And as for box office - basing it on dollars - or even popularity in the moment - is total BS. You can only do that for the current year, which is fine. But trying to compare the popularity of films that have been released 50+ years apart is ridiculous. Maybe if you combine total ticket NUMBERS (not dollars) with total number of DVDs and VHSs sold and rented over the years? No matter what though, I don't see many of the newer films becoming 'classics' and a huge part of our culture like Star Wars, Jaws, Gone With the Wind, etc. "Classic" to me has to do with the widest number of people seeing something, not the same people seeing it over and over and over and then having it lose it's 'crown' to the next big thing in 2 years or so.
For instance, Star Wars will always stand out to me as the most classic and successful of the classic films ever made for a few reasons (and I'm only talking about the ORIGINAL Star Wars here, forget everything else that's happened since then - and forget whether you're actually a SW fan or not
):
1) It's pure film. It was not a book, it was not a comic, it was not a part of culture at all - before the movie was released no one had any idea what the heck it was. IT HAD NO BUILT-IN AUDIENCE. It was a TOTAL risk, moreso than any other film. And now you would be VERY hard-pressed to find someone on the earth (within 100 miles of a TV or newspaper) that doesn't know who Darth Vader is... even if they HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE! Now, that's pretty amazing and no matter what we say about Lucas, we have to give him that - his combination of story-telling through film, his ingenious merchandising, and being smart with his IP is a case-study for success and I can't really see it ever being replicated to the same extent.
2) It's timeless. It's a story, like mythology and bible stories, that can be told in any culture, in any time, and still be relevant. Yeah, we may now laugh at some of the cheesy acting and effects, but overall, the story is pure and captivating. Movies like Wall-E, Iron Man, TDK rely heavily on the politics of the time. Yes, the superheroes themselves are timeless, but the stories told in these current films, and the way the characters are explored, are heavily reliant on the time in which they are released.
3) It explored brand new areas in the art of film-making - in both effects and cinematography. Yeah, the effects and cinematography in Iron Man and TDK are pretty amazing, but they're really nothing really new. They make you say, "OMFG, that's awesome! The suit looks so REAL!" but there is nothing in them that's a brand new experience like Star Wars was - for adults and kids alike. (The first time I felt that I was actually experiencing something new in cinema since Star Wars was during Jurassic Park, FOTR, and Titanic actually... but these were all books and/or well-known events before the film, so I don't really count them as classic 'films' as much as classic 'stories'.)
I also think ET is pretty classic and definitely belongs in the top-5 most popular movies of all time. Gone With the Wind... meh, that's one like Titanic... it's good, not great, but it definitely spoke very loudly to certain people - mainly women who love romance novels
To be fair, it also made me really interested in the history of the Titanic, so that's a plus and speaks well for a film when it makes you think of it outside the theater.
