This is not about AFI's 100 Greatest American Movies.

I hate Shakespeare.

No - that's wrong. I don't hate him exactly but I hate what people have turned his work into. Dude wrote plays about how shortsighted and fickle teenagers are full of dick jokes and and now he is the bar for theater.

The American Film Institute has enough lists with 100 in the title that you’ll actually realize that film – As in: Respected film as we know it – has been impacting culture for 100 years. So when I saw ‘AFI’s 100 Greatest American Films Of All Time’ I wanted to see the list of end-all-be-all list of American creations over the last 100 years. I was met with equal parts surprise and disappointment. Starting from the number one spot (Citizen Kane – 1941) the list is packed with iconic films but if you check the top 10 only one of them was made in the last 30 years (Schindler’s List – 1993). If you keep going down the list to #20 you’re now aware that of the top 20 Greatest Films of the last 100 years only 3 of them came after 1970. The further down the list I went the more disappointed I was.

I scrolled back up to the header to see what they were using to determine this list and its order and found out that 1500 leaders of the film community chose 100 films from a list of 400 provided by the Institute. And therein may lay the issue. The American Film Institute is a prestigious organization respected by many and consulted by even more. Trivial Pursuit (An institute I respect MORE than AFI) has pertinent questions about the lists they release. These questions are worth slices of a pop culture pie that I will absolutely win every time with no questions asked so I set out to make a point for why I thought this was complete and utter bullshit.

Let me preface what I’m about to say with this:

The mark of greatness is when everything before you is obsolete and everything after you bears your mark. Great things influence the next wave of even greater things.

Considering the rate at which films have been released in the last 30 years as opposed to yesteryear it is a mathematical improbability for the top 20 of any list the AFI has not to include at least 5 entries younger than 1985. You're telling me that in 50 years we haven’t made anything to replicate the captivating narrative of Citizen Kane? After 50 years Casablanca still belongs in the top 3 greatest stories of all time? After 50 years we’ve had nothing more technically groundbreaking than The Wizard of Oz? (It’s a sore spot. Don’t @ me)

To make a list composed of the Greatest Greatness that ever was and then only celebrate things based on how good they were for the time they were created is insulting. These films could be considered Iconic. Some may even be labeled Classic. But neither of which are shoe-ins for Greatness and according to the Institute 'greatness' apparently waned after '77.

Other lists I looked into were: ‘Greatest movie quotes of all time’ – Where the top 10 ranged from 1939 to 1977.

‘100 Years 100 Cheers’ - Where the top 10 Most Inspiring films ranged from 1939 to 1998, the 2 most recent films being ET and Saving Private Ryan.

‘100 songs’ Where, again, the top 10 ranged from 1939-1977

'100 love stories’ Where the top 10 ranged from 1931-1977

I know that film, as with any art, is subjective and (by design) tells a story to evoke emotions based more so on what’s being experienced in the theater than what’s going on out in the world or even in the personal lives of the audience - but great things didn't just stop being made because the calendar turned. Old cinema is good. Like, GOOD good. Crazy good, even. If you watch some of these films today and put yourself in the mind of the time they were made it’s beyond amazing to see what they managed to create on a sound stage or in the Arizona desert and it presented a template for everyone who came after to follow. This can’t be disregarded but it also can’t be revered like this anymore.

When Citizen Kane is listed as the number one greatest film of all time the Institution is saying that this is the pinnacle of film making and nothing made since then has been able to hold a candle to it. And they're wrong. It’s insulting to think that work done by the minds of this generation don’t rank alongside the creative team that brought us Lawrence of Arabia.

I’m not saying the age of a film makes it unwatchable but when you are adding a film to a list of THE GREATEST SHIT TO EVER BE HAD you shouldn’t include anything where your defense for its presence includes the phrase ‘for its time’.

THAT is the difference between Classic and Iconic.

The Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind were the definition of greatness in 1939 and Citizen Kane may have been the pinnacle for 1941 but here's a taste of what came after them:

Chinatown

The Godfather

The Graduate

Psycho

2001

Apocalypse Now

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Kingdom Under Heaven

The Fountain

Pump Up The Volume

Blade Runner

Harlem Nights

The Davinci Code

Lady Bird

Zodiac

Insomnia

Se7en

The Game

And here's a list of franchises we'd have to leave out:

Star Wars

Rocky (Including Creed)

Alien

Terminator

Batman

The Extended MCU

Star Trek

I beg anyone to make the case that the above films are in some way not as valuable as the aforementioned three.

There's no right answer here. Art speaks to us individually and there’s no accurate way to compare them objectively because what draws us to them is specific to the person experiencing them.

What metrics would an institution use to determine greatness?

It's far more likely that the films on that list have been around for many years and have just had the time and opportunity to leave a bigger impact on more people.

It’s here where I realized I was being a little bitch about the whole thing because I was tied up on the language used by the institute: 100 Greatest American Films.

This is also when I stopped being a bitch and realized I was mad at an institution because they used a word I didn't like to describe their list that I found insulting when my own assumed perspective about how they put that list together may have been just as insulting.

But the mark of greatness is when everything before you is obsolete and everything after you bears your mark and great things influence the next wave of even greater things.

No one who matters thinks this stopped in 1977.