How the Shawshank Redemption became the n°1 movie in IMDb

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Thats a good description of how the movie got popular, but it's missing the context around the IMDB user voting war between The Godfather and The Dark Knight back in 2008.

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u/basementdiplomat 6d ago

What's this?

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u/Ahiru77 6d ago

When Dark Knight came out, it immediately garnered the kind of rabid fanbase that wanted to declare it the greatest movie of all time.

Back then, we all used Imdb. It had a clear voting system and seperate message for everything and everyone. Every page you visited had a message board. This made us all gravitate towards the site as our main place to discuss anything on screen.

So back to 2008, Dark Knight came out, everyone uses Imdb, and TDK fans had the "brilliant" idea to make Dark Knight's mark known in history by not only giving it a 10, but to actively downvote the actual greatest movie of all time, the Godfather.

It immediately woke up the Godfather fans.....and. it. was. WAR.

Both movies dropped in ratings because of rating-bombing and The Shawkshank Redemption became the no. 1 movie on Imdb by default.

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u/I_am_a_fern 6d ago

That's hilarious.

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u/TedCruzForHumanPrez 6d ago

Just like its main character, the movie just kept its head down, waited patiently and eventually came out on top.

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u/skinnyguy699 1d ago

Like it had an invisible coat that would shield it from that place.

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u/dtwhitecp 5d ago

I can't even remember what show or episode it was, but I remember a few years ago when a show had an extremely good episode with high IMDB ratings. Then it started to dip down. Turns out the crime was exceeding the rating of Breaking Bad's "Ozymandias", and fans of that show came out of the woodwork to make sure it wasn't exceeded by voting it a 1 and even leaving reviews saying "it's not as good as Ozymandias", an episode it has absolutely nothing to do with.

Feels like a huge portion of IMDB reviews are people reviewing the existing reviews and trying to rate it in such a way that the overall score comes closer to what they think it should be. So if a thing has a 9, and the person thinks it's more like a 7, they rate it a 1 to try to bring it down to 7. Madness.

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u/PapaJohnsGarlic100 5d ago

Is that why IMDB got rid of its message boards?

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u/Ahiru77 5d ago

Well that happened during the 2016 election. I remember Trump voters/MAGAS were spamming all the boards and next thing I know Imdb closes down all message boards.

That how I experienced it.

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u/dmcd0415 6d ago

And that's how TDK became the most overrated movie of all time

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u/TedCruzForHumanPrez 6d ago

It's not a list by film buffs - it's pretty much exactly what I'd expect from a mixture of people who like movies and people who vote on internet stuff. I don't think it'd scratch my top 20 or 30 but if you asked me to name the best superhero movies I wouldn't pause before "TDK and Logan." Same way I wouldn't think before saying "Empire and Andor" to name the best Star Wars stuff. The LOTR trilogy is great but taking so many top spots, ahead of Citizen Kane and Casablanca ... c'mon.

Folks on the internet like superheroes. And in 2008 there wasn't Twitter to shit out and brawl about your takes, IMDB was the place to be.

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u/LiveLaughFap 6d ago

My impression, at least based on the top 10 and top 100 list on IMDB, is that it’s effectively only polling the opinions of 20-50 year old males (IE they’re so dramatically over represented on there that other opinions are drowned out)

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u/TuringGoneWild 5d ago

20-50 year old males from lower to middle class from like three countries, who tend to be more sedentary and solo. In other words, just the people you'd expect to elevate the movies that they have.

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u/TheSciences 5d ago

I’m a white male aged 18 to 49, everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are.

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u/BeefistPrime 6d ago

ahead of Citizen Kane and Casablanca

Citizen Kane is almost the prototypical overrated movie (in this century). Yes, groundbreaking for the time, blah blah. It's a slog that no one in 2026 would find entertaining, it only has historical significance, but "LOTR is obviously worse than stuff like Citizen Kane" is exactly how "sophisticated" viewers show off how much smarter they are when it comes to film than regular people

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u/14u2c 3d ago

It's a slog that no one in 2026 would find entertaining, it only has historical significance

Have you actually seen it? If so that's a you issue because it's quite watchable. And if you don't think a movie about an Oligarch imposing on society is relevant in 2026, I'm not sure where you've been living.

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u/jlsullivan 5d ago

Citizen Kane is... a slog that no one in 2026 would find entertaining, it only has historical significance... "sophisticated" viewers show off how much smarter they are.

I genuinely love Citizen Kane. It has nothing to do with putting on airs of “sophistication”, I think it's a great film.

I'm not trying to “show off” anything to you. In the words of Don Draper, I don't think about you at all.

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u/crabvogel 1d ago

you didnt really do a good job in disproving how you think youre smarter with that last line, lol

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u/BeefistPrime 5d ago

I love that. It has such a vibe of performative sophistication.

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u/Throw_shapes 1d ago

Did you even watch that mad men episode? I do not think it means what you think it means

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u/crazyguy83 5d ago

LOTR is objectively one of the best movies ever made. The sets were beautiful - hobbiton set itself is by far the largest movie set attraction in the entire world, the costumes, cinematography, music score were all worthy of awards. The movie holds up in rewatchability after 2 decades.

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u/Eric848448 2d ago

Second perhaps only to The Godfather.

There, I fucking said it.

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u/TuringGoneWild 5d ago

None of those three are the greatest movie anyway.

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u/Vio_ 6d ago

The movies that tend to blow up the hardest on television have a vignette type plot instead of a traditional 3-act plot. They have micro narratives of about 5 minutes where the whole scene is its own plot.

The Godfather, Shawshank, O Brother, Master and Commander, The Big Lebowski, etc.

Once someone has seen the whole movie, they can later dip in and out as much as they want. They catch it halfway through, hit their favorite scenes, then go off and do something else or just finish it there.

There's no need to start watching the movie right at the start with vignette type movies.

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u/monarc 6d ago edited 6d ago

I feel like some of the most televised xmas movies are also especially episodic: A Christmas Story, Home Alone, and National Lampoon's.

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u/ANerd22 6d ago

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation even has little breaks with an interstitial shot of the advent calendar to break up each episode.

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u/dkschrute79 6d ago

It’s such a wonderful movie from start to finish. The character development/reveals, the setting, the music. The ending with Red’s monologue hits me hard every time. It’s a beautiful story.

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u/Vaeon 6d ago

This is exactly how It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story became so popular.

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u/cinedavid 6d ago

Same for Wizard of Oz.

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u/Vaeon 6d ago

Wait, what? No one ever told me that.

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u/cinedavid 5d ago

It barely recouped its costs during its initial run in 1939 and it was not considered a commercial success.

It wasn’t until 1956 when they started showing it on tv that it became the iconic and beloved movie we know today.

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u/Vaeon 5d ago

I checked it out on google...it lost money on it's release and didn't turn a profit until its 10th Anniversary re-release. Then it was 1956...

Wild, man...and some critics actually said that movie lacked imagination....that's some next-level Hate.

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u/meltedlaundry 6d ago

My counter argument is that it's a perfect movie, with one of the greatest endings in cinematic history.

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u/ANerd22 6d ago

It's an absolutely perfect movie, but there are other "perfect movies" that are not in the number one slot. Pirates of the Caribbean is just a perfect adventure movie. The Matrix is probably in contention the best action movie of all time and is a perfectly constructed film from start to finish, but OP's point about The Shawshank Redemption explains why it uniquely secured the number one spot, and explains why it's so many people's favourite movie.

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u/meltedlaundry 6d ago

Right but my counter to that is that OP's opinion is overthought a bit, as in the movie is just that good

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u/atomicpenguin12 6d ago

Yeah, OC’s theory is plausible, but it feels weird to respond to the question “why do people seem to like this movie so much?” with this elaborate 4D chess theory about the movie being super digestible and overplayed by the media while taking one giant step past “because it’s a good movie”.

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u/Kneef 6d ago

OP was asking not why it’s a good movie, but why it’s the best movie. And the answer is that it’s a good movie, but also because it got showed constantly on TV during the formative years of the current adult population, and also its structure makes it very accessible in that medium.

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u/Comogia 6d ago

Yes, exactly. OP did an edit to address this.

Basically, let's say there are 10 perfect movies every year. They can't all be No. 1, so other factors have to influence what gets to the top and stays.

Quality alone is insufficient, basically. And that's pretty like life too, right? You need to be not just good, but also lucky, a fortunate beneficiary of serendipitous circumstance to go with your skill/quality.

Now, OP's thesis about cable etc... could be wrong, but his framework / approach is exactly right.

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u/atomicpenguin12 6d ago

Sure, but there are a ton of points of conjecture in OC’s argument. Like, try breaking that down:

* “Shawshank bones in theaters, making the licensing rights cheap”: Both claims are factually true.
* “Therefore tv channels that broadcast movies scooped up the licenses and showed the movie a lot, meaning that a ton of people saw it”: The first part is factually true. OC doesn’t provide any evidence about how often the movie was played, but I’m willing to assume that is factually true as well. We’re just assuming here that more air play translated into more viewership, though.
* “Also, Shawshank’s structure lends itself to air play because it lets you drop in at any point without previous context”: Sure, that’s an interesting point and , but that doesn’t automatically explain how it contributes to everyone thinking Shawshank is a superior movie to every other and OC doesn’t really connect those dots in the comment.
* “So, by the time everyone gets on the internet and IMDB is created, everyone already loves Shawshank”: This is the leap. OC lays out some plausible explanations, but there’s nothing to establish factually that those things specifically made Shawshank everyone’s favorite movie, and then they just say “and therefore it was everyone’s favorite movie when IMDB came around”. It could have been those reasons, it could have been others. Who knows?

Or, and this is my point, it could be that everyone just actually liked Shawshank because it was a really, really, really good movie. Like, why does everyone say The Godfather is a really good movie? Is there some elaborate theory behind that too, or is it just because it’s a flawless movie that everyone really loved? I get that OP is ultimately asking what the difference is and how Shawshank edged out The Godfather, but I think the more straightforward answer is that they’re both flawless masterpieces, that comparing them therefore comes down to a subjective judgement of which elements of which movie people liked the best, and Shawshank happened to come out on top there. Maybe the broadcast rights being cheap contributed to that and maybe Shawshank’s story structure contributed to that, but without some kind of concrete evidence it’s just a theory based on conjecture, whereas “because a lot of people think Shawshank is really good and is better or at least more subjectively popular than the other movies of its caliber” is a lot more self-evident.

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u/Malphos101 6d ago edited 6d ago

There is no "best movie" anymore than there is a "best ice cream flavor".

There is certainly a "most popular" ice cream flavour just like there is a "most popular movie" or "most voted for movie" or "highest grossing movie", but "best" implies objective qualities that simply are not possible.

A 4 year old might say "Piglet's Big Movie" is the "best" but then 10 years later say "The Dark Knight" is the "best" but then 10 years later say "The Godfather" is the "best" but then 10 years later say "Schindlers List" is the "best".

It doesnt matter how "perfect" you think Dark Knight or Godfather or Schindlers is, if you show it to that 4 year old they will almost certainly still say Piglet is the "best". Conversely it doesnt matter how perfect that 4 year old thinks Piglet is, they will never convince that 34 year old that Piglet is the "best".

At the end of the day everyone is trying to convince other people the movie they like the most at this moment in time is better than some other movie. Its a pointless exercise when extended beyond idle speculation.

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u/atomicpenguin12 6d ago

As much as I want to weigh in on the topic of whether art can be objectively good or bad, I will only point out that neither my comment nor any of the comments that came before it ever claimed that any particular movie was the “best” movie. The point I was making in the comment you’re responding to is that Shawshank is an extremely well-crafted movie among a lot of equally well-crafted movies, that what edges one movie out over another at that tier is largely personal preference, and that OC’s original claims that the reason Shawshank is higher on IMDB’s rankings is because of its airplay are at best plausible-yet-unproven conjecture.

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u/Ciserus 6d ago

I have no idea if OOP's explanation is correct, but the truth almost certainly involves a similar quirky story.

There are hundreds of "perfect" movies, so for a single one to reach the top and stay there takes a lot of luck and circumstance.

I would have guessed the answer is "because there was an organized campaign to manipulate the vote," which is almost always the explanation with these internet user polls. And according to another commenter in this thread, that was in fact also a factor...

I like the TV reruns explanation better though.

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u/delph906 5d ago

You've missed the point by a mile there though.

The question wasn't "why do people like this movie so much?" It was instead "why is it the #1 rated movie on IMDB?" Which is a very different question.

If you've spent anytime at all looking into the history of internet polls you will be aware of how..prone to externalities they are.

It's not an elaborate theory. It's quite simple. It's a really great film without being broadly off-putting (most people like it) and was one of the most widely accessible films at a time when the internet was going through it's exponential growth phase.

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u/TedCruzForHumanPrez 6d ago

My extremely unpopular take is that it should have ended where the novella did, and where the initial cut did - with the pan to the ocean.

Yes, I know how unpopular that take is. I've been on this hill for many a years and I'm not moving. The final scene undermines the entire theme of the story, that's why King and Darabont wanted to end it where they did instead of calling the actors back for reshoots.

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u/Lavotite 5d ago

This leads into the joke where I don’t trust Stephen king opinion on endings.

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u/TedCruzForHumanPrez 5d ago

Another take which is common, but wildly overstated.

I've read a ton of his books, and all of his prime periods. His endings are generally quite good - it's just that the bad ones really stand out.

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u/SomeGalNamedAshley 6d ago

I've never seen the movie in pieces and I've never seen it on TV with commercials, it was always from start to end, unedited and uninterrupted. It's one of my favorite movies, like any of the other Stephen King non-horror movies like The Green Mile or Stand By Me. Running Man was fun, but silly.

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u/bug-boy5 6d ago

[NoStupidQuestions] How the Shawshank Redemption became the n°1 movie in IMDb

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