!!!!



T.S.S.R. beat GF?

Whats going on..

about what?

GF dropping to 3..

oh, yeah it sucks, it dropped to #3 on IMDB

Send Luca!!

Luca ain't answerin' his phone, maybe he's shacked up somewhere

There was a HUGE battle years ago between GF and SSR... I think there's a SSR site that just pushes and pushes for it. I was like, WTF? Maybe they're "attacking" again... lol

TSSR is the best prison film ever made, but it's not as good as GF1 or 2.

I disagree. Who's to say which movie is better? I personally think The Dark Knight is a much better film than GF and SSR. And I haven't even seen it.

Go Red!

I think Brokeback Mountain is any day better than The Godfather.

*long awkward pause*

*laughing* Get the fuck outta here blibble

In that vein, how about Gigli and Ishtar? They leave the Knight, SSR, and the GFs in the dust, right!

Everyone on here should start voting 10's for the GF to get it back on top..

i voted 10 for brokebak mountain and 1 for godfather, because at least we get to see appolonia topless.

te salud!

Let's face it, the Godfather is slippin. Could Batman have got to him five years ago?

just talking a bunch of your namesake I see!

BUT... I do think that SSR is a GREAT film though, but all this talk about The Dark Knight... I don't know... With a Hannibal Lectur clone stealing the show... not likely!

I voted 10/10 for both the Godfather as the Godfather pt2. But now I see GF2 has far less votes than GF1. Now if every person who had voted for the Godfather but not for part II, now votes 10/10 for part II, that should do the trick right?

IMDb is junk to begin with, don't get your collective vagisil out yet. Every film that comes out that gets a ton of hype usually gets on the top 250. HOWEVER, this is one film that actually met the hype. No, it's not better than The Godfather, but IMDb is meaningless really. Then again, it's also meaningless to bash a film you have not seen. Ignorant too, but whatever.



Olivant's opinion on The Dark Knight is about as valid as this dude's:

Hey Robin. get a job, move out of your parent's house, and give up your Robin costume.

Robin's character hasn't been in a Batman film in a decade...not that I'd expect you to know that either, since bashing a film without seeing it is your status quo. Oh, and Robin's an orphan so theoretically I'd have to leave Bruce Wayne's pad...but you criticized my Batman costume the other day, why the sudden change of heart?

BTW, Robin? You could've come a bit stronger than that Yertle. I mean...total weak sauce. Fact is, your credibility goes down the drain with each continual post about The Dark Knight that you make.



P.S. Personal insults are a no-no on this board!

All I want is a truce.

All I want is for people to talk with some sense around here.

Okay, I've seen like 3 reviews that say at some points in Dark Knight, they got a Godfather-esque feeling from them. I'm not sure I would say the same, but I'm just telling you guys, people are making comparisons. Even as far as saying Batman=Michael Corleone , i.e. this Rolling Stone review:


No fair giving away the mysteries of The Dark Knight. It's enough to marvel at the way Nolan — a world-class filmmaker, be it Memento, Insomnia or The Prestige — brings pop escapism whisper-close to enduring art. It's enough to watch Bale chillingly render Batman as a lost warrior, evoking Al Pacino in The Godfather II in his delusion and desolation. It's enough to see Ledger conjure up the anarchy of the Sex Pistols and A Clockwork Orange as he creates a Joker for the ages. Go ahead, bitch about the movie being too long, at two and a half hours, for short attention spans (it is), too somber for the Hulk crowd (it is), too smart for its own good (it isn't). The haunting and visionary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imagination. It's full of surprises you don't see coming. And just try to get it out of your dreams.

Well said Pacino Princess.

GF is back up to #2..

YAY

or is it..

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO it is 3 again!!!!!!!

this thread is funny. We all care so much about IMDB rankings.

Ya, I guess I can see the comparisons between GF and Batman:

-How about when Morgan Freeman as Lucious Fox, Batman's armorer, tells Bruce Wayne that he doesn't want Batman coming out of the bat-cave with just his bat-dick in his hands.

-Or Harvey Dent/two-face as Frankie/five-angels...The Joker recruits sp1cs, he recruits niggahs.

-And don't forget about the penultimate bat-cave scene between Alfred and Wayne. You're my butler and you take care of me? It's the way your pop wanted it. IT AIN'T DA WAY I WANTED IT!1! I'm smaht, not like dark like everybody in Gotham says!!!

I really dont see the Batman - Michael comparison. If anyone, Harvey Dent is the obvious Michael Corleone.

The comparisons are strained at best; they're completely different films, ideologically, and even on technical grounds the comparison is unfavourable to Nolan. Bruce Wayne = Michael Corleone? I don't see it. At all.

The Godfather works both literally (plausible, psychologically sound aesthetic) and allegorically (the grander themes of family, justice, betrayal, revenge, etc.). The Dark Knight is pretty thin in both respects, and critical attempts to adultify it seem unwarranted, unnecessary. It's a decent action film, perhaps the best so far this year (I still haven't seen Iron Man, which looks much better).

I find the notion of putting it on this sort of serious pedestal a bit silly, anyway; IMDb's Top 250 takes its votes from a very selective demographic. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if half of the voters who put The Godfather up there were only doing so out of some sort of attempt at objective canonisation.

(And canons are inherently elitist and conservative anyway.)

Capo, I pointed out somewhere in the thread that the demographic (at least age/sex) split is almost the same for both the films. Probably that has got something to do with the nature of IMDB membership or internet usage patterns.

Yeah, I read that. It doesn't surprise me. Look at most of the top 250 films, and the demographic will be at least similar. I'd put it down to a mixture of these sums, which comprise a certain lifestyle or trend: cinema-going patterns, Internet-usage patterns, IMDb membership patterns.

Most people who claim The Godfather is the best film ever made (a pretty meaningless statement, really) do so on the grounds of its lasting endurance (I'd ask: to whom?), cultural significance (I'd ask: which culture?), and its technical greatness (I'd ask: what defines "technical greatness"?), or its universal themes (I'd be sceptical: "universal" in this critical sense pretty much means "Western").

For starters, even if I limit myself to those four defining factors alone, I can think of half a dozen films that are better than The Godfather.

IMDb's pretty useful as a reference guide, and it's fun to look at what its users vote their most popular film, but the notion of BEST FILM EVER MADE is meaningless.

I think what is going on here is that Heath Ledger's character is undoubtedly destined to be an iconic one much like Brando's Vito Corleone and Pacino's Michael Corleone. That and the fact that both films deal with good and evil.

But they don't, at all. The Dark Knight does to some extent (comics do in general; superhero universes are built on this concept of "goodies and baddies"). What's "evil" in The Godfather?

I can definitely see parallels between The Godfather and There Will Be Blood (2007), in that both take on the juxtaposition of personal, intimate stories set against all-American backdrops; Daniel Plainview as self-destructive, distrusting misanthrope (the Michael Corleone of this century, so to speak), etc. And both evoke the terms "epic", "family", "power", "Americanness", etc.

But The Dark Knight? Ledger's performance is a different sort of performance to those found in The Godfather. To begin with, he's not playing a real, serious character. He's a concept painted in broad brush-strokes. Daniel Day-Lewis (in TWBB) is much more of Brando and Corleone's ilk. (And that's not a dent to Ledger; it's a different sort of acting completely.)

Something weird is happening at imdb. Now Shawshank Redemption is #1 Godfather is 2 and Dark Knight is 3.

As of today, Shawshank is number 1, Godfather is 2, and Dark Knight is 3. Yet, it's really a tie because all three have a rating of 9.1. Go figure.

EDIT - Sorry, DT. I just realized your post said the same thing.
So far since your post then, there's been no change.

The dark Knight was good but not as good as the godfather.

I agree, this is egregious.

Where the hell is Citizen Kane?

The Dark knight is down too number 4 now..

These things gotta happen every five, ten years. It gets out the bad blood.

I should have knew this..

tonight in the end of the main show about soccer in ESPN Brasil, that goes on air every monday night, guys got some free time - that was a slow weekend - and the anchor just said he watched "The Godfather Part I" last night and he had seen it was awarded "best movie ever" somewhere, and after rewatching it and paying attention to all the details and stuff, he agreed this is realyy thee best movie ever.

you'll never see a guy saying something like that about the shawshank redemption or the dark knight in a sports show so fuck imdb!

Cool story, Tony. Have you watched the Trilogy in English and Portugese? How is the translation? What lines get changed?

Incidentally, I finally got around to watching "The Dark Knight." It was pretty amazing. While it doesn't have the depth of GF or GFII, I don't think the comparisons are totally without merit, as there are some common themes.

I watched only in english... translation would kill it!

I watched Part III in portuguese once when I was homesick and it was actually useful because that plot is so confusing that I wanted to be able to pay attention to the face of the people. but that's it!

When I read the subject line, my first thought was, "behind what, The Dark Knight?" Lo and Behold lol

Down to 5

Since someone's already bumped this thread...

If Heath Ledger does not win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor then there is something very wrong with the Academy.

That being said, I was mildly disappointed by the movie. It certainly was not awful, but to the standard of GFI, II or Shawshank Redemption? Certainly not.