In 1989 I was caught up in the hysteria of Tim Burton's Batman, rating the thing VERY highly, but in the years that followed I looked at it with a little more critical eye and have found it to be a mediocre movie at best.

I doubt very seriously that I'll ever think that TDK is mediocre, but I also think it's also very likely that some of the people caught up in the hysteria over THIS movie will look at it a little differently 5 or 10 years from now. Instead of putting it in the top 5 or 10 movies OF ALL TIME I think they'll merely call it a great movie, possibly deserving a place in the AFI Top 100.

In this case it seems fanboyism is running rampant, but when I saw The Departed and There Will Be Blood, I was ready to put them up against the best films of all time and I think they hold up (for me) - so if someone wants to make that claim for TDK, it's their right. Only time will tell. Sometimes you see a masterpiece and just know...

Just get out and see The Dark Knight. I've been prone to hyperbole in the past, but this is easily the best genre picture of it's kind in a long time...if not of all time. I think it can stand alongside all the movies that have been mentioned in this thread.

I don't know - The Departed was a VERY good movie, maybe great, but not on a par with Godfather 1 & 2 or Goodfellas. Hell, I think Casino's better than The Departed.

And The Departed and There Will Be Blood are still VERY recent, so we haven't seen how well they age.

To each their own, because in my book The Departed > Casino. Easily. The Departed gets better each time I see it. (and in the case of TWBB, period pictures don't really 'age' the same way non period pictures do).

I'm pretty Shawshank was #1 at some point, but they've laso changed the scoring system over the years.

When was the last time The Godfather was not #1? I've been aware of IMDB's existence for only about 2.5 years, but it's always been #1 in that time frame.

Over on Superherohype they linked to a website that tracked this info. It showed 'The Godfather' as being ranked number 1 since 1999, except for a brief period in 2002.

So you think the opinions of others are silly and ridiculous?

Well maybe American Beauty was at #1 at sometime, but never when I was a member. It was ranked #2 for a pretty long time though.

Kudos to those dudes living in their mother's basement and who have time to create multiple accounts at IMDB, I guess.

The Thing > The Dark Knight.

Had to be said.

the Top 250 has been updated, still number 1 by .4 with 69,135 votes :)

Update: 9.5 score with 104,906 votes

This may very well be IMDb's #1 movie for a very long time.

Update: 115,340, 9.4 and still #1.

Could it be that it'll be #1 after the dust settles? I know The Godfather has a 9.1 rating, but it's been steady at 9.4 lately.

It has dropped .1 in the last few days, so we'll see.

i'll be fairly surprised if it maintains. it will have to endure the inevitable backlash of people who didn't see it the first weekend and will be somewhat let down after the now-astronomical hype. also, the haters who intentionally rebel against the hype.

Maybe, but how many of them would be considered "regular" voters which is what determines the Top 250? I think it'll certainly dip a little, but I'm a little surprised it's lasted this long...

I'm assuming that the 115,340 people who voted for The Dark Knight haven't seen The Rules of the Game.

^ Seriously. Most movies that attain a high ranking on the Top 250 do so within a few days of their release with a handful (maybe 10-15K) of voters giving it praise. Then they sink like a stone once the casual movie watchers finally see it and rank it. The fact that TDK has over 115K votes <i>and</i> is still #1 is pretty amazing. Even if it does drop from #1 I see it sticking around in the top 5 for a long time.

Exactly. When this was first up there early on, I figured that, like ROTK or any other fanboy movie, it would fall some and settle down around number 30 or so (BB is at #100), but at this rate I think it could be in the top 5 for a while...

ROTK was in the top five for years. Hell, I remember all three LOTR movies being in the top ten for years. It's about time they finally fell out of the top ten.

The Departed will probably age worse than other Scorsese movies because it's not a period piece.

There Will Be Blood on the other hand, is a masterpiece, one that will probably age wonderfully.

Most people, especially people under lets say 40 don't give a shit about movies made in the god damn 30's and 40's, hell even the 50's. That shit is TOO old. People aren't old enough to remember it (or born) when it was first released, and they sure as shit aren't going to rent something that old. Its the common stigma in life old=boring/uninteresting.

If it isn't called Wizard Of Oz, Gone With The Wind, It's A Wonderful Life, or Casablanca, nobody gives a shit. Its the modern time here, people want to see, vote, whatever, on more modern movies they grew up with. Do you think anybody that was alive to see The Rules of the Game hangs out on IMDB. No. Shit man my Grandma is 75 she never heard of The Rules of the Game and she sure as shit isn't on IMDB. She can barely handle her AOL email account.

I love TDK, and I think its about time for something else to be #1 I got sick of seeing The Godfather up there, I love Godfather and all, but its time to shake things up, time for some new blood.

Update: Still #1 with a 9.3 and 124,766 votes. So it's down .1 from the previous day, but still above Shawshank by .2. Yea, this thing isn't moving for a while.

Edit: Shawshank Redemption is now #2, with The Godfather at #3. Don't know when that happened. I suspect some TDK lovers/fanboys voted lots of 1's for The Godfather to help dethrone it and, in turn, they knocked it lower than #2.