A Very Ranker 2022 Wrap-Up
Any publication can remind you about the big events that defined 2022 — Ranker can tell you how people feel about them. We’re looking at some of the people, shows, and movies that dominated the conversation over the last twelve months and using voting data from millions of users to answer your burning questions about everything from Tom Cruise to Tom Brady.
Photo: Wikipedia
The Slap Does Noticeable (Short-Term) Damage to Will Smith’s Reputation
Few moments in 2022 pop culture were more shocking than the one that took place during the Academy Awards, when actor Will Smith walked onstage and slapped presenter Chris Rock for a joke Rock made at the expense of Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. The unscripted outburst was all anyone could talk about for weeks after the ceremony, and as a result, the reputation of an actor who’d once been one of Hollywood’s most beloved stars took a serious hit. But you don’t have to take our word for it: Smith’s fall from favor is backed up by the numbers on Ranker.
Smith’s 2022 actually got off to a good start, with sentiment from Ranker voters hitting nearly 60% in the month before the Oscars. But the Independence Day actor’s fortunes reversed very quickly after “The Slap”: between March 27, the night of the Oscars, and March 31, Smith went from #112 on our list of Celebrities You’re Sick Of In 2022 (129K votes) to #1. This sharp uptick in votes indicating negative sentiment about the actor reached a low point in June, when positive sentiment for Will Smith on lists across Ranker was a meager 33% of the total. A large portion of voters expressed their discontent by downvoting the former Fresh Prince star on lists like The Hottest Men of 2022 (285K votes)— not the most straightforward way to make your disapproval of his behavior known, but damaging all the same to a 90s heartthrob like Smith.
Smith’s overall approval has picked up a bit since then, and a recent shakeup on the list of Celebrities You’re Sick Of In 2022 has put Will Smith down to #15. If his new movie Emancipation does well, the actor may yet recover from this tremendous controversy in 2023.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Passing of Queen Elizabeth II Renews Interest in Royal Family
Queen Elizabeth II’s passing on September 8 brought the longest reign of any English monarch to a close; truly the end of an era. The Queen’s death prompted not just grief and sympathy from internet users, but a new bout of curiosity regarding the late regent’s history, her role as head of the British state, and the procedures that must be followed after an English monarch passes.
Among our most popular votable articles about Queen Elizabeth is this list of Facts About Queen Elizabeth That Made Us Say ‘Woah,’ which has been voted on 15,000 times. The most popular Elizabeth II fact? Her vocal desire to take part in a James Bond sketch that kicked off the 2012 Summer Olympics in London — a step that broke royal protocol.
Photo: Apple
Severance and House of the Dragon Duke It Out Over 2022’s Top Spot
What was the best show to premiere in 2022? When you put a question like that to a vote, you’re more likely to see big-budget blockbusters take precedence over critics’ picks and indie darlings. In 2021, nearly 2,000 Ranker voters picked Squid Game (#1) over Mare of Easttown (#11), WandaVision (#3) over Yellowjackets (#21), and Superman & Lois (#4) over The White Lotus (#23). This year, though, the clear favorite House of the Dragon may be beaten by a very different kind of show: Apple TV+’s Severance.
With 12K votes in so far, Severance is, as of the writing of this blog, #1 on The Best New TV Shows of 2022 — though it’s swapped places with the runner-up a few times just in the last week. Severance is a surprising winner not just because it’s not based on any IP, but because it’s on Apple TV+, a newer streaming service without the same kind of subscriber base enjoyed by competitors like Netflix and Amazon. House of the Dragon is currently #2, ahead of Disney+ shows Moon Knight and Andor, with HBO’s foray into the superhero show genre Peacemaker rounding out the Top 5.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
A Tale Of Two GOATs
When all-time tennis great Serena Williams announced her retirement, Ranker voters reacted to the news positively. 75% of the votes she received on our list of The Best Women’s Tennis Players Of All Time (57K votes) the month of her announcement were upvotes, pushing her that much closer to the #1 spot.
When Tom Brady confirmed that he was retiring in February, he got a similar flood of goodwill. Our voters pushed him to the #1 spot on our list of The Best Football Players Ever (1.3 million votes) for the first time in the nine years since the list was published. When he changed his mind just 40 days later, things began to change.
Brady’s position wavered following his reversal, shifting rapidly between first, second, and third places. Though he did return to the #1 spot for less than a month in June, that streak ended with a fall down to #6 for the seven-time champion. His position hasn’t been helped by an NFL season with the Buccaneers that has so far proved disappointing — from October 31 until the writing of this blog, Brady is #4 on the list. That’s a considerable achievement, considering that we’re talking about a list that includes every NFL player in history, but it’s a lower spot than the quarterback had before he initially announced his retirement.
Photo: Paramount Pictures
Top Gun: Maverick Tops 2022’s List Of Best Movies — And Its Predecessor
An iconic action movie starring one of Hollywood’s biggest A-listers, Top Gun set a standard that would be hard for any sequel to meet — especially one released 36 years later. But 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, which features both original stars Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, and Jennifer Connelly and new talents like Miles Teller, beat out the original film in several different ways on Ranker.
First, Top Gun sits at #3 on our list of The Best Movies Of 1986 (18K votes), sitting behind fellow ‘80s classics Aliens and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and just ahead of Stand By Me. Its sequel, on the other hand, is #1 on The Best Movies Of 2022 (6K votes), beating out Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Batman, and The Banshees of Inisherin. That’s not the only list that Maverick tops: it’s also #1 on The All-Time Best Tom Cruise Movies (35K votes), with the first Top Gun in the #2 slot.
It’s not all bad news for the original, though. Out of the 80,000 votes that have been cast for Top Gun across Ranker’s hundreds of film lists, 63% indicate positive sentiment. Maverick’s percentage of positive votes amounts to just 60% of the 5,000 votes that have been cast for it so far.
Photo: Universal Music
Swifties Make Their Pick For Best Midnights Track Known On Ranker
2022 was yet another year in which Taylor Swift has staged a comeback. Her latest album, Midnights, helped the country-turned-pop star set a record by becoming the first artist to claim all of the Top 10 slots on the Hot 100 in a single week. The winningest song on the Billboard charts has been “Anti-Hero,” which was #1 for six weeks, the second-longest stint of any song this year. But to Swift fans on Ranker, that’s not even the second-best song on Midnights.
‘Anti-Hero’ is #4 on our list of The Best Songs On Taylor Swift’s Album Midnights (2K votes), with 65% of the votes cast for it on the list being upvotes. It sits behind ‘Maroon’ and ‘Karma’ at the second and third spots, respectively. The #1 song on the album is ‘You’re On Your Own Kid’ which boasts an upvote percentage of 69% on the list.
Photo: Amazon
Reacher Is the Show No One Is Talking About, But Everyone Is Watching
You may not see Reacher on many other end-of-year wrap-ups. It wasn’t a spin-off of another popular show, it didn’t have A-list stars, and as a traditional shoot-em-up without the trappings of prestige TV, it’s not a ready-made critics’ pick. But Reacher is without a doubt one of the most popular shows to premiere in 2022, quickly climbing to the top of some of Ranker’s most competitive TV lists.
Reacher hasn’t come higher than its #7 debut on the Watchworthy leaderboards in February, the month its first season premiered, but it’s been hovering around the Top 20 long after other, more talked-about shows disappeared. On Ranker, Reacher is #1 on Best New Action & Adventure Shows Of 2022 and #6 on The Best New TV Shows Of 2022 (12K votes). But most impressively of all, it’s #4 on The Best Action TV Series Of All Time (38K votes), a pretty staggering accomplishment for a show made as recently as February 2022. In fact, Reacher is the only show made in 2022 to be in the Top 5 of an all-time genre list — the only 2022 show to come close is The Time Traveler’s Wife, which is #6 on The Greatest Shows About Love & Romance (5K votes).
Photo: Disney
Marvel’s Phase 4 Rolls Through 2022
Kicked off with the July 2021 release of Black Widow, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase 4 has featured both post-Infinity Wars saga films and TV shows on Disney+. Last year, Marvel made waves with its entry to TV, with hits like WandaVision and Loki playing big parts in any conversations about 2021’s best shows. It also saw the release of highly anticipated films like Black Widow and Spider-Man: No Way Home. 2022 had plenty of major releases of its own, but with the Infinity War saga far in the rearview mirror, the question for Marvel is whether Phase 4 is losing or gathering strength.
The question is a tricky one to answer, according to Ranker. Between the four MCU movies released in 2021 (Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, and No Way Home) and the three movies released this year (Multiverse of Madness, Love and Thunder, and Wakanda Forever), 2022’s films are slightly more beloved on average by Ranker readers, with 61% of all votes cast for the movies indicating positive sentiment compared to 2021’s 60%. But 2021’s TV shows got far better reception with our voters, getting an average positive sentiment score of 64% compared to 2022’s 54%. Moon Knight got the strongest reception with 61% positive votes, while She-Hulk brought down the average with just 50%. The highest rated movie and the highest rated show of Phase 4 were both released in 2021, with No Way Home getting 79% approval and Loki getting 73%.
Our verdict: Marvel is maintaining its momentum, but the superhero brand is in danger of stagnating if 2023 doesn’t bring some truly super hits.
Most Popular MCU Phase 4 Releases, According to Ranker:
Spider-Man: No Way Home — 79%
Loki — 73%
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — 70%
WandaVision — 69%
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings — 68%
Thor: Love & Thunder — 64%
What If…? — 62%
Hawkeye — 61%
Moon Knight — 61%
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier — 56%
Black Widow — 55%
Ms. Marvel — 52%
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law — 50%
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — 48%
Eternals — 37%
Photo: James Duncan Davidson
Copyright: CC BY-NC 3.0
Elon Musk’s Popularity Dips After Twitter Purchase
Tesla founder Elon Musk has enjoyed a relatively positive reputation among Ranker voters in the past: he has a 58% positive sentiment rating on Ranker, and he’s high on competitive lists like The Most Influential CEOs Of All Time (15K votes), where he sits at #4. But after his acquisition of Twitter on October 27, Musk’s reception among our readers took a noticeable dip.
In November, the month immediately following Musk’s tumultuous Twitter takeover, positive votes for Musk hit 45%, the lowest point for the entrepreneur since 2020. The biggest source of the negative votes came from our list of Celebrities You’re Sick Of In 2022 (129K votes), where 67% of the votes cast for Musk were upvotes (he’s currently ranked at #58). But the news hasn’t been all bad for Musk this year: he was also voted to #1 on The Most Influential People Of 2022 (8K votes), for better or for worse.
