Hiya, gang. It's me, your friendly Internet Movie Database Math Dweeb, with an important update about Battlefield Earth's IMDB ranking.

A few days ago, with precious little fanfare, BE became one of only 477 films in the IMDB to have over FIVE THOUSAND "votes" ranking it on a scale from one to ten. That's pretty darned impressive, especially when one considers that the IMDB has over 50,000 movies, tv shows, and video games in its database.

Only about one in a hundred movies reaches the 5000 vote plateau, and Battlefield Earth is one of them.

So, where does BE rank among these heavily-voted films? The average "score"

for an IMDB film is around 6.9 (people are generally very nice to the movies they've seen, apparently). In fact, there are only TEN films with 5000 votes that have a "score" of under 5.0; they are:

10. Mission to Mars - 4.8 9. Lost in Space - 4.7 8. The Haunting - 4.7 7. Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls - 4.5 6. Godzilla (1998) - 4.2 5. Wild Wild West - 4.0 4. Showgirls - 3.6 3. Batman and Robin - 3.5 2. The Avengers - 3.4 and, the lowest rated of the five thousand vote-getters, your friend and mine...

1. Battlefield Earth - 2.3 This is, to say the least, statistically amusing.

For one thing, BE seems to have garned a disproportionate number of votes compared to, oh, the number of people who've actually seen the fershlugginer thing. Look at the other movies in the bottom ten; they all stunk, but a LOT of people saw them. In BE's case, though, it would appear that either a) viewers are going out of their way to cast a vote, or b) there may be a little ballot stuffing involved.

If there IS ballot-stuffing, though, it seems to be cutting both ways...or at least it used to be. In months past, it appeared as though the stuffing of '10' votes was being balanced by the stuffing of '1' votes. In the last few weeks, thought, the '1' votes have been dominating.

Currently, BE is ranked 96th in the 100 Worst Films in the IMDB. In a couple of weeks the voting should pick up again, when BE begins its run on HBO.

Your math geek friend,
Mike Stemmle,
Lord of the Ducks.

Go Back