To celebrate 30 years since Empire first hit the shelves, the new issue of the magazine tasked the team with working up a list of the 30 best films of Empire’s lifetime. The one rule: there could be only one film for each year. Which films made the biggest impact on release? Which still endure today? Which gave us the most eye-popping spectacle? The most iconic characters? The greatest dialogue? Many arguments, sulks, and tortured discussions later, and the list was decided – with each one emblazoned on its own cover for the Special 30th Anniversary Edition issue.
Empire's 30th Anniversary Edition Covers
1 of 30#1 – Batman (Tim Burton, 1989)
2 of 30#2 – Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
3 of 30#3 – Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991)
4 of 30#4 – Reservoir Dogs
5 of 30#5 – Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
6 of 30#6 – The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994)
7 of 30#7 – Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
8 of 30#8 – Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)
9 of 30#9 – Titanic (James Cameron, 1997)
10 of 30#10 – Blade (Stephen Norrington, 1998)
11 of 30#11 – The Matrix (The Wachowskis, 1999)
12 of 30#12 – American Psycho
13 of 30#13 – The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001)
14 of 30#14 – Spirited Away
15 of 30#15 – Lost In Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)
16 of 30#16 – Shaun Of The Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004)
17 of 30#17 – Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005)
18 of 30#18 – Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
19 of 30#19 – No Country For Old Men (The Coen Brothers, 2007)
20 of 30#20 – The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
21 of 30#21 – Avatar (James Cameron, 2009)
22 of 30#22 – Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)
23 of 30#23 – Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011)
24 of 30#24 – Avengers Assemble (Joss Whedon, 2012)
25 of 30#25 – Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron, 2013)
26 of 30#26 – Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2014)
27 of 30#27 – Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
28 of 30#28 – Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)
29 of 30#29 – Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)
30 of 30#30 – Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018)
Here are the 30 films that made the list and why – and stay tuned to read about the ones that just missed out.
1) Batman
(Tim Burton, 1989)
In the year that Empire began, came the comic book film that started it all – Tim Burton’s unique take on the Dark Knight. It’s a vivid interpretation that proved the cinematic potential in splashing comics across the big screen – with iconic turns from Michael Keaton as the Bat himself, and Jack Nicholson as the Clown Prince Of Crime, the Joker.
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2) Goodfellas
(Martin Scorsese, 1990)
As far back as we can remember, few crime epics have had the resonance, the propulsive energy, or the multi-generational scope of Martin Scorsese’s mob saga – with iconic from Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco and more.
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3) Terminator 2: Judgment Day
(James Cameron, 1991)
He said he’d be back – and when Arnie’s unstoppable killing machine returned, it was in a souped-up, non-stop, heart-filled blockbuster with groundbreaking effects that still hold up to this day. T2 remains so monolithic that no Terminator movie since has been able to hold a candle to it. A big, molten iron thumbs-up to James Cameron.
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4) Reservoir Dogs
(Quentin Tarantino, 1992)
The heist movie without the heist. The film that talked pop culture like no other. The hyper-violent, hyper-stylish, hyper-hip explosion of the ‘90s indie scene. Quentin Tarantino’s debut is still astonishing – and announced a vital new voice in the cinematic landscape.
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5) Jurassic Park
(Steven Spielberg, 1993)
He did it. The crazy sonofabitch, he did it. Master of spectacle Steven Spielberg brought dinosaurs back from extinction with masterfully-deployed animatronics and early CGI effects that proved anything was possible on the big screen. First he made you believe – and then he made you terrified, in the ultimate blockbuster blast.
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6) The Shawshank Redemption
(Frank Darabont, 1994)
It didn’t break the box office at the time, but Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s prison novella endures as a touching, heartfelt testament to the power of hope – even if it means navigating an entire river of shit to see the light at the end of the tunnel. There’s a reason why it remains the #1 user-rated film on IMDB, besting even The Godfather.
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7) Toy Story
(John Lasseter, 1995)
As the first feature-length 3D CGI animated movie, Toy Story broke the mould and more or less invented a whole new storytelling medium. But beyond its technical wizardry and milestone importance, the reason Pixar’s debut feature endures is because of its indelible leading odd-couple, Buzz and Woody – a friendship that will never die.
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8) Scream
(Wes Craven, 1996)
After his New Nightmare, Wes Craven burrowed further down the meta rabbit hole with his none-more-self-referential horror. Part genre deconstruction, part loving homage, part top-notch slasher, Scream is a horror movie about horror movies that remains as smart and nasty as it was decades ago.
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9) Titanic
(James Cameron, 1997)
Cynics expected it to sink. But the unstoppable box office force that is James Cameron propelled his period-disaster-romance to become the biggest film ever (at the time). An epic story, epically told, and made on an epic scale – with a notoriously water-logged shoot.
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10) Blade
(Stephen Norrington, 1998)
Before the MCU, before Raimi’s Spider-Man, before the big-screen X-Men, the rise of the Marvel movie began with Blade. Stephen Norrington’s cult comic-book-horror cast Wesley Snipes as the half-human-half-vampire hero in a film that paved the way for all that followed.
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11) The Matrix
(The Wachowskis, 1999)
Just before the new millennium, the Wachowskis gave audiences a choice: opt for the usual blockbuster and believe whatever you want to believe, or enter The Matrix and see how deep the rabbit hole goes. All who chose the latter were treated to a mind-bending genre mash-up of kung fu mastery, cerebral philosophical sci-fi, and cyber-punk thrills in an all-time action classic.
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12) American Psycho
(Mary Harron, 2000)
Mary Harron took Bret Easton Ellis’ incendiary satirical slasher and turned it into a true cinematic experience. On screen it boasts icy visuals, butcher knife-sharp dialogue, and brilliantly incongruous needle-drops – all further elevated by a chilling performance from Christian Bale as murderous ‘80s yuppie Patrick Bateman.
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13) Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring
(Peter Jackson, 2001)
Before Fellowship, there were doubts that Peter Jackson could even pull off a big-screen, bigger-canvas adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s dense fantasy – let alone that it would be a towering blockbuster achievement. The first film in the trilogy is arguably its best, conjuring a whole new world of Hobbits, Uruk-hai, dark wizards, and high elves. The start of a monumental cinematic journey.
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14) Spirited Away
(Hayao Miyazaki, 2002)
The film that brought Studio Ghibli to the western mainstream – even if its complex explorations of morality and greed and its elements of Japanese cultural specificity mean it’s often anything but mainstream. The gorgeous animation and visual invention dazzles, but its the heart of young heroine Chihiro that connects and endures.
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15) Lost In Translation
(Sofia Coppola, 2003)
Sofia Coppola’s low-key comedy-drama of isolation, ennui, and blossoming emotional connections is a beautiful would-be-romance, an unexpectedly funny fish-out-of-water comedy, and a perfect example of what the ‘90s indie scene evolved into through the ‘00s. Tender performances from Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannson leave you falling for both of them – even if they’ll only break your heart.
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16) Shaun Of The Dead
(Edgar Wright, 2004)
Just after Richard Curtis reached peak Brit rom-com with 2003’s Love Actually, along came Edgar Wright to splatter the genre with entrails. The so-called rom-zom-com kicked the careers of Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost into overdrive, taking a cricket bat to the head of British cinema. In a good way.
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17) Brokeback Mountain
(Ang Lee, 2005)
Even as recently as 2005, Brokeback was a groundbreaking piece of cinema – a major, mainstream movie that proved LGBT stories are universal, with powerful performances from Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. It bagged BAFTAs and the Golden Lion at Cannes, though lost out to Crash for Best Picture at one of the most controversial Oscar decisions of recent memory. Nearly 15 years later, its legacy can be felt through the likes of Moonlight, Carol, Call Me By Your Name and more.
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18) Pan’s Labyrinth
(Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
With its haunting fantasy sequences and brutal, heartbreaking depiction of war and fascism, this is del Toro working at maximum capacity. Achingly gorgeous and emotional, the story of Ofelia and her quest to complete three dangerous tasks confirmed del Toro as a master filmmaker, combining visionary fairytales and arresting character dramas with total ease.
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19) No Country For Old Men
(The Coen Brothers, 2007)
It’s bleak. It’s brutal. It’s brilliantly made. The Coen Brother’s pitch-black neo-Western is a tense and gripping thriller with sound design that whistles through the vast American expanse and creaks through the halls of scuzzy motels. No Country skirts narrative convention at every turn, offers no concessions to casual viewers, and introduces Javier Bardem as instantly iconic villain Anton Chigurh – with a bowl haircut as terrifying as his murderous nature.
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20) The Dark Knight
(Christopher Nolan, 2008)
If Batman Begins was a pyschological odyssey into the trauma that makes Bruce Wayne tick, The Dark Knight is a grand, post-9/11 crime story told on an operatic scale. Its scope is thrilling, with propulsive storytelling and sweeping character arcs to make your hair stand on end. And then there’s Heath Ledger’s Joker, a lip-smacking, bent-backed anarchist who menaces Gotham with reckless abandon and fearsome conviction. A towering comic book movie – though it’s so much more than that.
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21) Avatar
(James Cameron, 2009)
Yes, James Cameron’s epic sci-fi fantasy has its detractors – but Avatar was truly explosive on arrival. The filmmaker created a planet so stunningly gorgeous and thrillingly realised (in the very best 3D of the recent format revival) that audiences kept going back again and again for a few more precious hours on Pandora. Throw in a classic natives vs. evil industrialists story and some massive mech action in the final reel, and the former biggest film of all time is a thrillingly colourful adventure. Prepare to remember why you loved it so much a decade ago when Cameron finally deploys Avatar 2.
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22) Inception
(Christopher Nolan, 2010)
Post-Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan returned with a complete original: a blockbuster with Bond-influenced action and a malleable sense of reality akin to The Matrix. With its mind-infiltrating set pieces and dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream structure, Inception is dizzyingly inventive, told with complete confidence, and still confounds audiences with its spinning-top cliffhanger.
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23) Bridesmaids
(Paul Feig, 2011)
The realm of gross-out gags and ensemble comedy was long reserved for the men of Hollywood – but in 2011, Bridesmaids blew that wide open. Paul Feig’s no-holds-barred comedy had Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy and co swearing up a storm, shitting in the street, drinking copiously, and drawing huge laughs along the way. But more than that, it depicted its characters and their complex, barbed friendships with nuance and insight. And it was a major box office hit too – proving that female-fronted comedies were far from the commercial kryptonite that (male) execs had long claimed.
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24) Avengers Assemble
(Joss Whedon, 2012)
Four years after Iron Man first soared, Marvel Studios made good on its promise: assembling Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye into Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. With six leads, and five previous movies of set-up, it shouldn’t have worked – but writer-director Joss Whedon made its comic book-structured storytelling work in cinematic form, with ludicrously exciting team-up brawls, a fizzing gag-packed script, and a promise of much, much more to come. A movie miracle.
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25) Gravity
(Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
The ambitious extended takes that came to define Alfonso Cuarón’s cinematic style were blasted to outer-space for a taut, tense sci-fi thriller. Emmanuel Lubezki’s fluid, zero-G camerawork is a none-more-immersive way into Dr Ryan Stone’s (Sandra Bullock) fight for survival against the infinite cosmos – and her internal journey from grief-fuelled isolation and rebirth is mirrored in the pacy plot, delivered in a breathless 91-minute runtime.
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26) Birdman
(Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2014)
The cheeky casting of Micheal Keaton as an actor haunted by the spectre of the superhero character he played in the past is just one part of what makes Birdman great. In another knockout bout of technical mastery from cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, Iñarritu’s story of an actor in crisis is delivered as one long shot, seamlessly stitched together from extended takes that tasked its cast with memorising reams and reams of dialogue. An astounding magic trick of a movie.
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27) Mad Max: Fury Road
(George Miller, 2015)
Arriving 30 years after Beyond Thunderdome, Fury Road bears all the hallmarks of a cinematic vision that brewed in the director’s head for three decades before bursting from his mind, fully formed, onto the screen. Its epic, acrobatic desert car chases are unparalleled, its imagery admirably unhinged, with an unforgettable new hero in Charlize Theron’s apocalypse-hardened Furiosa. Magnificent.
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28) Moonlight
(Barry Jenkins, 2016)
The Oscars gaffe nearly robbed it of its moment in the spotlight, but Barry Jenkins’ staggeringly tender coming-of-age drama has a poetry that could endure any envelope-swapping scandal. Across its three timelines, Moonlight traces the tiniest moments that have a seismic impact on a lifetime, depicting how Liberty City kid Little becomes repressed teen Chiron in his adolescence, and isolated dealer Black in his adulthood. An utterly beautiful film, whose Best Picture win proved a landmark in LGBT and African-American filmmaking.
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29) Get Out
(Jordan Peele, 2017)
Jordan Peele’s directorial debut announced the sketch comedian as a brand new horror master. Get Out is a supremely entertaining satire in the vein of The Twilight Zone and The Stepford Wives that hit big with mainstream moviegoers – but it’s the razor-sharp subtext on the racism hiding beneath supposedly liberal white America in the post-Obama era that kicks it up into masterpiece territory.
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30) Black Panther
(Ryan Coogler, 2018)
Far more than Marvel’s long-overdue first film led by a black superhero. Black Panther embraces its cultural specificity, delving into weighty topics – the struggle of inner-city African-Americans, the cultural ramifications of colonialism, the duty of giving back to the world – in a flashy, Bond-esque adventure. All that, and it gave audiences Wakanda – easily one of the most dazzling and fully-realised cinematic worlds since Avatar’s Pandora, a nuanced villain in Michael B Jordan’s Erik Killmonger, and iconic action beats (Okoye’s wig throw!) A genuine game-changer.
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