At the beginning of each semester Trinity teacher Mr. Chad Waggoner has the students in his film study class compile a top 20 movie list. The list, Waggoner told his students, should be comprised of the 20 greatest and most important movies of all time. “I want them to start thinking about the types of movies they consider good,” Waggoner said of the assignment. “In my opinion what makes a good movie first would be actors and acting. They’ve got to be top,” said Tyler Flashpoehler, a student in one of Waggoner’s film study sections. “Second would be music, and third would be how it’s produced.” “(A good movie) has got to be funny, interesting; it’s got to have some good music to it,” said Hunter Hepler, another student in Waggoner’s class. “A good movie can’t just be something that’s going to be a temporary emotional change,” Waggoner said. “It’s something that’s going to connect with the audience.” With clearly established criteria for a good movie, the question then becomes what makes a great movie? “If you’re going to say overall greatness, you’re going to have to give more weight, I believe, to the technical aspects of the art form: the acting, the story, how it was shot, the cinematography, the set design and things like that,” Waggoner said. “But that’s not to take away from a person’s own personal opinion. That’s one of the cool things about watching movies for us. We can look at movies and find it to be extremely enjoyable, and other people won’t really like it.” Erik Eaton echoed Waggoner when he said, “I think (a movie’s greatness) is more of a personal preference.” Eaton, a student in Principal Dan Zoeller’s film study class, also believes that great movies will be widely recognized. “Great movies will be agreed upon as great,” he said. “If it truly is a great movie, the general consensus will be that it is great.” Eaton’s assumption seems logical; if a movie is great, the majority of people will think that it is great. The data from Waggoner’s film study classes, however, do not support this claim. After doing some basic research on the films they wished to include in their list, Waggoner’s students submitted their top 20 lists. Using the movies the students listed, an overall top 10 was put together. Every movie in the top 10 of the student lists was assigned points based on its position in the list. A movie listed as No. 1 received 10 points, No. 2 received 9 points, No. 3 received 8 points, and on and on to the 10th movie listed. The stats are as follows: • 274 different movies were listed in the top 10 by the students in Waggoner’s two sections of film study. • 38 different movies were ranked No. 1. • 8 movies received a No. 1 ranking by more than one student. • “The Dark Knight” and “Saving Private Ryan” both received four No. 1 rankings, the most for any movie. Considered together, these statistics demonstrate an astounding lack of consensus. Movies from “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II” to “Marley and Me” to “Star Wars” were listed. The enormous scope of the movies that Waggoner’s students included in their personal top 10 suggests that personal preference is indeed an overriding factor in choosing the “greatest movies of all time.” “It’s completely a matter of personal opinion,” Andrew Murray, another member of Zoeller’s film study class, said. “Someone could like a certain topic over another topic. People are stubborn, so I think personal opinion reigns over technique.” Perhaps even more interesting than the variety of movies listed is the movies upon which students did agree. When the all the points received by each movie were totaled, the following top 10 was compiled (the number of points that each movie received is in parentheses): 1. “The Dark Knight” (130) 2. “Saving Private Ryan” (107) 3. “The Hangover” (64) 4. “Step Brothers” (57) 5. “The Shawshank Redemption” (51) 6. “Toy Story” (46) 7. “Friday” (42) 8. “Forrest Gump” (41) 9. “Inception,” “The Godfather,” and “Finding Nemo” (tied with 36 points each) 10. “Goodfellas” and “Coach Carter” (32 points each) Several general trends are highlighted in this group of movies. Excepting “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas,” all of the movies on this list are relatively recent. This underscores the fact that young movie watchers today haven’t had exposure to some of the older critically acclaimed films. “They (students) see newer movies and that forms their opinion. Newer movies are fresh in their minds, so that’s all they’re going to be thinking about when they make these lists,” Murray said. “I don’t think that these students have seen a great array of movies. They’ve seen more recent ones,” Eaton said. Waggoner agreed. “It’s simply that our guys haven’t had a real opportunity to see a lot of older films.” Another general trend is the preference shown to action and comedy movies over other genres. “I think (the movie taste of students) is very limited,” Eaton said. “They tend to rely heavily on violence and comedy as their favorites.” “The way Hollywood promotes these blockbusters, they target the adolescent teenage mind,” Waggoner said. “Most movies are targeted for that 18-to-26-year-old male movie ticket buyer.” “We (Trinity students) like action movies. Some of those movies are pretty funny. Some of them are interesting and cool to watch,” Hepler said. The last obvious trend that can be seen in the list is that the movies people like, such as “The Hangover” and “Step Brothers,” simply are not what critics would call great movies. While such movies are engaging in the theater, they lose their power as time passes; the emotional connection the viewer feels with the movie wears off. “Some of the movies, I would say, are technically nowhere near the great aspect of cinema,” said Waggoner, who is himself a published critic. “When you see a movie like ‘The Hangover’ make No. 3 on the list of all times, and ‘Step Brothers’ at No. 4, I believe what that simply is saying is that a lot of our students haven’t seen a lot of great films yet.” When asked if he would keep “The Hangover” in the top 10, Flashpoehler responded with a definitive, “Oh yeah, for sure.” Hepler agreed, saying: “‘The Hangover’ is a good movie. I think it should be where it is.” Eaton was more critical of the list. “I don’t think ‘Step Brothers’ is the fourth-greatest movie of all time, nor is ‘Toy Story,’ nor is ‘Friday,’ nor is ‘Inception.’ ‘Coach Carter’ is not the 10th-greatest movie of all time,” he said. “I think it’s not accurate in the least.” Murray sided with Eaton on the question of “Step Brothers” and “The Hangover.” “‘Step Brothers’ should not be in the top 10,” he said. “‘The Hangover’ shouldn’t be up there. I thought it was overrated.” Therein lies the caveat of the entire debate: “I thought.” Despite their differences in taste concerning movies, each person interviewed for this story felt that personal opinion about a movie played a key role in determining the movie’s inherent greatness. Perhaps Waggoner put it best when he said that movies are supposed to be debated and talked about and argued over. He said, “Movies are made for us to enjoy. They’re made for us to have a conversation about. They’re important for us because they take us away from our reality. That’s what makes going to the cinema so fun, and that’s what makes having debates and arguments over what are great films so enjoyable at the lunch table.”
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Top 10 movie lists spark debate about what’s great
February 15, 2012
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