The Best Sequel Of All Time, According To IMDb

The IMDb top-250 is a curious portrait of populist taste. The list is, it's worth remembering, culled only from user ratings on the IMDb website, and, judging by the films on the list, the average IMDb user seems to be a college-age white male with a taste for crime, guns, fantasy, and the ultra-masculine. The top movies on the list all seem to be the types of movies that young men would own posters for, proudly displayed on their dorm room walls. There are many unassailable classics, to be sure, and young teens could easily look to the list as a rudimentary introduction to the world of cinema, but the list seems ... skewed. There's not a lot of variety. It's not curated by a single critic, nor even a panel of critics. It's just a general consensus of the taste of the types of people who like to rate movies on IMDb. 

By the top-250's gauge, the best movie of all time is Frank Darabont's prison drama "The Shawshank Redemption." The top-10 includes Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II," Sidney Lumet's 1957 courtroom drama "12 Angry Men," Quentin Tarantino's scuzzy crime flick "Pulp Fiction," and Sergio Leone's stylized Western "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." All of these films depict, or center on, murder. Also on the top-10 are Steven Spielberg's WWII film "Schindler's List," and Peter Jackson's fantasy epic "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring." The list is somehow both loaded with classics ... and weirdly basic. The films are all in English, most of them are American productions, and none have female protagonists. 

With a 9.0 rating, and coming in third on the IMDb's top-250 is Christopher Nolan's sequel to "Batman Begins," "The Dark Knight," the overwhelmingly popular hit superhero film from 2008. It's the highest-rated sequel on the list. 

"The Dark Knight," as the millions of people who saw it can tell you, follows the further adventures of a newly rebooted Batman (Christian Bale) and his first encounter with the Joker (Heath Ledger), here depicted as a sloppy, punkish anarchist. "The Dark Knight" offered audiences several outstanding action sequences, as well as a tantalizing philosophical counterpoint for a superhero. If a superhero lives to inflict order, then their opposite would be one who lives to inflict chaos. It doesn't have the political and economic underpinnings of "The Dark Knight Rises," but "The Dark Knight" attracted gigantic audiences with Ledger's scary and unhinged performance as the Joker. The actor famously received a posthumous Oscar for the role. It was nominated for seven additional Oscars besides. 

It seems churlish to reiterate what "The Dark Knight" is, as it was a billion-dollar hit that rattled the zeitgeist. Indeed, when "The Dark Knight" wasn't nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, there was a quiet uproar from fans. The Academy responded by expanding the Best Picture category from five to ten nominees, aiming to include more populist blockbusters in the category. 

On IMDb, "The Dark Knight" has a lot of fans, as three million users bothered to rate it. 1.3 million users gave the film a 10 out of 10. 

To be fair, "The Godfather Part II" also has a 9.0 — making it the IMDb's other most highly-rated sequel — but one may rank it below "The Dark Knight" because a mere 1.4 million people voted for it. Other high-ranked sequels include "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" (at #12), "The Empire Strikes Back" (at #15), and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (at #28). 

Looking quickly down the IMDb top-250 reveals a lot of stories about war, prison, criminals, and fighters. If there is a vague common theme throughout the bulk of the top-250, it's the interplay between crime and justice, sometimes realized as bloody revenge or battlefield catharsis. "Shawshank" is at the top of the list, but other prison dramas like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "The Green Mile," "The Pianist," and "Life is Beautiful" appear. IMDb users like captivity. There are also many stories about criminals who live free. In addition to the crime films already listed, one will find "The Silence of the Lambs," "GoodFellas," "Seven," "Psycho," "The Departed," and "City of God" (a Brazilian film in Portuguese) on the list. 

As for films not in English, there are a few on the IMDb top-250. Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" is ranked at #22, and Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" is at #31. Bong Joon-ho's film "Parasite" is ranked at #33, and "Grave of the Fireflies" is at #38. The first real surprise on the list may be Masaki Kobayashi's 1962 samurai drama "Harakiri," ranked at #44, one spot above "Casablanca." 

The most recent film on the list's top half is 2024's "Dune: Part Two," listed at #49, although multiple other films from the last two years, including "The Wild Robot," appear far down in the top-250. The oldest film on the list is Charlie Chaplin's 1921 sentimental comedy "The Kid." There are six silent films in the top-250. 

Some films typically considered among the best are ranked somewhat low. "Citizen Kane" rests at #105, while "The Wizard of Oz" is way down at #230. "Bicycle Thieves" is at #124, and "All About Eve" is at #139. 

The highest-ranked film directed by a woman is the 2018 "Capernaum," made by Nadine Labaki. It's at #89. The only other was the anime film "A Silent Voice: The Movie," co-directed by Naoko Yamada. It's at #250.