Shawshank Redemption #2 on iMDB -- why? (1 Viewer)

[Rob Gillespie]

I'm not saying Star Wars is better than Shawshank...but certainly more people have seen it

But how many people see a film doesn't necessarily mean they will like it. A lot of people will see SW, LOTR, whatever and dislike them immediately. Shawshank appeals to a much broader spectrum of taste than sci-fi/fantasy/whatever. I could never prove it, but I have a feeling more people would view Shawshank and love it than would do for SW.

 

[Scott Weinberg]

I think The Shawshank Redemption deserves every drop of praise it earns. I love it and I do think it's an excellent film. Is it in my Top 20? No. There are hundreds of movies that I consider excellent that didn't make my Top 20.

And I can clear one small thing up: if you re-vote for a movie at IMDb, it just takes your most recent score. In order to 'stuff the ballot-box' (which certainly could be the case here), you'd need to login under different user names and vote repeatedly that way.

I can certainly understand Martin's bewilderment at the statistics (particularly the number of votes overall), but I have no problem with people praising the film loudly and enthusiastically.

 

[Carlo_M]

I have never read the novella, but there is no doubt in my mind that this is one of those cases where the film transcends the book.

And you'd be wrong, in my opinion.

In fact, this movie is a NEAR-WORD-FOR-WORD adaptation of the novella, there were very few things changed by Mr. Darabont, who is a big Stephen King fan.

In fact, movies based on King's works get bad raps because they are such *bad* adaptations of his novels. The good ones (Shawshank, Stand By Me, The Green Mile) are very close to his novels. The bad ones deviate quite greatly from his written word.

This is just a little PSA by me to get people to read the book if you have a chance. The written word is a bit more expressive and adds nuances to this great film. I loved the movie, I loved the novel. Read it if you get a chance.

 

[Scott Weinberg]

In fact, this movie is a NEAR-WORD-FOR-WORD adaptation of the novella

Except for the title!

 

[Scott Weinberg]

Agree totally. And I'd add Misery to that list, despite some noticable deviations from the source material.

 

[Mark_vdH]

And (Kubricks's) The Shining is the proverbial exception to the rule....?

I consider Shawshank to be a today's Casablanca: certainly not perfect in a technical/objective kind of way, but with a tone, an atmosphere, that resonates with almost every human being.....

 

[Rob Tomlin]

I really like Shawshank quite a bit.

That being said, add me as another who doesn't "get" why this would be ranked at number 2 on IMDB.

The Home Theater Forum had a AFI challenge a while back. Here is the complete list of Top 100 films as voted by those on HTF who participated:

The total list
1 Citizen Kane
2 The Godfather
3 Lawrence of Arabia
4 Casablanca
5 2001: A Space Odyssey
6 It's a Wonderful Life
7 The Wizard of Oz
8 Rear Window
9 Vertigo
10 Star Wars
11 Psycho
12 Gone with the Wind
13 The Maltese Falcon
14 North by Northwest
15 Raiders of the Lost Ark
16 Singin' in the Rain
17 The Godfather, Part 2
18 The Bridge on the River Kwai
19 Dr. Strangelove
20 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
21 Chinatown
22 Snow White
23 Jaws
24 Schindler's List
25 On the Waterfront
26 Ben-Hur
27 The Third man
28 The Graduate
29 To Kill a Mockingbird
30 City Lights
31 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
32 Taxi Driver
33 Sunset Blvd
34 General
35 Double Indemnity
36 Duck Soup
37 High Noon
38 Apocalypse Now
39 Clockwork Orange
40 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
41 Grapes of Wrath
42 Goodfellas
43 Empire Strikes Back
44 Raging Bull
45 King Kong
46 Sunrise
47 Modern Times
48 Patton
49 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
50 Apartment

51 Some Like It Hot
52 12 Angry Men
53 Bride of Frankenstein
54 Best Years of Our Lives
55 All About Eve
56 Fantasia
57 All Quiet on the Western Front
58 Annie Hall
59 Manchurian Candidate
60 West Side Story
61 Sound of Music
62 Big Sleep
63 Sting
64 Goldfinger
65 Rebecca
66 Touch of Evil
67 Notorious
68 M*A*S*H
69 Bonnie and Clyde
70 Paths of Glory
71 Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind
72 Pinocchio
73 It Happened One Night
74 Manhattan
75 Philadelphia Story
76 E.T.
77 African Queen
78 His Girl Friday
79 Frankenstein
80 Wild Bunch
81 Pulp Fiction
82 Network
83 Bringing Up Baby
84 Cool Hand Luke
85 Searchers
86 Silence of the Lambs
87 Streetcar Named Desire
88 Gold Rush
89 French Connection
90 Night of the Hunter
91 Back to the Future
92 American Graffiti
93 Platoon
94 Fargo
95 Rocky
96 Do the Right Thing
97 My Fair Lady
98 Unforgiven
99 Stagecoach
100 Shane

Honorable mention films (10 that just missed our list)
Amadeus, Toy Story, The Exorcist, The Right Stuff, Intolerance, Dr. Zhivago, Dances With Wolves, The Deer Hunter, From Here to Eternity, The Conversation >>>>>


Unless I missed it, Shawshank is nowhere to be found!

 

[Paul_Sjordal]

Aw c'mon. It's a top-whatever movie list based on a popular vote. What do you expect?

Citizen Kane is way down at #9. Kurosawa's Ran is way down at #75.

The Godfather trilogy, the Star Wars trilogy and the Lord of the Rings trilogies were all good, but do they really deserve to be that high on the list?

These movie lists based on popular votes are always distorted. Don't read too much into them.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

And (Kubricks's) The Shining is the proverbial exception to the rule....?

Anyone I know (including myself) who read and liked the book were lukewarm to loathing of Kubrick's version. The movie starred Jack, the book starred the Overlook Hotel. I'll take the book.

I agree with the above poster that the best King movies are the one's where he had a hand in the production and the script was almost word for word. Kubrick's Shining was so different, it really stretched the "based on a book by" credit.

 

[Ricardo C]

The Godfather trilogy, the Star Wars trilogy and the Lord of the Rings trilogies were all good, but do they really deserve to be that high on the list?

I hate it when people ask this sort of question. Obviously, to the people who voted on such lists, they ARE worthy. To you (and many others) they are not. It's a question that can't be settled, so I don't understand why people ask "yeah, fine, but are they REALLY that good?" Do you expect the Almighty Film God to appear and give you a definitive answer? It's not gonna happen.

 

[MartinTeller]

Again... it's not really about who likes what. It's the number of votes. Look, here's the top 5 vote-getters on iMDB (not talking about scores, just the number of votes)

90949 - Pulp Fiction
101271 - Star Wars
101605 - The Shawshank Redemption
102515 - The Matrix
105643 - Fellowship of the Ring

Now, which one looks like the odd man out? The other 4 movies all have HUGE followings, especially among young men, which is probably the majority of iMDB voters.

Never mind the scores (we could debate all month about how worthy it is, and we'd end up nowhere). All I'm saying is that it's surprising to me that that many people would log on to iMDB and register a vote for a movie that, although it may be very much loved by its fans, doesn't seem to have an exceptionally large following of devotees. People don't seem to have the same level of fanaticism for TSR as they do for the other movies on that top 5 vote-getters list. You don't see a lot of Shawshank Redemption fan pages... or, surprisingly, any "When will we get a Shawshank SE?" threads. (There are vague rumors about an SE in 2004, but no one seems to have any details or confirmation.)

Another theory is that maybe people are more likely to vote for Shawshank because they assume that the more fanboy-ish movies already have enough supporters, so they want to vote for an underdog. That could be a factor.

 

[Rob P S]

Shawshank is a perfect movie and many people love it. Maybe that's why it is ranked so highly on IMDB. If you ever want to hear someone praise it, hang out with me. I'll praise it all night long.

 

[Kevin Grey]

I think Roger Ebert can explain the Shawshank phenomenon better than I can.

From his The Great Movies review of Shawshank:

 

[TheLongshot]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is the fact that it was made in the past 10 years. Those films have an advantage on IMDB, because it is more likely someone has seen it. People who browse IMDB are more likely to vote for what it currently out, rather than for an older film.

BTW, I also think it is one of the top 10 films ever. I saw it on its original theatrical run and fell in love with it ever since then. It is the definition of a perfect film.

Jason

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Shawshank Redemption #2 on iMDB -- why?

Why not?



It's got the second most votes. As to why it got many votes? That many people registered on IMDB cared to vote for it.

Personally, I love the movie.

 

[Brian Lawrence]

Now, which one looks like the odd man out? The other 4 movies all have HUGE followings, especially among young men, which is probably the majority of iMDB voters.

Personally, I thought the movie sucked rotten eggs, but 95% percent of the people I know loved it. I don't think it looks odd getting that many votes, as most everyone has now seen the film, and that it's popularity and reputation seems to grow each year.

 

[Adam_S]

In fact I was stunned to find that Shawshank Redemption was not on the revoted HTF list. I believe Seth said it lacked only a few points of making it into the 'new 25' that were combined with the 25 voted off the list. 25 films were voted out of this 50 and voted back on to the list, the list was then revoted.

I for one consider Shawshank Redemption to be one of the finest films of all times, it's number 7 in my list (see my sig). My best friend holds it as the best film ever made (and he's a film fanatic!). A reader above called it a modern Casablanca, I would disagree slightly. Casablanca was an enormous success when it was released, and it has been considered a great film nearly since it's release. A better comparison would be to say that Shawshank Redemption is a modern-era Wizard of Oz or It's a Wonderful Life. Both those films were not very successful on their initial releases (IAWL was a near disaster) but found an audience and had their greatness discovered via many playings on television. Shawshank has done the same on home video and television (TNT). Virtually everyone I knew in my high school of 2400 in a mid sized mid-western city had seen the film and considered it one of their favorites.

The film itself is powerful and moving. It's dark but compelling with an odd veneer of hope that somehow works because of (or despite) the dichotomy. The characters are absolutely fabulous, the acting is up there with The Godfather, the script is perfect and the story never makes a single misstep. I find the photography to be more rich every time I go back to the film (and I usually see it a few times a year, probably more than any other film in my top ten). The score enhances and complements the film but never overstates itself. In many ways, I see Shawshank as a classic Hollywood film made in the modern era. It also helps that the story is from one of the two authors of this century most likely to be remembered and read for hundreds of years.

Shawshank is not on lists like the AFI and S&S because the critics and directors are of a different generation than the one that loves this film. While theirs was a generation that grew up with films like It's a Wonderful life and Wizard of Oz as staples of TV; our generation has grown up with Shawshank Redemption. For most contempory critics, Shawshank was another film among the few hundred films they reviewed for that year alone (and it was praised and nominated for quite a lot of oscars). The film is also finding a place and audience in film schools as well, I know they've used the film to demonstrate almost any aspect of filmmaking here at USC (btw I keep seeing The Iron Giant shown for classes, so they have good taste). Give Shawshank Redemption another 20 years and it will probably begin to crack those 'greatest films' lists--new generations will bring their own favorite films (and agendas) to add to the lists.

Also it's worth noting that very very few major Hollywood film from the past ten years are on the S&S lists, and I don't believe there were any from the year 2000 onward. However several foreign films from both periods did make the lists. Consider the newest films on the S&S lists, In the Mood for Love and Spirited Away (both excellent, outstanding films which I have on DVD) but they're also very widely accoladed foreign films. That means that most critics probably made the effort to see them and probably only saw another 5-10 japanese or hong kong films that were from the same years as those films, and maybe 50 or more foreign films (from that year) total. So it's much easier for those films to not be forgotton--they don't have to compete nearly as much. (I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the foreign critics polled stacked their lists either against Hollywood cinema or with a majority of films from their own countries. I'd have to check the individual listings but recent foreign films may have had an advantage over recent Hollywood films).

And I find IMDB to be as or more valid than many other lists. There will be some skewing because of militant fan bases (tarentino, lotr, SW etc), but notice how many classic films are listed in that top list! Kurasawa's Ran is 75 on a popular film list! That's a better ranking than it gets in the S&S poll, should we ignore the S&S poll because they didn't rank Ran high enough? The value of popular votes is that they don't protect an elitist echelon of 'cineastes' who have certain sacred cows that they champion just as strongly as any LOTR or Tarentino fan. You could almost say that the IMDB list is a list based on merit, a film HAS to appeal to a broad range of people to stay on the list, a film that just appeals to art house crowds for being so edgy: "it's a guy all in white, against a white wall--one shot--just staring at the audience for, like, 20 minutes!... It's the greatest thing ever!" will not survive, because people will recognize it for what it is--pretentious stupidity masquerading as intellectualism. Instead a film must appear on a much broader level--the way acknowledged popular classics like Casablanca, The Godfather, and It's a Wonderful life do.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

"it's a guy all in white, against a white wall--one shot--just staring at the audience for, like, 20 minutes!... It's the greatest thing ever!"

It's sad that there are people out there who believe that.

 

[Matt Pelham]

Well Shawshank is my number 2 of all time as well http://www.ymdb.com/user_top20_view.asp?usersid=5899

so I have no disagreements!

The Shawshank Redemption is probably the closest thing to a perfect movie if there ever was one, and I will cherish it forever.

 

[Steve Felix]

Its long standing spot at the top of the IMDb list gives it high visibility on the site, which probably leads to the unusual number of votes. I expect it got there honestly in the first place, though. Although most experts don't love it, I've never heard of anyone that didn't like it (well, except Brian L.).

As much as I like it, I don't think it would make my top 50. It's immensely satisfying -- who doesn't enjoy the constant stream of setups and payoffs? -- but it doesn't have the depth (or at least ambiguity) that in my opinion gives a movie power.

When I told my sister about its high ranking, she said, "There aren't many good movies with happy endings." I think the key is that the happy ending is itself a payoff and not an arbitrary, manipulative choice. The characters earn it and the audiences love it. It ends on the word "hope!"