Top 10 Movies of 2015

What are the top 10 movies of 2015? Well, actually, that all depends on who you are listening to. In fact, one could pick just about any year and it will not be a definitive shortlist of 10 movies. We have looked at several sources, each one claiming to report the top 10 movies for 2015, and none of them had the exact same movies on listed.

For example, we have found the list from the New York Times[i], compared it with Forbes[ii] and also with IMDB[iii]. What did we find out? The only movie that all three sources agreed with as one of the top 10 movies of 2015 was The Martian.

The Assassin and Mad Max were tied with the New York Times so we grouped these two together. Forbes and IMDB both picked Mad Max but not the Assassin. The movies that were picked by at least two of the sources were “Carol”, “Inside Out and “Straight Outta Compton”. That is it.

So the rest of the 23 movies each had one mark from each of the rating sources. So just using these three rating sources, we came up with 23 movies, not 10 without much of any consensus. See the chart below.

The results obtain here; will most likely be similar no matter how many rating services or movie commentators we were to investigate. So what is the potential conclusion? One could say that rating of movies as being in the top 10 or top 15 lists are somewhat or extremely subjective. Maybe it is depending too much on the professional movie critics. Is it just the sale of box office tickets that make it in the top ten categories? What is the metrics that should be used?

One of the metrics used is how often a previous movie was quoted in a current movie. This is typically quoting back to a classic movie, such as “The Wizard of OZ”, “Star Wars” or even “Gone with the Wind”. The decision to include parts of previous greats into a current movie is a decision of the director, not the critics.

Maybe it is time for us to determine a better way of measuring movie success, and whether it is in the top 10. Currently, movies are measured in revenue, not ticket sales. Part of this is because the cost of a ticket can vary from one theater to another. In addition, there is a growing trend that shows that much of the revenue generated is outside the United States. How do the cultures of other countries determine the popularity of a movie versus the American movie goers?

Maybe the process for determining the top 10 movies of any given year needs an overhaul. We are suggesting that it be recreated to help the average movie goer and the industry as well. Let’s say that we create a metric of 20 data points. These data points can be a combination of objective and subjective ratings as well. To be sure, we can disregard the Emmy’s or the Peoples awards and let them have their own metrics.

So for example, the objective data points can be gross revenue sales for the first year, net revenue sales (gross minus production costs), ticket sales, the number of references back to previous classic movies. One could also calculate the number of ticket sales based on the average ticket price for that year against the gross revenue.

Then we can actually go to the movie critics, take their opinions as a subjective weighted metric and calculate a formula for that. So we can start to build a solid metric system that is logical, objective and subjectively weighted. This seems to us to be the best approach that creates fairness across the board for all movies produced in a given year.

We are not offering up the exact metrics here. We are offering up a suggestion. However, the real top 10 movies are the ones you decide as an individual. Those are the real top 10 for your moviegoing tastes.