LotR Takes Top Spot on IMDB

Dwarf_Sibling writes "Hard to believe but with over 11,000 votes tallied LoTR:FoTR has displaced "The Godfather" as the highest rated movie at IMDB. Over time I'd guess this will fall lower, but this is an amazing accomplishment for a fantasy movie."

Comments

Better than the Godfather?

[banuaba]

Don't get me wrong, but I don't think that LOtR was any better than the godfather, or for that matter, better than any of the top ten movies on the IMDB's list. While it was great, and I was happy to see it twice this week, it just doesn't have what it takes to beat the godfather (for that matter, it doesn't beat the rest of the top ten, by and large).
I mean, yes, it was great. Great FX, great cast, great story. But better than Citizen Kane? no way. I mean, the movie it knocked out of the top ten was Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. In my mine, there's no contest. Strangelove wins every time.

Nothing finer than starting off monday morning burning some karma.

I don't agree

[mirko]

The problem is that there are lots of newbies who recently began voting on IMDB hence this "all new - all beautiful" effect this had on the votes.

Now, I'd be curious to see if it'll still be at the same place in several months whenever an even more over-hyped blockbuster will have taken place.

Don't take me wrong, I am not flaming whoever for this choice but I firmly consider that there should be a separate voting booth for the film which are less than 2 years old (IE: which are either still playing or not yet available on DVD/LD/DivX ;-)/VHS/Betamax... ).

Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

No one should be allowed to rate movies until one has seen a broad enough range of movies to make a valid judgement. This must include a grounding in early cinema, silent pictures, non-American cinema, classic Hollywood cinema, cinema noir, angry-young-man school, B pictures, new wave cinema, independent cinema, amateur movies, etc.

And no, seeing Casablanca once on your local PBS station does not qualify you as an expert on the history of moving pictures. The only way to become an authority is to view several thousands of movies whose release dates are balanced across the first 100 years of movie making. Only then can a reasonable judgement of what is really "the best" be offered.

Amazed that people like it so much

[Frog]

NOTE: I've read the book about 15 times over the years, so I'm not exactly a casual LOTR fan, but nor am I a rabid "Gandalf is God" fan.

One of the very few negative reviews I've found expresses exactly my feelings about the movie.

Basically I thought the film was OK as big superproductions go, but I was disappointed that it doesn't add anything to the book. On the contrary, it seems to replace most of what's good with tired old Hollywood shticks: meaningful glances, silly special effects, poor character development, ugly sets (the Elves' residences are especially disappointing), and so on.

There's a very few things I liked: the Hobbiton sets, Bilbo and Gandalf smoking a pipe, the grief-stricken fellowship outside Moria, maybe a few other things. The rest seems like a big waste to me.

Re:Amazed that people like it so much

[ergo98]

After just about every movie that is an adaptation of a book, endless droids pipe on about how it "wasn't as good as the book": Is this not a given? Has there ever been a movie that's been "as good" as the book?

Firstly, books have more leeway timewise: They can go from 200 pages to 1000 pages and people don't bat an eye. Movies, on the other hand, are from 1 hour 30 minutes to 3 hours tops, with Lord of the Rings pushing the upper limits: It was absolutely impossible to fit in every nuance of the book without either making this into a 10 hour movie, or splitting the series out into about 8 movies (having said that I will say this: I think separating the movies at the same points as where the book separated was a mistake, and instead book 1 should have covered a movie and a half, with books 2 and 3 occupying less: There is just less interesting content with each passing book) : Neither of which is a reasonable option without the project having been canned a long time ago. Other complaints such as the missing poems and songs are questionable given that making this movie into a musical or poem reading movie would have commercially ruined it (in other words it would have never happened).

..but I was disappointed that it doesn't add anything to the book

I don't understand this complaint: How could the movie `add' something to the book without raising the ire of even more hardcore Tolkien fans? The small changes that were made for the movie were nuances and even still stories such as the MSNBC one are groaning about who was the one to dismiss the idea of going through the Mines, so imagine if they just created new storylines all together...

There will always be people who are displeased when one of their favourite books is made into a movie: There is no way that the filmmaker can encapsulate your visualizations, so when you see it if you're not willing to accept theirs as a credible version then you'll be disappointed. There's also always the `attempting to be academically elite' that will wave off this film with a dismissive brush to appear more critical, as if somehow that is a desired trait.

Lies, damn lies, and...

[Nick Number]

This would seem to demonstrate that LoTR has satisfied its target audience, us geeks. It remains to be seen whether it will become a cultural juggernaut like Star Wars that appeals to all segments of the population.

It's worth remembering that newer films tend to achieve high ratings initially. By my count, 33 of the top 100 rated films at imdb were made in the last ten years. The database hasn't been around that long, and young people are more active on the net than older ones, so you're bound to see more votes for movies that have come out recently.

Lists like this are meaningless anyway. They only serve to stir up discussion and draw attention to good films that people may have forgotten.

And no, I haven't seen it yet, but I will.

IMDB User Bias

[Cloudmark]

While there have been some posts highlighting the fact that the IMDB rating is only representative of those individuals with web-access, I think this doesn't fully address the limits of the IMDB ratings and how in particular they may not accurately reflect this film.
Specifically, the IMDB ratings are the product of those individuals who care enough about a film to take the time to enter a rating. It is likely to contain significantly more strong positive or negative reactions and far fewer moderate reactions than other means of statistical analysis. This can produce skewed results.
Furthermore, to make use of the old 'geeks and dungeons & dragons/tolkienesque fantasy' stereotype, while it is highly doubtful that Hollywood would produce a film with such a small target audience, the IMDB is particularly biased towards this group. In my experience, there is some validity to the claim that computer 'geeks' have generally had a higher level of exposure to fantasy novels and have had more opportunities to form opinions based on this exposure. Tolkien, at least within the circles I frequent, has always been a favourite of computer professionals. While these are not the only people who will see the film, they are the group most likely to head home and make use of an online rating service to make their opinions known and to have the tools available to do so.
To summarize my own rather rambling post, I think there is some justification for the belief that those people who are both willing and able to use the IMDB rating system may be bias through their own background and interests to grant this movie an abnormally high rating.
Before I conclude, however, I would like to say that I did enjoy the film a great deal and would not hesitate to say that it is one of the better films released in recent years, though not the best ever.