Twitter is fighting over the best gangster movies

Who’s the “King” of the mobster movies?

That’s what Stephen King wants to know. The horror honcho incited a Twitter debate Wednesday when he asked an innocent question: “Assuming ‘The Godfather’ and ‘The Godfather 2’ are the best, what are the other 8 greatest gangster movies?”

King then paused and paid his respects: “Assuming ‘GOODFELLAS’ is #3, what are the other 7 best gangster movies?”

His cinephile survey unleashed more than 4,500 impassioned responses, advocating for favorites, rebuking classics and throwing in a few Cosa Nostra curveballs.

Among some of the most popular responses were the expected “Casino,” “Once Upon A Time In America,” “Donnie Brasco,” “The Irishman,” “The Departed,” “The Untouchables” and “Pulp Fiction.” But even those presumably safe answers led to some tussles.

“’Irishman’ was embarrassing,” said wiseguy @scherbenstein. @theruester1 refuted King’s thinking: “’Casino,’ it’s better than ‘Goodfellas.’ There I said it.”

And @Laywerdave1 whacked Leonardo DiCaprio’s film about the Irish mob. “I thought ‘The Departed’ was long-winded, and each character was the archetype,” he said. “The bad cop with no chance of normalcy, the perfect Captain with the hot headed sergeant, the sex-obsessed bad guy, etc.”

There were also fights over what qualifies as a gangster flick.

One user made the case for Robert Zemeckis’ groundbreaking “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” “There are rarely enough rabbits in gangster movies, I’ve found,” said @HobyPenhaligon. “’Roger Rabbit’ was an attempt to set this right.”

In the animation field, “Shark Tale” and “Zootopia,” which features a tiny Don Corleone-like Arctic Shrew named Mr. Big, also got some votes.

However, on a thread full of mob hits, nobody came for Coppola.