Is The Dark Knight the best movie ever?
By PETER KEOUGH | July 23, 2008
Every summer, it seems like another superhero movie has broken some box-office record or other and made movie history. This past year, Spider-Man 3 made $151,116,516 in its opening weekend, beating out the previous record holder, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which pulled in $135,634,554 in 2006. This year is no exception: as a recent press release from Warner Bros. proclaims, The Dark Knight has surpassed them all, taking in a total of $158,411,483.Given that ticket prices are forever on the rise, that doesn’t necessarily mean Knight attracted the most viewers of all time. But ticket for ticket, Batman still beat Clark Gable — badly — this weekend. The 1939 classic Gone with the Wind made $945,000 when it first opened, back when ticket prices averaged $0.23. That means only 4.1 million fans chipped in two bits to see it that first weekend, while some 23 million paid an average of $6.88 to catch Knight the first few nights after it was released.
The more cynical might suggest that the box office doesn’t have much to do with cinema quality. In which case the latest returns from the Internet Movie Database’s Top 250 are of interest. In it, Knight has skyrocketed among online voters to be rated the best film of all time, receiving more than 91,000 votes in less than a week, with an average rating of 9.4. That puts it ahead of The Godfather in second place at 9.1 and leaves Wind in the dust in 172nd place with an 8.1 rating. Then consider that number three on the list is The Shawshank Redemption (virtually tied with The Godfather with a 9.1), which handily beats out Citizen Kane way back in the 28th spot with an 8.6. Maybe the cynics are right after all.
Related:
King maker, The medium is the movie, Pan-American, More 
- King maker
Anybody who’s read Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men at the very least that it was set in the ’30s during the Depression. But if you watch Steve Zaillian’s adaptation and look closely at the license plates, you’ll notice the date: 1954. Stark realization: Steve Zaillian can’t put All the King’s Men together again. By Peter Keough
- The medium is the movie
In almost every movie you go to these days you’ll see another screen — a television, a computer, even another movie screen — within the screen you’re watching.
- Pan-American
To understand the difference between Hollywood’s notion of fairy tales and Guillermo del Toro’s, compare the faun in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with the one in Pan’s Labyrinth . Fauny girl: Innocence finds its way through Pan’s Labyrinth . By Peter Keough
- Review: Waltz With Bashir
The so-called anti-war-film genre has lately "distinguished" itself with a flurry of Iraq-war flops featuring earnest polemics.
- Word play
The end of the world has always appealed to movie audiences, no more so than now that the prospect is looking more and more likely.
- Interview: Paul Rudd
"With Lou Ferrigno there was also that element of excitement that I think we had with Rush."
- Flashbacks: August 11, 2006
These selections, culled from our back files, were compiled by Doug Fleischer, Sam MacLaughlin, and Hannah Van Susteren.
- Company man
In at least one of its toss-away scenes, Joshua Seftel’s War, Inc. rises to the level of brutal bad taste that distinguishes master satirists from Jonathan Swift to Stanley Kubrick.
- Dead reckoning
Fo r years it looked as if George Romero had hit a dead end.
- Frill rides
Looking back on a time when action sequences unfolded without the currently fashionable veil of rapid editing and CGI.
- Legend of the last
They all start the same way.
- Less
Topics:
Features
, Entertainment, Movies, Charles Foster Kane, More
, Entertainment, Movies, Charles Foster Kane, Clark Gable, Less
