Inflation-Adjusted Box Office Totals

Zachary Pincus-Roth offers us a much-needed complaint about the habit of using nominal dollars when calling something or other the “highest-grossing movie of all time” or the “best-opening weekend.” Failure to adjust for inflation is always a bad idea, but in the case of these cinema lists it’s also horribly culturally distorting. The highest-grossing films in nominal terms includes a lot of mediocrities and is just very biased toward the recent. The correct list, by contrast, is a list of films that, while not necessary the best movies, are undeniably significant cultural icons:

1. Gone With the Wind
2. Star Wars
3. The Sound of Music
4. E.T.
5. The Ten Commandments
6. Titanic
7. Jaws
8. Doctor Zhivago
9. The Exorcist
10. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
11. 101 Dalmations
12. The Empire Strikes Back
13. Ben-Hur
14. Return of the Jedi
15. The Sting
16. Raiders of the Lost Ark
17. Jurassic Park
18. The Graduate
19. The Phantom Menace
20. Fantasia

Now, the less said about The Phanton Menace and Titanic the better, but in general you’d have to say that cracking that list would be a pretty impressive achievement.