Why rely on the seesaw nature of what your gut tells you when you have hard, empirical data on hand to analyze? That seems to be the driving principle behind IMDb’s final 2008 STARmeter and MOVIEmeter rankings, which uses IMDb search results (versus the opinions of namby-pamby critics) to show us all what was truly popular this year. While you might not be surprised to learn that Johnny Depp and The Dark Knight top the charts, you’ll will find it interesting that TR2N, the sequel to TRON that isn’t due until the year 2011, finished the year being more popular than both Iron Man and Indiana Jones. [IMDb]