A few weeks ago, Dan Trachtenberg of the Totally Rad Show was lamenting the fact that every single “top 10 of the decade list” was actually just a collection of each critic’s favorites of the decade. No critic included important films that they did not like, nor did they try to glean what audiences thought about the films. Their list was their list. And Tachtenberg wondered aloud to all his film-critic buddies about how one might go about compiling a ONE TRUE LIST. Well, I can tell you right now that there is no such thing as a One True List. Not really. It just can’t exist.
You see, there’s this thing called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (stay with me here) that states (via Wikipedia): “…certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known.” In other words, you can know how fast something is going, but not exactly where it is at any given moment; or you can know exactly where something is at any given moment, but not how fast it is going. The same works with public opinion on films: It is ever changing; you can know where a movie is on any given “best-of” chart by looking at it – but you can’t know by looking at it whether it is climbing, falling or staying steady in public estimation. (Seriously, stay with me.)
You also never know when something weird is going to come along and change the way we look at something. In the late ’90s, movie-geek Web sites began springing up all over the Internet, and as this new breed of reviewer started speaking in reverent tones about films like Star Wars, The Thing, Blade Runner and The Shawshank Redemption, audiences started to hold these movies as revered. That’s not to say they loved these films any more or less than before, but it suddenly became OK – mandatory even – to include them on “best-of” lists. Meanwhile, as critics gained distance from cutting-edge films, and as ideas, techniques and film styles became repeated, perfected and ultimately passé, certain films fell out of favor, some becoming forgotten or mostly ignored.
I want you to mentally compile a list of the very best films of the 1980s, the movies that really resonate with you. Most of you are probably compiling very similar lists. Films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, An Officer and a Gentlemen, The Dark Crystal, Gremlins, The Empire Strikes Back, The Thing, Ghostbusters, Blade Runner. Maybe you remember Raging Bull; maybe you don’t. Perhaps you’re like me and you threw Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan in there. Probably not. But where’s Platoon? Ordinary People? Mississippi Burning? House of Games? The Natural? My Dinner With Andre? Ran? Wings of Desire? You know, all the films that critics put on their best-of-the-decade lists 20 years ago?
Those films didn’t leave behind the impact that the intelligencia thought they would. Sure, filmmakers and critics still love and watch them while speaking of them in hushed – and, again, reverent – tones. But they aren’t the films that are considered to define that decade. They aren’t the films that run endlessly on cable and are rushed onto whatever new movie viewing format is readily available for the type of people who spend lots of money on such things. So when one considers a One True List, one needs to take cultural significance like box office into consideration.
In a vain attempt at a public display of futility, I have compiled a list of the TOP TEN FILMS OF THE DECADE as they were seen at the end of the decade. Here’s how I did it: I began with the box office grosses of each film – after all, this list needs to take public opinion into account. If everyone saw a particular movie, there had to be something really great going on, right? But as you’re already thinking to yourself, box office numbers isn’t going to cut it. So I created something I call the “Critique Modifier.” Using Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb, I created a percentage by averaging the RT Freshness score with the IMDb user ratings of the 50 highest-grossing films of the 2000s. For example, if a film had an 8.0 user rating, that became an 80 and was averaged with its Freshness rating (in this case, let’s say 70), to get it Critique Modifier of 75 percent. Then I simply multiplied the percentage against the domestic box office (foreign audiences tend to favor visuals and cannot hear bad acting – thus I left it to the native language speakers).
And the list below is the result of all that math. Some high grossers were knocked off by terrible reviews and lackluster user ratings (like Passion of the Christ, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen and Pirates of the Caribbean). And while your favorite, unrecognized indie film isn’t on here, neither is anyone else’s. This list may be worthless in 10 years – hell, there’s one movie on this list that might make you think it immediately irrelevant. But what the heck. Here goes. If you ever linked a review on Rotten Tomatoes, clicked a user rating on IMDb or bought a movie ticket in the last 10 years, you voted for this list. Here are your winners.
10) Iron Man
9) Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
8) Finding Nemo
7) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
6) Spider-Man 2
5) Spider-Man
4) The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
3) Shrek 2
1) Avatar
A few notes: The current No. 1 film is still The Dark Knight, but Avatar is less than $70 million away from robbing that top spot – something that WILL happen within the next few weeks, especially after its Golden Globe coup. Oddly enough, there are only two original films on this list: Avatar and Finding Nemo. Everything else is a sequel or adapted from previously existing material. And I don’t think there is a critic out there who would put Shrek 2 on a top 10 list of anything, but audiences loved it, critics loved it, IMDb users love it, and everyone paid to see it. So there you go – the best animated film of the decade wasn’t made by Pixar. It’s an interesting list. Not a lot of surprises. I’m sure even the most rabid of indie lovers are shrugging and nodding along with the list. No Michael Bay. No Twilight. Not too shabby.
Of course, will these be the movies we look back on as the classics of this era? Yeah, actually, I’m pretty sure we will. So there you go, Danny: your One True List. Best of the decade?