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I wouldn't criticize The Godfather at all if it was labelled as "one" of the greatest movies ever and not "the" greatest movie ever".

Right you r Donte, Art is only what its perceived to be, and in this modern day and age we have some many perspectives and standards that we hold ourselves to our own boundaries. People like J & C Nolan challenge themselves to think outside the square, make new forms of Art, what we would analyse, compare and enjoy. Human emotions can be attained anywhere and anytime and i think TDK has broken the barrier for new ways of making a film and how to get the preferred result (emotions for certain characters).

Its like what i told my friend when we left the cinema - Not exactly what i expected (not a masterpiece) but still stunned, impressed and blown away!

I don't think that's there's much of a question that the Godfather is not the greatest movie ever. That's too subjective a statement to be either true or false.
However, it is an absolutely iconic modern film. It influenced all crime films that came after it, it changed the way we saw certain types of films and virtually created the crime epic genre.

It is too early to say if TDK will be that iconic. Will it influence the way we see superhero/action films? With the glut of superhero films on the market and lined up for coming years, I'm not so sure. I'm not sure it represents anything new. It may, however, become the yardstick which all other superhero films are measured by but that remains to be seen.

Well, theres no question we are seeing something fresh here, if anyone is going to follow anything its the Dark manner in which this movie was made and i do see that for upcoming Superhero movies, good call Jman. Iron Man 2 will be not as dark but will have elements of Alcohilism and Mass Production of weapons which will probably make the film less appealing to the Happy Family, but more appeal for Males age 15+. Studios will respond to this and probably make the Iron Man Franchise take more of a TDK like turn for a sequel than Spiderman 3.

I hope Captain America isn't goin to be the Saviour of this dark trend

tuan69 wrote:

I wouldn't criticize The Godfather at all if it was labelled as "one" of the greatest movies ever and not "the" greatest movie ever".

What are you talking about? Please, calm down and go to sleep already. There's no master list for the greatest film of all-time. I'm glad you liked "The Dark Knight". It was a decent film, in my opinion, but it certainly wasn't one of the greatest films of all-time. But, that's my opinion.

If you want to rank "The Dark Knight" in your top 5 or #1, go ahead. If you don't enjoy "The Godfather". Okay. Great. Next topic.

Sometimes the viewer is bad at watching certain movies and then calls those movies bad. It's all about your personal expectations based on what a movie promises to be. I think you shouldn't, for example, blame The Godfather for lack of comedy or blame The Dark Knight for lack of character development.

I think The Dark Knight deserves to be among the top movies if it satisfies it's audience in such a way that it exceeds the already incredibly high expectations that a lot of people had for this movie.

Wow. I know I have a lot to get too, but damn. I was floored when I read this. It is just a brilliant sentiment. It puts how I feel into words better than even I could. great job Thomassi.

The only definitive thing that can really be said on this topic, is that there is no Best movie of all time. There never has been, there never will be. We can all argue it till our hands get carpel tunnel syndrome. The only thing we have is our own personal favorites. We all have things that we find enjoyable and loving a film, like loving any other form of art, is subjective. We will all love films that others hate, and hate films that others love. Thats why film is an artform and not a math problem. I will defend the movies that I love against anything, because I know what makes them great to me. The simple fact that when I am watching them, I am happier than I was before the movie started. I am having fun. I am enjoying myself. That is why we go to the movies. To enjoy what we are watching. The Dark Knight is one of the 2 most enjoyable films I have ever seen. I compare it against the other films that I have a great love and passion for. I don't know yet if I like it better than Judgment Day, but I know its on that level. I'm seeing it again tomorrow in IMAX, and I will have a better sense of whether it is better or not then. I don't have to wait 5 years to know. Because my best films are always changing. I know in 5 years, my top 100 will look very, very different. Because as we change as people, what we find enjoyable changes. I made a list when I was 16, and it is vastly different from now. So for now, I can call the Dark Knight one of the greatest films I have ever seen. And I really don't care if I don't feel the same in 5 years. Right now, if I could choose any film to watch in the entire world of films, I'd pick The Dark Knight, and thats what makes the greatest film to me. The one movie you would take on a deserted island if you could only have one. Right now, for me, that is up in the air between two films. The Dark Knight is one of those films.

Spot on Geez, Very well put. IT's all opinion and nobody's opinion is better than anybody else.

Ha Ha, Right at this moment if i had to choose 2 to take with me on a deserted island it would be Pirates of the Caribbean and The Dark Knight. Wait can i also take Princess Mononoke and Signs?

Then I would also stick Lord of the Rings and The Lion King under my shirt without anybody knowing

740 people gave dark knight a 1/10 on imdb............... i didn't realize that many FMers decided not to play it

Those 740 came from Godfather fanboys.

To make a quick point, if movie taste was subjective, then there wouldn't be much point posting here at all, now would there

My point is that I think there are a few flaws to TDK that stops it being the best film ever. It's certainly nowhere near as good as Terminator 2, for example, Geez, but I am interested to see how you feel about the two movies compared after a while.

Thomas, there's a huge difference between criticising a film for not begin a comedy, and criticising a film for not having a character development. Even when a film is popcorn entertainment, it needs to have characters doing something, progressing somehow. And everyone, from writers to execs, demand it. It just doesn't happen very well at times. But, I don't have too much of a problem with TDK in terms of character development. Dent is done so well, and while Batman doesn't have much, the whole question of whether to give up or not was enough to keep me interested.

I think it was Becs who said it best- the true quality of TDK is that it success will prompt studios to attempt to make darker, more intelligent blockbusters. Next up: Watchmen!

All this talk is absolutely pointless. I find the fact that people actually care about the top 250 a little stupid. Don't get me wrong, i consistently look up movies on IMDB, and yes, they do eventually show a fair reflection of what most people think, but they are by no means a cornerstone for films.

Personally, i have always said that GoodFellas is my favorite movie EVER, and that hasn't changed at all. So, the fact that it was not number one was disappointing for me. However, i also know people who thought the very same film was over-rated, and while i believe they are idiots, i can guarantee you they think the same about me for having it as my number one.

What i'm saying is that this is all subjective to peoples tastes. While two people are disappointed about GoodFellas placement in the top 250, both those people have different reasons, one thinks it's too low (which it is DAMMIT!) and the other think it's too high.

At the end of the day, the people who have already voted for TDK have decided that it warrants this rating, and no amount of bitching will change that. Frankly, i find it more horrifying that 3.5% of the people who rated Druids gave it a 10, while to me it was the biggest steaming pile of shit served this side of sun! (yes, my worst movie of all time)..

What i'm saying is; if you like TDK then good for you, and if you don't, then good for you too. In my opinion the movie topped Batman Begins, which to me was a comic-book masterpiece. And yes, i am one of those many who gave it a 10 because i fully believe it deserves it.

Wow, who shit in the Cheerios this weekend?? Now you boys play nice...

That is a lot of arguing about a movie's rating. Sure I think that the 48 K votes giving it a 9.5 is a bit overblown but it was a good movie. As a comic fan it was the best comic movie ever made. As a movie fan it was spectacular and certainly deserves to be in the top 20 or 30 at least. Better than Citizen Kane or Shawshank Redemption for me? Not likely but it was a work of art and Ledger deserves a mention at the Oscars at least. I think he was creepier than Hannibal Lector but not as creepy as Chigurgh. And both of those characters were much better in their book versions whereas I think Ledger's Joker is as good as any Joker in the books.

Leetsu, my friend, I knew I liked you for a reason. One of my life rules is to never trust a man who doesn't like Cuckoo's Nest.

Donte was that a shot at me?

I never said I didn't like Cuckoo's Nest, I just don't think it should be that high on the list is all. It is a classic and is a fantastic movie, I know these things.

OK, so i read this thread up until about the end of page 2, and i felt a lot of points were being repeated fairly often and the discussion was turning into a Godfather vs. TDK....so here's my take:

The Dark Knight is definitely NOT the best movie of all time. It may have the greatest villainous performance of all time, some of the most awesome action sequences of all time etc. but it definitely is NOT the BEST MOVIE.

That being said, it definitely IS one of the best. Christopher Nolan has taken a COMIC BOOK - geared towards children - story, and produced a movie rife with themes of the fear of anything different, and was it numbersix who mentioned a "good man's descent into evil" in relation to the Godfather?? HELLOO!! Aaron Eckhart may not have had as much screen time in TDK, but he sure produced a performance nearly as brilliant and moving as Heath Ledger. It is my belief that the scene at the end where he forces Gordon to look into his boy's eyes and tell him it'll be OK is one of the most chilling scenes of this movie and Dent executed it to perfection!

As for all talk about the 'fanboy effect', there are now close to 70,000 votes in on IMDb, and guess what, the rating went up!! Yes, it is now officially 9.6!! And I'm pretty sure that this movie is going to settle down somewhere in the 9.0-9.3 region, and although that's a bit high in comparison to some of the greatest movies of all time (that ARE and ARE NOT in the T10), as a movie in itself, i think TDK more than warrants the rating as you could not have made a better movie given the need to stay true to the comic origins of the movie, and the need to incorporate mind-blowing action sequences and 'popcorn movie' effects to satisfy the summer blockbuster audience.

Last summer, I watched Transformers and rated it as NUMBER 1 on my T10 list of 'popcorn movies'. However, it wouldn't ever be seen on my T10 list of movies as a whole, because it didn't have the undercurrent of social commentary, darkness and dynamic characters that TDK has shown us. In addition, I also believe that the suave, sophisticated method in which the action sequences in TDK were shot trumps those of Transformers any day, and that is why TDK is definitely on my T10 list of movies of ALL TIME, for the amazing feat of taking a comic book which would ideally turn it into a popcorn movie, yet producing a movie that had so much more substance - in fact, about as much substantially as possible while staying true to it's comic book origins - than any movie of it's genre and the end product being a work of art that in my mind, gives movies like 'The Godfather', 'Memento', 'V for Vendetta' and 'LotR' a good run for their money.

To sum up, I'll say that TDK is most definitely going to be in my T10 list for a long long time (unless a few movies that match its caliber come out within 50 years or so, which is possible but not probable) but what I cannot know at present is how long it will remain in my T5 list. I currently estimate it at #3, and I'm sure it'll remain there for a few years at least - and I'm sure of this based on the fact that you just know some movies will hold up to repeat viewings, or even mature with repeats and this is most definitely one of them. But what I cannot be sure of is whether 'V for Vendetta' (which is my #4 - I haven't seen several movies on a lot of 'Top Movie' lists, so there!!) will turn out to be a better movie than TDK 4 years from now. In this respect, I agree with whoever it was that said movies should be made to wait for 5 years before they are allowed onto the T250 list, which would follow the example of several great institutions such as several 'Halls of Fame', the 'Nobel Prize', etc all of whom wait to observe the longterm effect of a person's work before awarding them the prize.

So those are my thoughts, and I won't be reading this thread again, just because it's too tedious on the eye to go through the mountain of posts generated daily. If you need to reply to a point that I have raised and think it absolutely mandatory that I read it, mail me at devilsfriend88@hotmail.com.

Finally, I'll close off by addressing a minor point which received major attention: the need for 'Lucius Fox'. Remember that for all the character-building, thematic content and brilliant social commentary this film possesses, it remains (at heart) a COMIC BOOK ADAPTATION. The core fan-base are comic-book readers and to unnecessarily mess with the foundation of the Bat-world by combining two characters as one (Fox and Alfred as suggested by - was it numbersix??) is exactly the kind of meddling that these people wouldn't appreciate from Nolan (who wrote the script along with his brother, which I didn't know till yesterday). That, in essence, is why the 'flaw' you found with the movie is NOT a flaw, but rather a 'necessary evil', if you will.

And with that, it's ashkul, over and out!

numbersix_99 wrote:

It's certainly nowhere near as good as Terminator 2

yikes.. i haven't seen TDK yet... but that statement is very discouraging

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