Listosaurus Rex

The IMDb Top 250 is one of my favorite lists to follow.  It’s a list of the best-rated movies by hundreds of thousands of users on the International Movie Database, imdb.com.  The Godfather had been #1 for the two years I’ve been following the list, and sources online state that it’s held the top spot for over a decade.

The Shawshank Redemption has long held the #2 spot.  Its rating has always hovered right next to The Godfather’s, and many message boards have bickered about whether Andy Dufresne’s spiritual epic would ever take the top spot.

And finally, a little over a week ago The Godfather was finally dethroned.  The big surprise that it wasn’t The Shawshank Redemption that took the final spot, but a brand new movie.  The Dark Knight, this summer’s number one blockbuster, climbed into the top five spots on its first night, and within two days held an unbelievable 9.5 weighted rating, which takes away points from movies that not many have seen.  This meant that The Dark Knight’s astronomical score was doubly impressive. The Dark Knight did what Shawshank could never do and took the #1 spot, blowing away The Godfather’s 9.1 weighted rating

The shift caused an uproar among fans of the list, who started putting in votes for the two movies — some trying to keep Dark Knight on top, others trying to restore order on the list and bring Dark Knight down a few notches.

Fans of The Dark Knight have won the battle so far:  The Godfather’s average has sunk a little while Dark Knight’s has leveled out a tenth of a point above The Godfather’s.  In fact, The Godfather even slipped down to #3 below Shawshank for a couple of days, before a flurry of positive votes brought Godfather back to #2.

Whether hype machine The Dark Knight, perennial classic The Godfather, or cult classic The Shawshank Redemption deserves the number one spot is not necessarily the point of this post.  It is merely to speculate how people will vote in the coming days, months, and years.

My prediction is that The Dark Knight will hold the number one spot for a month or two before slipping down to number two and gradually towards number five or so.  It will very likely settle in the bottom half of the top ten, slightly above Lord of the Rings 3, which peaked at #2 not long after coming out on the list but now sits at #14.  The thing is, The Dark Knight is a much better movie than LotR and has a more dedicated fan base, I think.  I wouldn’t call it out of the question for Dark Knight to stay at #1 for over a year based on the number of votes it has so far, which is pretty substantial and well over half of the votes that The Godfather holds.

What do you think will happen?