If you’re in a crowd, and you’re watching a movie, and you feel pleased at what you’re seeing while also getting the sense that the crowd around you is also pleased, then by gosh, you might just be sitting down and watching a crowd-pleaser. These movies are made with the broadest possible audience in mind, and they’re the cinematic equivalent of perfect pop music.
In both instances (cinema and music), you may have people looking down on such crowd-pleasing things, but that’s not what the following ranking is about. Things are positive here, and what follows is a rundown of some of the best of the best crowd-pleasers in cinema history, going back decades for some and looking at a few more recent hits, too. They’re not necessarily the greatest movies of all time, but they are among the easiest to like and appreciate.
10
‘Back to the Future’ (1985)
It’s easy to take Back to the Future for granted, to some extent, seeing as it’s very breezy and effortless to watch, on top of giving the impression that it was therefore effortless to make. So, there are bigger and more dramatic movies from the 20th century that might jump out as more ambitious or grand as far as cinematic undertakings go, but Back to the Future shouldn’t be overlooked.
There’s a lot going on technically here, and even if there wasn’t any comedy, it’d still be a great sci-fi/adventure sort of film. It breaks down time travel in a way that you can understand and have fun with, regardless of age, and it manages to appeal to people of just about any age without running the risk of feeling childish, or perhaps too simple for older viewers. Back to the Future does just about everything right, so singling it out as an all-timer of a crowd-pleaser feels justified.
9
‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (2022)
The narrative around Top Gun: Maverick is that it helped kick-start blockbuster-level movies again, post-2020, and it’s a decently fair one. Like, Spider-Man: No Way Home also did incredibly on a financial front, pleased most crowds, and was released the previous year, but even then, Top Gun: Maverick did all that and more, or did so to a greater extent while being of a higher quality.
It was a long-awaited sequel to a movie from the 1980s that is iconic in some ways, sure, but also a bit mediocre in other regards. Sorry. But Top Gun: Maverick was Top Gun refined, and also reverential enough to the first movie to please those who genuinely liked it. Top Gun: Maverick is all very simple, when you break it down narratively and thematically, but again, no problem with being a crowd-pleaser if you can please crowds of such a size.
8
‘Avatar’ (2009)
James Cameron pretty much always aims to please, and some people did indeed criticize him for being so willing to go broad and mass-appeal, but he makes it work, dammit! Titanic drew seemingly every pair of eyeballs on the planet to it, back in 1997, and then Avatar – his long-awaited follow-up – ended up being similarly popular, or even more so, because if you don’t adjust for inflation, it’s the highest-grossing movie ever.
Avatar is just the everything movie, kind of for everyone, with clear-cut heroes and villains, lots of spectacle, and emotional moments that are never anything less than big and sweeping.
It’s arguably more of a straightforward crowd-pleaser than its sequels, too, because both of them are longer and ever so slightly more challenging in terms of world-building and some occasionally zanier sci-fi/fantasy concepts. But Avatar is just the everything movie, kind of for everyone, with clear-cut heroes and villains, lots of spectacle, and emotional moments that are never anything less than big and sweeping. You can try and reject it if you want, but trying to ignore it altogether is, at this stage, pretty much impossible.
7
‘Avengers: Endgame’ (2019)
If you want to talk about Avengers: Endgame, you do kind of have to mention 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War first. That one pitted most of the heroes established in the Marvel Cinematic Universe up until that point taking on Thanos, who’d been hanging around behind the scenes, but emerged in that film as a central antagonist. And then Infinity War ended with him winning, and so much of the MCU in shambles.
Temporary shambles, of course. There was always going to be a return to the way things were, but seeing how (and what it might cost) led to intense anticipation and a little dread, which is why Avengers: Endgame felt so huge, at the time. It still feels pretty huge, even if some subsequent Marvel movies have diluted certain powerful moments, to some extent, but for a time, in 2019, Endgame was kind of everything, and it was one of those rare finales (temporary or otherwise) that seemed to please/satisfy just about everyone.
6
‘Casablanca’ (1942)
Well, if you want to get technical, Casablanca apparently didn’t set the world on fire when it first came out, being moderately well-received… enough to be an Oscar success, sure, but it’s sometimes talked about as a movie that was made as one of many on an assembly line, in effect. Studios were churning out movies throughout the 1940s reliably, and Casablanca was just one of them.
But then it’s continued to age phenomenally, and so its reputation now is far greater, being considered one of the best movies of the 1940s, and the Best Picture Oscar winner from that decade that’s easily the most well-remembered. As a romantic drama, it’s surprisingly involving and exciting, it’s got a decent helping of humor, thanks to a witty script, and then it also stands as one of the all-time great World War II movies. If you tend to avoid movies that are multiple decades old, or find films from the first half of the 20th century intimidating, then Casablanca is a perfect place to start; a truly great gateway movie that remains feeling – and probably will always feel – timeless.
5
‘The Princess Bride’ (1987)
There might be a person out there who doesn’t like The Princess Bride, though who knows where they are or what they’re doing. You’d have to feel bad for such a person, though, because you can approach The Princess Bride wanting a fairy tale, or a sly parody of fairy tales, or something in between, or maybe even something else altogether, and still likely come away satisfied.
It’s far from the only movie in this ranking that fits into a bunch of different genres all at once, but The Princess Bride impresses because it blends so many genres while also not being an epic, at least runtime-wise, since it clocks in at just 99 minutes. Also, like Back to the Future, you could describe it as a family movie, but it’s aimed at a far wider audience beyond just kids, so uh… you’ve got pretty much nothing to lose by watching it, if you’ve somehow gotten this far in your life without seeing it.
4
‘Rocky’ (1976)
Rocky is so definitive an underdog sports movie that looking up the word “underdog” in the dictionary and seeing an image of Sylvester Stallone as the title character… you’d have to be like, “Yeah, fair enough.” It wouldn’t look out of place. This movie does that kind of story so reliably, and in a way that might feel clichéd nowadays, yet there’s still an undeniable charm here.
There’s a guy who’s going nowhere in life, but then he starts training, aspiring to be someone great, and finds a connection with other people like he hadn’t had before. It’s just nice, it’s romantic, it’s exciting, it’s inspiring, it’s all the positive things. Rocky works and doesn’t really pack a punch, because that suggests it kind of hits you, but it packs a hug. Yeah, even though it’s about boxing, Rocky packs/delivers a real mean hug.
3
‘Star Wars’ (1977)
If you were around in 1977 and were able to see Star Wars on the big screen before it became this behemoth of a franchise that’s expanded well beyond the bounds of cinema, you should count yourself lucky. Not that the simplicity and inspiring stuff found here can’t still be appreciated, but when Star Wars was just Star Wars (1977), it probably felt even more special and mind-blowing.
The story told here gets wrapped up perfectly, and though at least one sequel to Star Wars is phenomenal, there are things here that are undone or even undermined by later entries in the series. Star Wars (1977) at its most crowd-pleasing and legendary was when it was just Star Wars, and for redefining what blockbuster movies could be, almost half a century ago now, it does have to be respected, even if that admiration now is somewhat from afar.
2
‘The Lord of the Rings’ (2001–2003)
It was hard to know which one of the three to single out here, so whatever: here’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and just consider it the one massive film because it was made as a giant production, and also, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the whole thing as one huge novel. It’s about a ring that some small and usually peaceful folk need to destroy, and then all the while, a massive war’s being fought over the entirety of Middle-earth.
And then there’s some other stuff going on, because of course there is. The Lord of the Rings is about nine hours long, after all, and it’s got even more room to explore further things if you’re more into the extended editions. The Lord of the Rings is the defining trilogy of the 21st century so far, or the one to beat going forward. Even if filmmakers still have 70-ish years to top the achievement here, it might well never happen. If people are still watching movies in 2100, they’re likely to see The Lord of the Rings as a high point of trilogies and blockbusters for the entirety of that century that’s just been.
1
‘The Shawshank Redemption’ (1994)
One reason to put The Shawshank Redemption at the #1 spot here is that there’s data to back up its popularity and general mass appeal. It’s been the highest-rated movie on IMDb for years, and even if it doesn’t stay there forever, it’s a sign that, for now, The Shawshank Redemption is about as easy-to-like as movies get. If you watch this and honestly don’t get anything out of it, that’s kind of wild.
Any attempts to praise The Shawshank Redemption run the risk of coming off corny, because yeah, it’s about being a human, dealing with hardships, and finding connection with those around you. Everything it deals with is broad, but it deals with it all so effectively, and in a way that’s hard to resist and not feel at least a little moved by. It’s eternally great, and probably the most broadly appealing movie ever made that’s not also a blockbuster (at least not in the traditional sense).