ELDORADO SHOWDOWN
Al Pacino versus Robert De Niro
Comparing their careers and ranking their films
MAR 4 2018
Tale of the Tape - Box Office - Reviews - "Godfather Ratings" - Genres
Al Pacino versus Robert De Niro
Comparing their careers and ranking their films
MAR 4 2018
Tale of the Tape - Box Office - Reviews - "Godfather Ratings" - Genres
Part IV: "The Godfather Ratings"
Box office receipts and online audience ratings are both informative, but they don't always tell the whole story – or agree. Actors sometimes have lesser roles in blockbuster films, blockbuster films sometimes have bad reviews, and highly regarded films sometimes do poorly at the box office. To account for all of these factors – and more definitively compare the work of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro – I devised something called “The Godfather Ratings.”
The goal of "The Godfather Ratings" is to assign a single score to each of Pacino and De Niro's career roles based on objective data. The ratings include box office receipts but are more comprehensive than looking at that data point alone. And they are free of critics' opinions. The only "opinions" that matter in these rankings are those of the general public. It may be a little silly to make numbers out of art, but "The Godfather Ratings" yield some fun results and will hopefully spawn friendly disagreement about the merit of certain films and roles ranking the way they do.
"The Godfather Ratings" apply to each actor’s role in a film – not to the film itself – and factor in U.S. box office receipts (in 2018 dollars), the number and quality of audience reviews on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, and the actor’s “billing” in the film (i.e., were they the lead, the #2, the #3, etc.). A perfect “Godfather Rating” is 10.0; that would mean an actor played the lead role in a film with perfect audience ratings and the same domestic box office receipts and number of online reviews as The Godfather. (Every role is thus rated in context of The Godfather.)[1]
Box office receipts and online audience ratings are both informative, but they don't always tell the whole story – or agree. Actors sometimes have lesser roles in blockbuster films, blockbuster films sometimes have bad reviews, and highly regarded films sometimes do poorly at the box office. To account for all of these factors – and more definitively compare the work of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro – I devised something called “The Godfather Ratings.”
The goal of "The Godfather Ratings" is to assign a single score to each of Pacino and De Niro's career roles based on objective data. The ratings include box office receipts but are more comprehensive than looking at that data point alone. And they are free of critics' opinions. The only "opinions" that matter in these rankings are those of the general public. It may be a little silly to make numbers out of art, but "The Godfather Ratings" yield some fun results and will hopefully spawn friendly disagreement about the merit of certain films and roles ranking the way they do.
"The Godfather Ratings" apply to each actor’s role in a film – not to the film itself – and factor in U.S. box office receipts (in 2018 dollars), the number and quality of audience reviews on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, and the actor’s “billing” in the film (i.e., were they the lead, the #2, the #3, etc.). A perfect “Godfather Rating” is 10.0; that would mean an actor played the lead role in a film with perfect audience ratings and the same domestic box office receipts and number of online reviews as The Godfather. (Every role is thus rated in context of The Godfather.)[1]
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Components of "The Godfather Ratings"
Whereas the box-office study focused on films, "The Godfather Ratings" encompass all of the actors' work listed on IMDb (113 credits for De Niro and 56 for Pacino),[2] which includes a modest but noteworthy smattering of TV movies, TV mini-series, shorts, and unreleased material. Here are the four main components of "The Godfather Ratings" formula used to evaluate that work. Each is included for a reason:
- U.S. box office receipts show commercial success. The figures account for ticket-price inflation and are shown in 2018 dollars. I chose to focus on domestic box office receipts because foreign box-office data is less consistently available and more influenced by era and the quirks of foreign release. The data source is Box Office Mojo. (This metric is excluded without penalty for TV and unreleased work.)
- IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes audience ratings best represent the opinions of the viewing public. I chose IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes because they have the most reviews of the various online rating sites. Screw the critics. This is the voice of the people!
- Number of IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews is meant to capture how “viewed” or “relevant” each film is today. This helps account for the fact that some films that have aged well and are really popular didn't do super well at the box office (e.g., Casino, Raging Bull, Donnie Brasco). Meanwhile, others that dominated at the box office haven’t aged very well (e.g., Serpico). (There may be some review-volume biases at play here, but I’m okay with that. A handful of titles also required proxy review numbers for Rotten Tomatoes.)[3]
- Actor’s billing in each film impacts how much “credit” a given actor “deserves” for the aforementioned metrics. For purposes of this analysis, I assigned the lead actor 100% credit, and then I assigned each actor thereafter 85% of the credit as the actor billed above him or her. So the number two in a film receives 85%, the number three receives 72% (85% of 85%), the number four receives 61% (85% of 72%), and so on. There can be controversy over who's actually the lead in a film, but I've deferred here to the actors' billing as it's presented on IMDb. It’s not perfect, but it keeps these ratings purely empirical – publicly available data goes in, and "The Godfather Ratings" come out.[4]
Whereas the box-office study focused on films, "The Godfather Ratings" encompass all of the actors' work listed on IMDb (113 credits for De Niro and 56 for Pacino),[2] which includes a modest but noteworthy smattering of TV movies, TV mini-series, shorts, and unreleased material. Here are the four main components of "The Godfather Ratings" formula used to evaluate that work. Each is included for a reason:
- U.S. box office receipts show commercial success. The figures account for ticket-price inflation and are shown in 2018 dollars. I chose to focus on domestic box office receipts because foreign box-office data is less consistently available and more influenced by era and the quirks of foreign release. The data source is Box Office Mojo. (This metric is excluded without penalty for TV and unreleased work.)
- IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes audience ratings best represent the opinions of the viewing public. I chose IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes because they have the most reviews of the various online rating sites. Screw the critics. This is the voice of the people!
- Number of IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews is meant to capture how “viewed” or “relevant” each film is today. This helps account for the fact that some films that have aged well and are really popular didn't do super well at the box office (e.g., Casino, Raging Bull, Donnie Brasco). Meanwhile, others that dominated at the box office haven’t aged very well (e.g., Serpico). (There may be some review-volume biases at play here, but I’m okay with that. A handful of titles also required proxy review numbers for Rotten Tomatoes.)[3]
- Actor’s billing in each film impacts how much “credit” a given actor “deserves” for the aforementioned metrics. For purposes of this analysis, I assigned the lead actor 100% credit, and then I assigned each actor thereafter 85% of the credit as the actor billed above him or her. So the number two in a film receives 85%, the number three receives 72% (85% of 85%), the number four receives 61% (85% of 72%), and so on. There can be controversy over who's actually the lead in a film, but I've deferred here to the actors' billing as it's presented on IMDb. It’s not perfect, but it keeps these ratings purely empirical – publicly available data goes in, and "The Godfather Ratings" come out.[4]
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Pacino and De Niro's top 20 career roles
Here are Pacino and De Niro’s top 20 career roles according to “The Godfather Ratings.” There are a lot of numbers in the table, but I’m including them so you can see how exactly each film stacks up in terms of box office receipts, number of IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews, and quality of IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews. Pacino fares a little better at the very top of the rankings, but in a manner only fitting for the half-century-old Pacino versus De Niro debate, they evenly split the top 10 and top 20 roles:
Here are Pacino and De Niro’s top 20 career roles according to “The Godfather Ratings.” There are a lot of numbers in the table, but I’m including them so you can see how exactly each film stacks up in terms of box office receipts, number of IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews, and quality of IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews. Pacino fares a little better at the very top of the rankings, but in a manner only fitting for the half-century-old Pacino versus De Niro debate, they evenly split the top 10 and top 20 roles:
Pacino’s portrayal of Michael Corleone in The Godfather takes the top spot. Some people prefer the sequel, and Pacino was technically the number-two actor in the original – he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, didn't attend the Oscars because he (justifiably?) thought he should have been in the lead actor category, and ended up losing the supporting actor award to Joel Grey for Cabaret (!?!). But The Godfather is ultimately too big a juggernaut across metrics to cede the top spot, with over three times the domestic box office receipts as Godfather II and the best IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes audience ratings on the list (on by far the most reviews).
Pacino’s Michael in The Godfather: Part II owns the second overall spot, with a “Godfather Rating” of 7.0, and De Niro’s Vito Corleone in The Godfather: Part II comes in third with a 5.93. (Pacino rates higher because he was the lead.) De Niro’s portrayal of James Conway in Goodfellas (5.92) and Pacino’s portrayal of Tony Montana in Scarface (5.79) round out a very competitive back end of the top five.
Goodfellas is a good example of the limitations of box office receipts as a standalone metric. (So are Casino, Raging Bull, and others.) Goodfellas is only the 31st-highest grossing Pacino or De Niro film of all time, but it’s the 3rd-highest rated Pacino or De Niro work on IMDb and 2nd-highest rated (tied) on Rotten Tomatoes[5]. It has the 3rd-most IMDb reviews and the 4th-most Rotten Tomatoes reviews among their films.
In other words, Goodfellas performed somewhat modestly at the box office, but it’s extremely popular and well regarded. Stir all of those metrics together – along with the fact that De Niro was officially billed as the film's lead despite Ray Liotta having more screen time – and De Niro’s James Conway comes in at number four in "The Godfather Ratings" on the basis of quality and popularity.
Pacino’s Tony Montana in Scarface ranks just behind De Niro in Goodfellas. Why? Scarface did a little better at the box office and is more reviewed on Rotten Tomatoes, but it trails Goodfellas in the two audience rating categories and in its number of Rotten Tomatoes reviews.
Pacino’s Michael in The Godfather: Part II owns the second overall spot, with a “Godfather Rating” of 7.0, and De Niro’s Vito Corleone in The Godfather: Part II comes in third with a 5.93. (Pacino rates higher because he was the lead.) De Niro’s portrayal of James Conway in Goodfellas (5.92) and Pacino’s portrayal of Tony Montana in Scarface (5.79) round out a very competitive back end of the top five.
Goodfellas is a good example of the limitations of box office receipts as a standalone metric. (So are Casino, Raging Bull, and others.) Goodfellas is only the 31st-highest grossing Pacino or De Niro film of all time, but it’s the 3rd-highest rated Pacino or De Niro work on IMDb and 2nd-highest rated (tied) on Rotten Tomatoes[5]. It has the 3rd-most IMDb reviews and the 4th-most Rotten Tomatoes reviews among their films.
In other words, Goodfellas performed somewhat modestly at the box office, but it’s extremely popular and well regarded. Stir all of those metrics together – along with the fact that De Niro was officially billed as the film's lead despite Ray Liotta having more screen time – and De Niro’s James Conway comes in at number four in "The Godfather Ratings" on the basis of quality and popularity.
Pacino’s Tony Montana in Scarface ranks just behind De Niro in Goodfellas. Why? Scarface did a little better at the box office and is more reviewed on Rotten Tomatoes, but it trails Goodfellas in the two audience rating categories and in its number of Rotten Tomatoes reviews.
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How about Heat doing so well?
Heat, in my opinion, ranks better than expected. Pacino’s portrayal of Lt. Vincent Hanna is sixth among all of Pacino and De Niro’s career films – better than De Niro in Taxi Driver and The Deer Hunter and Pacino himself in Dog Day Afternoon, all of which are more "critically acclaimed" films. De Niro’s portrayal of Neil McCauley in Heat ranks 11th – better than Pacino’s Oscar-winning Scent of a Woman role and his own Oscar-winning Raging Bull role. (Billing separates them for Heat. Pacino is officially billed as the lead; De Niro is listed as the two.)[6]
But take a closer look at the metrics and you’ll see why Heat does so well. Heat did really well at the box office (hell, it featured both actors in their commercial primes). It has an IMDb user rating of 8.2 – better than Dog Day Afternoon and Scent of a Woman, equal to The Deer Hunter, Casino, and Raging Bull, and only a shade behind Scarface and Taxi Driver. And it has a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 94% – best on the list except for Godfather I and II and Goodfellas! It also has strong review volume. "The Godfather Ratings" factor in all of this.
If any rankings give you pause, I encourage you to scan the box office, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes data in the table above. It might not change your mind about a certain result, but the rankings are purely number- and public opinion-based – no personal favorites or critics' views – so at least you’ll be able to see why they fall the way they do. Along with Heat, I don’t love where Pacino lands with The Godfather: Part III (#13). After all, its box office strength was likely driven by the previous Godfather movies. But we ultimately can’t deny its commercial success, its 7.6 IMDB rating isn’t too far behind Donnie Brasco, Carlito’s Way, and Serpico, and it's a very highly watched and reviewed film.
Heat, in my opinion, ranks better than expected. Pacino’s portrayal of Lt. Vincent Hanna is sixth among all of Pacino and De Niro’s career films – better than De Niro in Taxi Driver and The Deer Hunter and Pacino himself in Dog Day Afternoon, all of which are more "critically acclaimed" films. De Niro’s portrayal of Neil McCauley in Heat ranks 11th – better than Pacino’s Oscar-winning Scent of a Woman role and his own Oscar-winning Raging Bull role. (Billing separates them for Heat. Pacino is officially billed as the lead; De Niro is listed as the two.)[6]
But take a closer look at the metrics and you’ll see why Heat does so well. Heat did really well at the box office (hell, it featured both actors in their commercial primes). It has an IMDb user rating of 8.2 – better than Dog Day Afternoon and Scent of a Woman, equal to The Deer Hunter, Casino, and Raging Bull, and only a shade behind Scarface and Taxi Driver. And it has a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 94% – best on the list except for Godfather I and II and Goodfellas! It also has strong review volume. "The Godfather Ratings" factor in all of this.
If any rankings give you pause, I encourage you to scan the box office, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes data in the table above. It might not change your mind about a certain result, but the rankings are purely number- and public opinion-based – no personal favorites or critics' views – so at least you’ll be able to see why they fall the way they do. Along with Heat, I don’t love where Pacino lands with The Godfather: Part III (#13). After all, its box office strength was likely driven by the previous Godfather movies. But we ultimately can’t deny its commercial success, its 7.6 IMDB rating isn’t too far behind Donnie Brasco, Carlito’s Way, and Serpico, and it's a very highly watched and reviewed film.
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De Niro has had a more prolific career
Pacino fares better at the very top of the "best roles" list, but De Niro wins the career "Godfather Ratings" battle by a count of 140.3 to 96.8. He beat Pacino by 50% on the career box-office front. and he bests him by 45% here. So the career stats are directionally similar.
The 1980s were relatively quiet and close at the box office for Pacino and De Niro, but when it comes to "The Godfather Ratings" – which account for De Niro's spectacular run of highly rated films at that time – De Niro clearly wins the decade. Meanwhile, De Niro's 21st-century box-office dominance is less apparent, given "The Godfather Ratings" account for the fact that much of it came by way of supporting roles in films with lower audience scores.
De Niro's 1990s still ranks as the best aggregate decade in either actor's career, but the actors' other decades shift around some. De Niro's 2000s falls from 2nd (box office) to 7th ("Godfather Ratings), while Pacino's 1990s jumps from 4th (box office) to 2nd ("Godfather Ratings"):
Pacino fares better at the very top of the "best roles" list, but De Niro wins the career "Godfather Ratings" battle by a count of 140.3 to 96.8. He beat Pacino by 50% on the career box-office front. and he bests him by 45% here. So the career stats are directionally similar.
The 1980s were relatively quiet and close at the box office for Pacino and De Niro, but when it comes to "The Godfather Ratings" – which account for De Niro's spectacular run of highly rated films at that time – De Niro clearly wins the decade. Meanwhile, De Niro's 21st-century box-office dominance is less apparent, given "The Godfather Ratings" account for the fact that much of it came by way of supporting roles in films with lower audience scores.
De Niro's 1990s still ranks as the best aggregate decade in either actor's career, but the actors' other decades shift around some. De Niro's 2000s falls from 2nd (box office) to 7th ("Godfather Ratings), while Pacino's 1990s jumps from 4th (box office) to 2nd ("Godfather Ratings"):
De Niro didn't beat Pacino's running lifetime U.S. box-office haul until 2000, but in terms of "The Godfather Ratings," he passed him way back in 1987. Some of that 13-year difference is due to The Godfather, which was such an outlier at the box office that it gave Pacino a huge (and deserved) head start. That outlier status is muted in "The Godfather Ratings," which factor in more variables than box office receipts. De Niro's run of highly-rated films from 1976 to 1990 also accelerates his "Godfather Ratings" rise.
Pacino's only credit between 1983 and 1989 was Revolution (1985), which made a paltry $891K at the box office (2018 dollars) and has a 5.2 IMDb user rating and 31% Rotten Tomatoes audience score. De Niro muscled past with an array of solid work during that period, including Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Brazil (1985), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), and Midnight Run (1988). He went on to win a busy and successful 1990s for both actors, diversified his roles, genres, and reputation in the 2000s, and never looked back:
Pacino's only credit between 1983 and 1989 was Revolution (1985), which made a paltry $891K at the box office (2018 dollars) and has a 5.2 IMDb user rating and 31% Rotten Tomatoes audience score. De Niro muscled past with an array of solid work during that period, including Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Brazil (1985), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), and Midnight Run (1988). He went on to win a busy and successful 1990s for both actors, diversified his roles, genres, and reputation in the 2000s, and never looked back:
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Pacino is better on a per-film basis
But as we saw at the box office and in the online audience reviews, when Pacino comes to play, he plays pretty damn well. The average Pacino film out-earned the average De Niro film by 35% ($92.1 million to $68.2 million), and he had better per-film receipts in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Similarly, "The Godfather Rating" of the average Pacino title is 38% better than "The Godfather Rating" of the average De Niro title (1.76 to 1.28).
In fact, Pacino boasts better per-title "Godfather Ratings" in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and he doesn't lose the 2010s by very much. Why is that? Again, "The Godfather Ratings" temper De Niro's 21st-century box-office advantage because a lot of those receipts came by way of supporting roles in films with modest audience ratings. And by encompassing TV work, "The Godfather Ratings" capture Pacino's starring roles in Angels in America (2003), You Don't Know Jack (2010), and Phil Spector (2013). He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film for the first two and was nominated for the third. Pacino takes another TV turn with HBO's Paterno this April.
But as we saw at the box office and in the online audience reviews, when Pacino comes to play, he plays pretty damn well. The average Pacino film out-earned the average De Niro film by 35% ($92.1 million to $68.2 million), and he had better per-film receipts in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Similarly, "The Godfather Rating" of the average Pacino title is 38% better than "The Godfather Rating" of the average De Niro title (1.76 to 1.28).
In fact, Pacino boasts better per-title "Godfather Ratings" in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and he doesn't lose the 2010s by very much. Why is that? Again, "The Godfather Ratings" temper De Niro's 21st-century box-office advantage because a lot of those receipts came by way of supporting roles in films with modest audience ratings. And by encompassing TV work, "The Godfather Ratings" capture Pacino's starring roles in Angels in America (2003), You Don't Know Jack (2010), and Phil Spector (2013). He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film for the first two and was nominated for the third. Pacino takes another TV turn with HBO's Paterno this April.
Number of titles reflects all work credited on IMDb
Pacino's very best role (Michael Corleone) is unmatched, and his per-film performance has indeed been stronger. But Pacino and De Niro split the top 10 and 20 "Godfather Ratings" lists, and De Niro has more sustained and greater production over five decades.
Next: The evolution of Pacino and De Niro's genres over the course of their careers
Next: The evolution of Pacino and De Niro's genres over the course of their careers
ELDORADO SHOWDOWN
Al Pacino versus Robert De Niro
I. Introduction (Tale of the Tape)
II. Box Office Receipts
III. Online Audience Ratings
IV. "The Godfather Ratings"
V. Film Genres Over Time
Al Pacino versus Robert De Niro
I. Introduction (Tale of the Tape)
II. Box Office Receipts
III. Online Audience Ratings
IV. "The Godfather Ratings"
V. Film Genres Over Time
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Footnotes
[1] Even Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972) wouldn't receive a 10.0. He was officially the lead, and the movie scores perfectly in terms of box office receipts and number of IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes reviews (given it's set as the standard against which all other works are measured). But The Godfather doesn’t have perfect online reviews – it has a 9.2 user rating on IMDb and a 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Brando’s “Godfather Rating” in The Godfather is 9.1. Pacino was technically the film’s number two, so he scores slightly less. His portrayal of Michael Corleone has a “Godfather Rating” of 8.3.
[2] For purposes of this analysis, Pacino's ratings also include Looking for Richard (1996) as a 57th credit. It's not listed on his IMDb summary, but it's included as part of his box office receipts on Box Office Mojo, so it's part of the data set here, too.
[3] With respect to review volume, there's potentially bias in favor of newer films (i.e., modern viewers are increasingly likely to rate contemporary films online). Then again, there could be bias against newer films because they've existed for less time (i.e., there's been less time for people to watch and rate them). Review volume also hurts "The Godfather Ratings" for the actors' TV titles, which are generally less reviewed online. But if we think of "The Godfather Ratings" as a sort of measure of cultural impact – which isn't all that unreasonable given it combines commercial success, the public's opinion of how good the film was, how viewed it is on an ongoing basis (as measured by number of reviews), and how big a part the actor played – then I'm okay with TV movies getting dinged a little bit by this element of the formula because by and large, TV movies (at least old-school TV movies) are less culturally impactful than big-screen movies.
I'm also okay with some potential bias toward newer films because it introduces a degree of "modern relevance" into the formula. I'd worry about it little more if it were the only metric, or one of two metrics, but here it's a piece of a bigger puzzle that ends up serving as a nice "contemporary" complement to box office receipts, which almost exclusively occurred when the film first came out. The best films have really good box office receipts and a lot of online reviews (and high audience ratings). They were highly viewed when they came out and highly viewed (and reviewed) today. Including this metric helps separate the movies from that have been consistently great from those that were great when they came out, but have since lost momentum (or vice-versa).
I leaned on pure, publicly available numbers for this analysis, but Rotten Tomatoes review volume did require minor data cleanup for a few titles. Meet the Fockers, for example, had over 33 million audience reviews on the site, and while I understand it's a newer title that people might have been inclined to review more, 33 million is over 45x the review volume as The Godfather, with only Meet the Parents and Ocean's Thirteen standing in between. Its extreme outlier status makes me think the reviews were somehow bot-generated. To correct for this anomaly, I set the film's Rotten Tomatoes review volume in the same proportion to The Godfather as its review volume on IMDb. I made similar corrections to Stardust, Hide and Seek, Shark Tale, Meet the Parents, and Ocean's Thirteen.
[4] "Actor's billing" is an historically controversial subject. Was Marlon Brando the lead in The Godfather, or was it Al Pacino? (Pacino had more screen time, but Brando was billed, nominated, and awarded at the Oscars as the lead; Pacino had the supporting role, much to his chagrin.) Was Robert De Niro the lead in Goodfellas, or was it Ray Liotta? (Liotta had more screen time, but De Niro was billed as the lead.) Was Pacino the lead in Heat, or was it De Niro? There are many examples. The goal of "The Godfather Ratings" is to rely on publicly available information and remove "subjectivity" from the results, save for the opinions of the millions of people who have rated these films online. To that end, I accounted for the "actors' billing" in exactly the manner that it appears on IMDb.
[5] For reasons explained in the previous section, my reference to IMDb audience rankings excludes The Godfather Saga, a made-for-TV re-edit of the first two Godfather movies, and my reference to Rotten Tomatoes rankings excludes Ellis, which has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes audience score on only 12 reviews.
[6] Following on Footnote #4, Pacino as the lead and De Niro as the two in Heat is certainly debatable. I re-watched it last week as I worked on this story. During the first half of the movie, I felt like De Niro was a little more central. By the end, it felt like a coin toss. (Maybe I should have timed their screen time.) Either way, it's probably more of a co-lead situation. But for reasons described in Footnote #4, I'm deferring to IMDb, where Pacino is listed first.
[1] Even Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972) wouldn't receive a 10.0. He was officially the lead, and the movie scores perfectly in terms of box office receipts and number of IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes reviews (given it's set as the standard against which all other works are measured). But The Godfather doesn’t have perfect online reviews – it has a 9.2 user rating on IMDb and a 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Brando’s “Godfather Rating” in The Godfather is 9.1. Pacino was technically the film’s number two, so he scores slightly less. His portrayal of Michael Corleone has a “Godfather Rating” of 8.3.
[2] For purposes of this analysis, Pacino's ratings also include Looking for Richard (1996) as a 57th credit. It's not listed on his IMDb summary, but it's included as part of his box office receipts on Box Office Mojo, so it's part of the data set here, too.
[3] With respect to review volume, there's potentially bias in favor of newer films (i.e., modern viewers are increasingly likely to rate contemporary films online). Then again, there could be bias against newer films because they've existed for less time (i.e., there's been less time for people to watch and rate them). Review volume also hurts "The Godfather Ratings" for the actors' TV titles, which are generally less reviewed online. But if we think of "The Godfather Ratings" as a sort of measure of cultural impact – which isn't all that unreasonable given it combines commercial success, the public's opinion of how good the film was, how viewed it is on an ongoing basis (as measured by number of reviews), and how big a part the actor played – then I'm okay with TV movies getting dinged a little bit by this element of the formula because by and large, TV movies (at least old-school TV movies) are less culturally impactful than big-screen movies.
I'm also okay with some potential bias toward newer films because it introduces a degree of "modern relevance" into the formula. I'd worry about it little more if it were the only metric, or one of two metrics, but here it's a piece of a bigger puzzle that ends up serving as a nice "contemporary" complement to box office receipts, which almost exclusively occurred when the film first came out. The best films have really good box office receipts and a lot of online reviews (and high audience ratings). They were highly viewed when they came out and highly viewed (and reviewed) today. Including this metric helps separate the movies from that have been consistently great from those that were great when they came out, but have since lost momentum (or vice-versa).
I leaned on pure, publicly available numbers for this analysis, but Rotten Tomatoes review volume did require minor data cleanup for a few titles. Meet the Fockers, for example, had over 33 million audience reviews on the site, and while I understand it's a newer title that people might have been inclined to review more, 33 million is over 45x the review volume as The Godfather, with only Meet the Parents and Ocean's Thirteen standing in between. Its extreme outlier status makes me think the reviews were somehow bot-generated. To correct for this anomaly, I set the film's Rotten Tomatoes review volume in the same proportion to The Godfather as its review volume on IMDb. I made similar corrections to Stardust, Hide and Seek, Shark Tale, Meet the Parents, and Ocean's Thirteen.
[4] "Actor's billing" is an historically controversial subject. Was Marlon Brando the lead in The Godfather, or was it Al Pacino? (Pacino had more screen time, but Brando was billed, nominated, and awarded at the Oscars as the lead; Pacino had the supporting role, much to his chagrin.) Was Robert De Niro the lead in Goodfellas, or was it Ray Liotta? (Liotta had more screen time, but De Niro was billed as the lead.) Was Pacino the lead in Heat, or was it De Niro? There are many examples. The goal of "The Godfather Ratings" is to rely on publicly available information and remove "subjectivity" from the results, save for the opinions of the millions of people who have rated these films online. To that end, I accounted for the "actors' billing" in exactly the manner that it appears on IMDb.
[5] For reasons explained in the previous section, my reference to IMDb audience rankings excludes The Godfather Saga, a made-for-TV re-edit of the first two Godfather movies, and my reference to Rotten Tomatoes rankings excludes Ellis, which has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes audience score on only 12 reviews.
[6] Following on Footnote #4, Pacino as the lead and De Niro as the two in Heat is certainly debatable. I re-watched it last week as I worked on this story. During the first half of the movie, I felt like De Niro was a little more central. By the end, it felt like a coin toss. (Maybe I should have timed their screen time.) Either way, it's probably more of a co-lead situation. But for reasons described in Footnote #4, I'm deferring to IMDb, where Pacino is listed first.
The primary data sources for this story are Box Office Mojo (February 6), IMDb (January 26), and Rotten Tomatoes (February 2). Data was compiled and analyzed by ELDORADO. All charts and graphics herein were created by ELDORADO.
ELDORADO | Berkeley, CA | New York, NY
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ELDORADO | Berkeley, CA | New York, NY
eldo.co | @eldo_co