The Top Five Fictional Cities

5 - Rock Ridge (Blazing Saddles)

4 - Pleasantville

3 - Metropolis (Metropolis)

2 - Emerald City (The Wizard of Oz)

1 - Gotham City (Batman)

This was not the easiest list we've ever asked to help with. But it ties in nicely with this weekend, when The Dark Knight again revisits the best fictional city in the history of the movies, Gotham. It's been featured in six films in the past 20 years, half of them even good movies.

Among the other nominees: Sin City, Cloud City (The Empire Strikes Back), Zion (The Matrix), Mumford (from a movie of the same name that very few people say), Brigadoon, Dark City, Ape City from Planet of the Apes, Seahaven from The Truman Show, and Sandford from Hot Fuzz.

Why these five? Well, a few of them should be fairly self-explanatory. Rock Ridge isn't just a fictional city, but for a while in Blazing Saddles, the fiction city isn't even real. You get bonus points for that kind of magic.

Pleasantville was actually the first city other than Gotham that came to mind. Gary Ross' fable never gets old, and there's usually something different I like about it every time I watch it. Oh sure, Joan Allen is great no matter when I see it, but sometimes it's a little line I'd forgotten about, or Don Knotts, or anything, really.

If you've never seen Metropolis, you just don't get it. As Roger Ebert says, "Generally considered the first great science-fiction film, Metropolis (1926) fixed for the rest of the century the image of a futuristic city as a hell of scientific progress and human despair. From this film, in various ways, descended not only Dark City' but Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, Alphaville, Escape From L.A., Gattaca, and Batman's Gotham City."

Good enough for me. There may be earlier forms of German expressionism in movies, but I doubt there are many films in that category that are better and still have as much impact as this one. I doubt there has been another film so far ahead of its time than this one. Maybe Citizen Kane, maybe 2001. And just look at that architecture.

On the other end of the spectrum is Emerald City, a bizarre place that obscures its sadness and demons beneath a glossy finish. Am I the only kid who got more freaked out by The Wizard of Oz than drawn into it? Things are never what they seem there, and even what they seem to be is too good to be true.

And Gotham is number one, a city that we never really see. What we're exposed to is what Gotham has become after years of crime and destruction. It's fascinating that this is what Bruce Wayne/Batman fights so hard for, because every time we turn around, it doesn't look like it's worth saving. That makes it all the more intriguing, I guess.