FYI: Accessing old reddit now requires a reddit account.
thataccount•32m ago
I stopped at the point that Reddit required an account. I am afraid my opinions on the Shawshank Redemption are not sufficiently blazing for me to become a Reddit member in 2026.
al_borland•24m ago
I was able to read it on old.reddit without an account. This is what it said:
Here we go...
The SHORT BUT STILL LONG version.
Shawshank was a flop. Made no money in theaters. This made its home video and, most importantly, broadcasting rights SUPER CHEAP.
TBS and TNT were two basic cable channels that bought the rights to show it. And they showed it. CONSTANTLY. This is an era before streaming. If you wanted to watch a movie at home you either bought it, rented it, or caught it on cable. Since those two networks basically aired the movie on a damn near continuous loop for YEARS, everybody saw it.
Now it was super common to find movies by flipping through them on cable. But Shawshank benefited from its almost episodic story structure. Go back and watch the movie. It's not very complicated and there are multiple digressions. Like the Brooks bit, for example, where for like 5 to 10 minutes it's like a short film. The end of the film with the prison break is like that too.
Just a bunch of really good, very satisfying sequences that don't reaaaaally ask much of you if you come across it without seeing what came before it. It's not a complicated heist film. In fact, anecdotally, it took me YEARS to see the beginning of this film even after I had watched it like a dozen times. The first time I watched it all the way through I was like "oh shit. There was a trial?"
This made the movie VERY EASY to drop in on as you were flipping. "Oh it's this part!" you would say. Or you knew the part you liked was coming up.
So this was all happening in the late 90s. And the movie just slowly, stealthily became everybody's favorite movie. So when people started wandering onto the internet in that time before time and found themselves on IMDB, Shawshank got all the votes from those Gen Xers and Millenials who had seen the movie 50 times in bits and pieces on cable.
And it all happened before you started really getting concerted efforts to vote "against" things like it was some crazy competition.
EDIT: I think some very angry people are confusing what I wrote above with not believing the movie to be any good. The movie is exceptional which made all of the rest of it possible. But exceptional films fall into obscurity all the time and there has to be some other force at work outside of its intrinsic "goodness" to get eyeballs back on the screen. Accessibility to your audience is absolutely a factor.
al_borland•45m ago
It’s a Wonderful Life has a similar story. It didn’t do amazing at the box office, and the copyright wasn’t renewed. At that point it could be broadcast without paying a license fee. That led to be being shown around the clock on some stations during the Christmas season for decades. As a result, it became a beloved classic.
MisterTea•52m ago
thataccount•32m ago
al_borland•24m ago
Here we go...
The SHORT BUT STILL LONG version.
Shawshank was a flop. Made no money in theaters. This made its home video and, most importantly, broadcasting rights SUPER CHEAP.
TBS and TNT were two basic cable channels that bought the rights to show it. And they showed it. CONSTANTLY. This is an era before streaming. If you wanted to watch a movie at home you either bought it, rented it, or caught it on cable. Since those two networks basically aired the movie on a damn near continuous loop for YEARS, everybody saw it.
Now it was super common to find movies by flipping through them on cable. But Shawshank benefited from its almost episodic story structure. Go back and watch the movie. It's not very complicated and there are multiple digressions. Like the Brooks bit, for example, where for like 5 to 10 minutes it's like a short film. The end of the film with the prison break is like that too.
Just a bunch of really good, very satisfying sequences that don't reaaaaally ask much of you if you come across it without seeing what came before it. It's not a complicated heist film. In fact, anecdotally, it took me YEARS to see the beginning of this film even after I had watched it like a dozen times. The first time I watched it all the way through I was like "oh shit. There was a trial?"
This made the movie VERY EASY to drop in on as you were flipping. "Oh it's this part!" you would say. Or you knew the part you liked was coming up.
So this was all happening in the late 90s. And the movie just slowly, stealthily became everybody's favorite movie. So when people started wandering onto the internet in that time before time and found themselves on IMDB, Shawshank got all the votes from those Gen Xers and Millenials who had seen the movie 50 times in bits and pieces on cable.
And it all happened before you started really getting concerted efforts to vote "against" things like it was some crazy competition.
EDIT: I think some very angry people are confusing what I wrote above with not believing the movie to be any good. The movie is exceptional which made all of the rest of it possible. But exceptional films fall into obscurity all the time and there has to be some other force at work outside of its intrinsic "goodness" to get eyeballs back on the screen. Accessibility to your audience is absolutely a factor.