Moon
once in a white moon

Movie and TV statistics of a decade

I’ve spent the last decade tracking what I watch, and the statistics reveal the strongest habits in movies, shows, actors, composers, genres, and directors.

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Introduction

In 2009 I started keeping track of all the movies and TV-shows I watched. I limited this to only content from my own collection. The last few years I haven't really been purchasing any more physical content due to streaming getting good and easily accessible, and I've barely watched any of the content I own since 2020, so I figure it's about time I take a look at the statistics of what I've actually watched this last decade (and change).

Exclusions

There are, of course, the obvious list of movies with "Star Wars" coming up on top (not surprisingly with 9 movies, 2 spin-off movies, and a couple of animation shows), with the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy taking the runner up. This is then followed by Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, the "Harry Potter" movies, the "Hobbit" trilogy, the "Matrix" trilogy, and "Star Trek" (including "The Next Generation" TV show and various movies. The "Transformers" movies round off this list of movie series. Another big one in these collections are the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Honorable mentiona goes to the "Alien" collection which I've seen much too seldom, and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies. If we remove these movie collections from the statistics we're starting to see a much more interesting picture.

Top 5 movies and TV-shows

  1. Nightmare Before Christmas, The
  2. Black Hawk Down
  3. "From the Earth to the Moon"
  4. TRON: Legacy
  5. 2012
#5 is obviously a guilty pleasure, and #4 just has such good music and visuals that I keep coming back. #3 should come as no surprise to a space-head like me. This is probably one of my favorite TV-shows of all time. #2 is just such a well-directed and good action movie that I keep going back to it. The #1 movie is no big surprise as I watch this every christmas. But wait, there's more!

Top 5 actors

We can also find out which actors I watch the most. The top contenders are from "Battlestar Galactica" and "Stargate SG-1", which are shows I watch somewhat frequently, so let's disregard those. We're then left with the following:
  1. Matt Damon
  2. Morgan Freeman
  3. Bruce Willis
  4. George Clooney
  5. Hugh Jackman
I don't know what to make (or say) about this list, so I'll leave it at that.

Top 10 composers

Seeing as I mostly listen to movie soundtracks, this is the list that is the most interesting to me, so I've expanded this to 10 people:
  1. Hans Zimmer
  2. Michael Giacchino
  3. Danny Elfman
  4. Alan Silvestri
  5. Marco Beltrami
  6. Brian Tyler
  7. James Horner
  8. David Arnold
  9. Henry Jackman
  10. James Newton Howard
My favorite composer is John Williams, and he would be at the very top if I had included all the movies excluded above. It still paints quite an interesting picture. Hans Zimmer has composed for a lot of movies, and a lot of movies which I like, so it's no surprise to find him on this list. A bit of a surprise to find him at the top, though. I do enjoy listening to his music, so he deserves a spot on the list. I have a hard time picking out a third personal favorite. #2, #3, #4, #6, #8 and #10 are all among them. So I guess the outlier here is Marco Beltrami. I don't remember which movies he has scored and I've seen. Maybe I should take this as a hint to start listening more to him. Henry Jackman has scored many animation movies, and I've seen a lot of these.

Top 5 genres

  1. Action
  2. Thriller
  3. Adventure
  4. Sci-Fi
  5. Drama
This list comes as a surprise to nobody. If a movie falls into two or more of these genres then odds are I've seen it and maybe even liked it.

Top 5 directors

Rounding off the statistics are the directors.
  1. Steven Spielberg
  2. Ridley Scott
  3. Roland Emmerich
  4. Zack Snyder
  5. Bryan Singer
Again, there's no surprise Spielberg is at the top. He's just such a good filmmaker and masters just about every genre he touches. Ridley Scott should also not be a surprise due to movie #2 (and, of course, "Blade Runner"). The rest I'm chalking up to guilty pleasures.

Conclusion

It's been a fun decade (and change). The next decade I will have to comb through multiple streaming services, which sounds like way too much work, so don't expect a new list in 10 years unless they all create some common APIs which I can use to aggregate the data.