Is "The Dark Knight" the Best Film of All Time?

The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) has a list of the user-ranked greatest films of all time. Some of the films in the top ten are understandable, most notably The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, and Casablanca, but the list is in no way accurate. Now IMDB users, however, have reached a new height of mediocre movie madness by making The Dark Knight the number one movie of all time.

There's no 81/2, 2001:A Space Odyssey, or Citizen Kane even close to this film in the Top 250 that IMDB lists. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back are currently very close to it, however, which just goes to show one of the many reasons the public has declared this film the greatest ever: it's very recent in their memory and it's an entertaining, action-packed fantasy flick.

But you also have to look at the way IMDB's Top 250 is decided. Users vote on films from a scale of 1 through 10, and avid fans of current films are very apt to log in and vote on a film they recently saw and enjoyed more than they are when it comes to older films, which the general public doesn't tend to watch as much. The Dark Knight already has nearly 47,000 votes. A highly acclaimed film from 1963 that is often considered one of the greatest of all time, 81/2, has only around 19,000 and is currently number 151 on the list, to put this in perspective. In conclusion, this list is laughable.

But why is that so many are placing this film in such high regard? Well, of course Heath Ledger's death has a lot to do with it. His role in Brokeback Mountain earned him worldwide acclaim and made him a household name. James Dean, who never played a homosexual on screen but had relationships with men off camera, became legendary after his death, and there hasn't been a modern James Dean or Marilyn Monroe, so audiences are trying to make Heath Ledger into one of these icons. But we need to quit saying he's the next James Dean; Heath Ledger will always be Heath Ledger and James Dean will always be James Dean. They are not, nor will they ever be, the same person.