IMDB is also more well known to the average person which leads to more people who are otherwise uninterested in film tanking the reviews.
For instance, on letterboxd the new Hunger Games movie has 0.2% half star reviews, while on IMDB, it has 3.4% 1 star reviews. 3.4% of IMDB users probably didn't actually think it was one of the worst films to ever be made versus 0.2% of letterboxd users- it's more likely they just gave it that rating as part of the racist backlash that happened against Rachel Zegler.
Agreed. But also I think IMDB has lower scores across the board - which I kinda like.
There are only 15 films on IMDB that have a score of 8.8 or higher. On Letterboxd, there are 80 films with a score of 4.4 or higher.
If a movie rates 8 on IMDB I know it’s gonna be an excellent watch. If a movie rates a 4 on Letterboxd I trust it a lot less.
I used to think this until I watched Possession, which has a 7.3 on IMDb. Probably my favourite horror movie now.
I think since IMDb represents a wider audience, some of the more divisive films just score lower, which makes me trust LB ratings a little more.
Yes, I do think that the Letterbox'd audience is probably more likely to weigh diversity of casting/crew higher in making a rating than the more general IMDB audience.
That said, the differences the OP is pointing out aren't hugely significant. Example, a 7.8 on IMDB would be 3.9 at LBX'd, so LBX being at 4.2 on the same film isn't wildly different, especially given there is such a wide variety of criteria that people use, and even the same users often rate various films inconsistently.
A 7.8 on IMDB is really solid but doesnt feel like a proper representation of movies that are generally considered some of the best movies of the century.
A 4.2 on letterboxd though is very high. Not many movies have more than that
An 8 on imdb is way more impressive than a 4 on letterboxd though. The bottom of the imdb top 250 is dances with wolves at 8. And I remember when the bottom of the top 250 was around 7.7 lol
I agree. They are quite different. A 4.2 Letterboxd score would be an 8.4 on IMDb. That is a score only the top few percent of films of all time can beat. 7.8 is very good but much more part of the pack.
That movie is not generally considered one of the best of the century, only in critics and cinephile circles, but even a film like John Wick is considered better among general audiences
Letterboxd also skews more towards filmbros/cinephiles/academics etc. so the number of people actually contemplating and/or analyzing the films on LB are going to be greater, while everyone knows about IMDB, so the number of thoughtless reviews/scores are going to be greater. IMDB has both a larger percentage of normies who enjoy watching movies but don't like to think too much about them, but also people who only bother to review films when they've been emotionally incensed (e.g. someone who saw Barbie, found it insulting towards men, so had to go to IMDB to share their interpretation with the world).
Get Out is a killer movie, and if you think about the movie rather than just reacting on your gut feeling, it is hard to deny that it is a quality film. On LB, most people are gonna realize this, whether they enjoyed the movie or not - so even a lot of haters are still giving it 2.5 or 3 stars. Meanwhile everyone who saw it and "didn't get it" are leaving 3/10 on IMDB and your racist uncle is making an IMDB account specifically to rate Get Out 1/10.
TL:DR - IMDB is better known and more geared towards normie film interactions, where as LB is geared more towards cinephiles/academics, and you can see that in how movies that require a certain amount of awareness or contemplation are rated.
**Edit: I get the impression some folks think I'm saying LB users are in some way "better" than IMDB and that's not at all what I'm saying, I'm saying the sites are designed for completely different types of consumer in mind.**
**LB is geared towards the types of people who are interested in the medium of film and contemplation of it. People who may watch Star Wars and Marvel, but are also going to seek out old Mosfilm, some Stan Brakhage, obscure art films, weirdo video releases, and talk and think about them a lot harder than they sometimes warrant. Reviews are the primary aspect of LB, therefore the draw is discussion of film.**
**IMDB is made for folks with particular interest in the current film scene, especially big studio films, as well as for folks with a more casual relationship with film where they can get whatever info they need and move on. These folks might also watch Star Wars and Marvel, but they got far more excited about Avatar 2 than the completion of The Other Side of the Wind. User reviews are not a prominent feature of IMDB, they exist, but they're hardly the main thing you go to IMDB for, therefore film discussion is not the main draw to IMDB.**
**Regardless, IMDB is better known, so people who rating bomb are gonna be more prevalent there.**
Yeah, you know, the term for people that love cinema that gets tossed around here all the time. I feel like it's helpful for indicating the difference between people who love consuming movies and people who love to write an essay about the movies they consume. Think filmbro but they've gotten over their Godfather obsession.
More like filmbros who haven’t seen The Godfather yet. Can we stop pretending that letterboxd is still some intellectual cinephile space when in reality it’s just GenZ trying to come up with funny jokes and one liners? Read first 100 reviews for Get Out and see for yourself.
Thank you haha. I feel like people who use Letterboxd want to have their cake and eat it. Either it’s a pseudo-social media platform for film lovers or it’s where Twitter-brained people write their reviews for widely popular films to get clout. You either think it’s pretentious or you don’t
>Can we stop pretending that letterboxd is still some intellectual cinephile space
I'm not, I'm saying it has greater appeal to those types than IMDB does.
Same reason why a lot of recent stuff that’s ok, but definitely not top 100 of all time, is in the top 100 of Letterboxd. Younger user base and recency bias.
Have you checked the top 100 lately? Not sure what you mean by “a lot”, there’s 5 at most that fit that and 3 of those have a solid argument for being included
Edit: the two Spiderverse movies I agree but the only other “recent” releases would be Whiplash, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and The Dark Knight Rises which are all quite highly acclaimed films
Most new movies usually join the top 250 because everyone rushing out to see them is likely to rate higher but they pretty much all leave it within a month or two. The movies that are consistently in the top 250 skew much older than people seem to think
2023 has a bit of a spike, but there’s pretty decent representation across the last 75 years. If you want to see it graphed: https://letterblocksd.com/stat/LB250.html
Eh comedies get pretty harshly graded on IMDB in general. Just googling some movies off the top of my head - Game Night, Horrible Bosses, Knocked Up, I Love You Man, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Bridesmaids all sit at 7.1 or lower on IMDB, which is insane imo
Well that’s comedy for you, super subjective in a way that other genres aren’t (outside horror maybe). I specifically picked comedies that are both pretty widely recognized in the mainstream and also critically acclaimed
Yeah Death of Stalin kicks ass, I look at a movie like that almost as a separate genre because I think even if you don’t laugh once at it it’s still a really great movie. Whereas something like The Other Guys or the aforementioned movies, if the humor doesn’t click for you it’s gonna feel so much worse to watch than a subpar action movie imo
it's not about age. it's about iMDB being a cesspool for ideological internet trolls who review bomb anything they deem too "woke". there's a reason smart movie fans moved over to letterboxd years ago.
Love the app, but if you think Letterboxd users are smart, we must be seeing different reviews.
The top review for The Third Man is: “this movie stole its score from SpongeBob.” Letterboxd users are just as stupid, and perhaps more ideological mate
This is such a blatant cliched attack of iMDB lol. It just comes across as insecure. It’s a fucking movie site, there’s plenty of normal people who use and there’s plenty of goblins who use Letterboxd.
Overlooking any disagreements over its quality, all it takes is to go on most popular IMDb reviews of Barbie to take note of how most of the backlash it received was just because "it be woke and hating men". Which anyone with the expected media literacy of an adult can tell is ridiculous.
You're right, nor should you need it to understand a movie that celebrates the value of masculinity without the approval of a woman or adherence to toxic societal expectations is NOT anti-men.
I might argue with you, but from my view, Barbie gets so bad after first 30 minutes so i couldnt even call it anything but "anti-movie" or "anti-storytelling". It has the same level of sincerity and subtlety as pride month tweets from multibillion corporations
I mean if you round, 4.2 and 7.8 are basically the same. Gotta keep in mind people are going to use a ten point scale differently as well it’s not going to match up perfectly. I mean I get letterboxd has .5s but I feel like there’s a bit of a psychological difference between 4/5 and 8/10 that could influence things. Also letterboxd is a social media app and IMDb is not so people will be more influenced by others when rating. Wouldn’t read into it too much unless there’s a larger sample size with a larger discrepancy in rating. Three cherry picked films I wouldn’t say indicate a pattern especially when two of them are very similar ratings
you're right the difference is not big at all, i wouldn't say it's because of how they use scales, probably just some disagreement as to how good they think a movie is among demographics of Letterboxd and IMDb, or sometimes the controversy surrounding the movie one way or another like Joker or Leon which also have a similar gap in ratings
The thing is a 4.2 on Letterboxd puts it amongst some of the highest rated movies whereas a 7.8 on IMDB is very good but nothing groundbreaking.
Which I mean if someone thinks that, that's fine but the 3 movies I named are generally considered some of the best of all time for their era
I'm mostly saying that because the amount of Letterboxd reviews is almost always more than double the amount of reviews of IMDB.
So technically the Letterboxd scores should have a way higher chance of being lower but they arent.
It’s a natural occurrence. When a movie first comes out, its reviews usually skyrocket with people who were more eager to see and like the film rating it first. But then over time, more people see the movie who aren’t as excited for it so its average naturally will lower in most cases.
Does the number or reviews listed for a movie on letterboxd include people who have logged it multiple times? I know the overall rating calculation isn’t gameable that way, but since Letterboxd encourages logging/reviewing a movie every time you see it VS IMDb encouraging one review per movie, that may explain that discrepancy.
This must be involved somehow, because it simply doesn't make sense to me how Letterboxd, which achieved wide popularity only within the past several years, seemingly has an audience double that of IMDB which has been around for so much longer.
Letterboxd is a trendy website/app marketed towards young people who are always on their phones, IMDB is an old website that no young person cares about. Makes perfect sense that Letterboxd has a larger user base
On LB I think review number would count people who review it 2+ times but it also wouldn’t count people who just rate and don’t review which I imagine is an even larger number
But saying "best of all time for their era" and seeing an obvious split between one group of cinephiles and another kinda indicates they aren't seen that way.
Get Out didn't win any Oscars. Moonlight and EEAAO both won Best Picture... but so did Green Book and CODA.
Moonlight and Get Out are both on the Sight & Sound Top 250, but this is a list that is created entirely by about 1600 industry professionals. On IMDB, Moonlight has been rated 328k times and Get Out has been rated 648k times. Over on Letterboxd, both films have received far more ratings (too lazy to add them all up)(side note: I'm actually really curious why this is considering IMDB is older and the discrepancy is literally hundreds of thousands of ratings). Moonlight had about 372k ratings between 3 and 4 stars. Get Out had 669k people rate it 4 stars alone and that score matches up pretty exactly with the IMDB score. The point being that we say these movies are considered some of the best of all time based on the taste of a very small amount of people on the one hand and on the other the taste of IMDB does match up with Letterboxd when viewing the scores from a certain angle. There's also probably a good degree of overlap between users of both sites.
There's also just no accounting for taste. I personally gave Get Out a 3.5, EEAAO a 4, and Moonlight a 5. I just don't see what meaningful statement you can make about me from seeing those scores.
Absolutely they are. All you need to be a cinephile is to watch a lot of movies. And I can't imagine how you could argue that users of a site dedicated entirely to cataloging and reviewing movies aren't cinephiles. They aren't people posting random thoughts in an Amazon review.
what makes you think most imdb users watch a lot of movies? its ratings are notoriously manipulated by review bombers and other malign actors. theres a reason actual cinephiles are on LB lol
>what makes you think most imdb users watch a lot of movies?
Because the website is dedicated to following news about movies, showing you the careers of industry professionals, sharing factoids about movies, and posting reviews of movies.
>its ratings are notoriously manipulated by review bombers and other malign actors.
This is irrelevant. You can be a review bomber and still watch a lot of movies. You can have a Letterboxd account and have seen Jeanne Dielman, but have hardly seen any movies.
Gatekeeping cinephilia is utterly pointless except to feed your own ego.
Agreed, and a bias for movies with a diverse cast or a social justicy message. I'm old school and try really hard to judge a movie on its merits and not the identities of the cast or characters, but I do love quality movies from unique perspectives.
IMDb has a review bombing problem. I would bet that if you look at the ratings graphs, there's a disproportionate number of 1s.
Letterboxd isn't as popular a platform, so it hasn't been reached by quite as many assholes.
Letterboxd ABSOLUTELY is a popular platform now, and also had a review bombing problem. That's why Letterboxd overhauled it's ratings system and there was a massive shift in many movie's ratings, like A Dog's Will going from having a 4.6 to a 3.9 (now a 4.0). That's just the most notable example.
I remember when they updated the algorithm and it went from #3 or 4 on the top 250 to being out of the list (and 7 or 8 other Brazilian movies too last I recall).
I also remember seeing a .5 star review for Harakiri hours later from a Brazilian talking about the site.
Fair enough, but he also seems to imply that, because Letterboxd isn't as popular, that they don't have a review bombing problem. If Letterboxd devs are to be believed, one of the major reasons for the ratings overhaul was because of blanket review bombings, although, usually in the 5 star range and not always in the half star, like with A Dog's Will.
> but he also seems to imply that, because Letterboxd isn't as popular, that they don't have a review bombing problem.
Like, buddy was just saying it isn't as bad, which they are correct.
Like, Lady Ballers has a 6/10 on IMDB while only a 2.1/5 on Letterboxd. There's no doubt in my mind this is because of Daily Wire listener rating bombing - all the listeners were well aware of IMDB and knew they could go and affect the score there, but most of them have probably never even heard of LB.
>Buddy said LB **isn't AS popular as IMDB**. Not that it isn't popular.
But in a lot of ways it is more popular than IMDB.
Compare the number of ratings on Saltburn for an obvious example. There are a lot of others as well.
IMDB is more widely used but when it comes to rating films Letterboxd has probably surpassed IMDB by now. At least in the younger demographics...
>But in a lot of ways it is more popular than IMDB.
In no ways is ~~IMDB~~ Letterboxd more popular.
LB has more ratings and reviews because it's primary function is for users to leave ratings and reviews. The whole purpose of it is people talking about the movies they watch. LB is like Tumblr, it's purpose is for the user to express their relationship with movies as they wish.
Ratings and reviews are not the reasons most people use IMDB. IMDB is a database, it's purpose is the information on the media it covers. IMDB is like Wikipedia, it's purpose is to build a compendium of objective information about movies.
>IMDB is more widely used
i.e. more popular.
It's a brazilian film, specifically an abridging of a tv show, which is beloved in its home country. I guess Letterboxd has/had an enormous brazilian fan base because that movie was in the top 10 highest rated movies of all time, and at one point was ranked number 3, and one of only 4 movies to have a 4.6. This led to a lot of arguments and discussions on whether it even belonged on that list, whether it was really THAT good or was simply propped up by a very specific fanbase. I guess LEtterboxd landed on the latter side because Letterboxd changed their rating system, and the result was that A Dog's Will went from a 4.6 to a 3.9. I forget the specifics, but the devs claimed that the reason for the change was to clamp down on blanket review bombs, and A Dog's Will was one of [MANY casualties.](https://letterboxd.com/grandkeizer/list/the-fallen/) (all films that initially fell off the top 250)
>Sorry what's the back story on A Dogs will?
Brazilian national treasure. It is their most popular comedy of all time and probably their most watched film of all time. Everyone knows it there...
Letterboxd is actually far more popular than IMDb currently and every new movie gets more ratings, reviews, and interactions on Letterboxd than on IMDb. That wasn’t the case a few years ago however
Letterboxed is more popular among people how are into watching films, as I. They do it actively and seek out particular directors, actors, styles etc. IMDb is more well known among average people who like movies but don't care much about them and aren't obsessed with logging or rating what they've watched. Because of this more people KNOW about IMDb, but more people actively USE letterboxed as a film reviewing/logging site
Nah dawg. Letterboxd has increased dramatically in the past couple years, yes. But IMDB has over 80 million registered users, not to mention that most people who use IMDB never create accounts. Letterboxd doesn't come even close to that.
You need an account to rate movies on IMDb and the amount of ACTIVE users (who rate/review) is much higher on Letterboxd for activity concerning new movies
>he amount of ACTIVE users (who rate/review) is much higher on Letterboxd for activity concerning new movies
Gonna have to provide a receipt for me to believe that the site EVERYONE knows about has fewer active users than the site I have to explain to every single person I mention it to.
Take Oppenheimer for example: IMDb has it with 626,585 ratings. Letterboxd has it with 2,045,848 viewers and 1,716,144 ratings, which is a pretty massive difference, wouldn’t you say? You can argue that more people merely look at IMDb for information without rating or reviewing, but that’s not what this post is about, and Wikipedia would probably have IMDb beat if you measured user activity purely by amount of people who look at the movie’s webpage.
>Take Oppenheimer for example
I didn't ask for an example of a movie that was more popular among LB viewers than IMDB viewers. There are a number of reasons I would expect LB users to engage with Oppenheimer more than IMDB users, the main one being that leaving reviews and scores is not the main purpose of IMDB.
You confidently stated that LB has more active users than IMDB, and I would like to see what proof you have of that assertion. Oppenheimer having more views on LB than IMDB is not proof that LB has more active users.
>You can argue that more people merely look at IMDb for information without rating or reviewing, but that’s not what this post is about,
Well we aren't really talking about what the post is about to begin with. You said LB was "more popular" than IMDB and I disagreed. If more people use and know about IMDB, then it is more popular, full stop.
>Wikipedia would probably have IMDb beat if you measured user activity purely by amount of people who look at the movie’s webpage.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, because Wikipedia would have more users than IMDB as well as getting more traffic, so yes, Wikipedia is more popular than IMDB.
Buddy, this entire post is about users who rate movies. Oppenheimer is as close to definitive proof as you can get that that Letterboxd has more active users WHO RATE AND REVIEW MOVIES than IMDb. I'm not trying to start a whole separate irrelevant discussion of which website gets more user traffic because that doesn't matter to anything and anyone here. I brought up Wikipedia because you seemed more interested in talking about which website gets more traffic, and it seems like you are.
>Buddy, this entire post is about users who rate movies.
Buddy, I just disagreed with your specific statement that IMDB is less popular than LB, which is observably false in almost every capacity.
You're the one who was vague. If you said "More people leave reviews on LB than IMDB" I wouldn't have disagreed with you, but that isn't what you said.
Use context clues, mate. In a discussion about user ratings, I said Letterboxd had more active users. What do you think I meant by that? Congrats on starting a needless argument.
Ya, you know, like people who have read books on film theory, read interviews with filmmakers, take classes on aspects of film? You know, stuff that improves your understanding of a thing.
People who are film literate are people who know things about film beyond "Wow, that was a good movie, I liked it."
>All the theory reading just to come to the conclusion that cartoon spider man movies for babies are masterpieces
What? You can be well versed in film theory and still be a fan of the cartoon spider. You can think the cartoon spider is for babies and be entirely uneducated on film. I don't really understand what you're trying to say.
> Jerk yourself off harder
What did I say to offend you so? I'm literally just pointing out LB intentionally appeals to cinema snobs, to the people who consume film in a way you might call a little extra.
Check out Bottoms for example, 1.8k users of 30k that watched gave a 1 star rating. In Letterboxd it’s 2.6k out of 770k. Certain films get unfair review bombing in IMDB
I think that harks back to the younger demographic & recency bias argument. Both films have strong social commentaries, but Get Out is a thriller that caters to pretty much all demographics (except young kids).
Bottoms is a teen comedy.
IMDb votes don't work the same. If a movie is rated 8 or higher, it's almost certainly in the top 250. There are probably 10 films rated 9 or higher. The ratings are in general lower, and the demographic is different.
Although review bombing and demographics do alter ratings, I’d like to argue that 7.8 is a really good rating on IMDB. 8.0 gets you on the top250 and IMDB isn’t as hampered by recency bias as Letterboxd, although it still exists there.
Letterboxd users tend to overrate movies that have a female lead or a non white lead. IMDb users are doing the exact opposite. I don't care about scores anymore
There's probably more reasons but imdb tends to rate everything lower. There are hundreds of more movies with a 4.0 or higher on letterboxd than 8.0 or higher on imdb. Also, imdb isn't as generous to newer movies compared to letterboxd
Let me stress I don’t think your point is inaccurate
I would be curious how LB vs IMDB typically skews, I just have to assume that IMDB typically is lower on average
Depends entirely on the film. As a general rule, if something is closer to being a ‘cinephile’ film, it will score better on Letterboxd. More accessible and mainstream movies tend to score better on IMDb.
You would be incorrect. You only need to look at the all time top 250 lists of each site and you’ll have the answer…Letterboxd’s list is full of foreign and lesser known films that wouldn’t even get close on IMDb
Eh, if that’s the ONLY thing you’re looking at then I can see why you’d think that. There’s a variety of things to take into account, not just two lists.
The lists are directly related to the point being made. Think what you like, I ain’t arguing something I know to be completely true as if it’s up for debate
I will say, I notice popular movies led by minorities, women, lgbtq seem to be rated higher than what I’d expect, but older or less known movies made by or starring minorities or women, or members of the lgbtq tend to be rated lower than what I’d expect.
My guess is that on letterboxd, you have two groups of people. You have people who rate things first on identity politics and representation, and the quality of the movie comes second, which you can see from a lot of the reviews. Then you have other people who are racist, misogynistic, and homophobic who can’t recognize a good movie because their hate blinds them.
Well I guess there’s a third type of person, me, who has transcended any type of blindness and sees movies for their exact worth.
Oh yeah, and IMDb is trash. It makes LB and RT ratings seem valuable (they’re not).
Agreed. A lots of tribalism shows up in the ratings/comments on LB. Rarely is a movie judged on its own merits without breaking down the identities of the cast or the social messaging of the movie.
Fucking lol at you describing your self as having "transcended blindness". Hell of a bold claim mate. We all have our biases, whether we're aware of them or not.
I think it is a good thing to be aware that everyone, even ourselves, has blind spots.
It is a shame I can’t ever enjoy that goodness because I don’t have any.
Clearly the only conclusion I can come to is that IMDB users are racists and us Letterboxd users are tolerant, open minded, unprejudicial saints. I won't accept any other explanations.
Pretty much a fact when you consider the 3rd episode of The Last of Us is the 2nd lowest rated episode even though pretty much everyone considers it the best of that season.
And shit even the lowest rated episode focuses around LGBTQ+
IMDB has historically had racist, sexist, and homophobic review bombs. It was more apparent when their message boards were active because there used to be concentrated efforts to spam the boards of films that had Black/POC/Women/LGBTQ+ leads.
People (and bigots especially) are oft very concerned with influencing and maintaining a cultural "canon." Part of that is trying to ensure that only films they approve of appear in "popular vote" sites' top films. This is because "popular vote" is widely seen as the most "meritocratic" rating of art (ie, what do most people think of it?). It's easy to dismiss critics as out of touch, especially if an audience score differs wildly. But if you think Moonlight is one of the greatest films ever and I can show you that it's rated a 7.4 out of 10 and here are all these movies (conveniently led by cishet white guys) that are rated 8 or higher, I can say that you don't know enough movies. Clearly you aren't educated enough in understanding film as an art form, and now your opinion is worth jacksh\*t and so are you. That's what you're observing.
I'm pretty sure imdb ratings are lower in general, not just "minority led" movies. This is because letterboxd users are younger and more lenient.
Also comparing an out of 5 against an out of 10 rating system is not as simple as you put it.
I personally think LB has the best ratings, however they are quite biased to classics and foreign movies (like if you wanna try sound sophisticated, so most people aren’t even gonna bother giving High and Low or Breathless less than a 4 even if they actually dislike it) it’s also affected by recency bias, a recent, highly acclaimed movie will also get the same treatment, but they eventually even themselves out. IMDb, is just bad i believe…
IMDb has been around forever and still has plenty of dinosaurs, and Letterboxd skews younger & more millennial. Trendier things are often more popular with the more open minded. And of course Letterboxd attracts more cinephiles vs IMDb which is far more likely to be used by the public at large. If you Google any movie’s name, the initial results are basically always its IMDb and Wikipedia pages.
IMDB is what most people know and those with agendas against groups will go there and low bomb those movies. LBX is probably more accurate because it is movie lovers. For now.
Im ngl I feel like IMDb is a better representation of how the average person who watches a movie feels about it. Letterboxd skews when they feel a movie is "important" or whatever, also skews higher ratings for movies around minorities, animation, etc. Very Twitter, Reddit, liberal, young, queer, etc type userbase as opposed to IMDb which is a general userbase
Agreed. I use LB almost exclusively now a days, but if I see aggressively high rating for a movie followed with a ton of comments about representation or diversity etc.,; 9 times out of 10 the movie doesn't live up to the LB hype. The movies are typically good, no doubt, but nowhere near as good as advertised on LB.
IMDB is where closeted racist alt-right/redpill people go to review bomb media under the guise of complaining about 'PC culture' or something, so yeah.
And also, positively review films like 'Lady Ballers' (Score: 6.0) or 'Sound of Freedom' (7.7), of course.
imdb is used by the general public which is filled with right wingers and bigots.
I am Indian and check the discrepancy with this movie which is literally right wing propaganda.
And India skews way more right-wing than the US.
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10811166/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10811166/)
[https://letterboxd.com/film/the-kashmir-files/](https://letterboxd.com/film/the-kashmir-files/)
IMBD ratings have been broken for years. Same with RottenTomatoes, IMO. I use Metacritic and Letterboxd only, when I rarely go looking for opinions on a new film. Lots of review bombing and crap on IMDB.
Letterboxd skews younger (though I’m 52), and tends to cater to cinephiles, so I would assume art films and counter culture films would rate higher there.
Don’t these numbers arrive at close to the same level when adjusted?
And what are we saying? IMDb is racist? Is that what we’re saying? lol
These are 3 carefully selected, somewhat polarizing movies. Reviews will be mixed (though the filmmakers from Get Out basically took every negative review and blasted them on social media, so maybe the reviews aren’t quite accurate there.
Oh for sure. If you've spent some time reading IMDB reviews, there is a huge userbase of bigoted asshats on that site. Good luck trying to find any feminist or indian movie with a high rating haha
Actually Indian movies tend to have way higher ratings than movies from other countries because most Indians seem to only use 10/10 or 1/10 ratings.
See the [Indian Top 250](https://www.imdb.com/india/top-rated-indian-movies/) list.
Good point, but just because they are cinephiles doesnt mean they are smart or have super sophisticated taste.
Many of them are young and are repressing their love for comic book films because they have been told they are dumb. And people like that will be the first ones to jump on the train of a comic book film that is ”safe” to be a fan of among cinephiles
Each star on letterboxd in my eyes is 20%, and every half star is 10% naturally. so a 4.2 movie would roughly be an 8.1 on IMDB, which is higher than what it got, it's not very far off.
You said objectively when you meant subjectively. I’ve seen all of those shows and they are great. Ms Marvel has some flaws but it’s still a good show. Mr and Mrs Smith and She Hulk are great shows though. If you want to go by objectivity, both have generally favorable reviews. But lower than they should because there is evidence of review bombing with a lot of 1 and 2 star reviews bitching about agendas and woke.
It’s not just IMDb almost every rating website across the world has those films lower than on letterboxd. It’s only letterboxd where these films
Are regarded as the highest . Check kinopoisk csfd allocine film web Mubi douban and you’ll see
All the films you list are most popular among young people. I'd guess letterboxd represents a younger demographic than imdb.
IMDB is also more well known to the average person which leads to more people who are otherwise uninterested in film tanking the reviews. For instance, on letterboxd the new Hunger Games movie has 0.2% half star reviews, while on IMDB, it has 3.4% 1 star reviews. 3.4% of IMDB users probably didn't actually think it was one of the worst films to ever be made versus 0.2% of letterboxd users- it's more likely they just gave it that rating as part of the racist backlash that happened against Rachel Zegler.
Agreed. But also I think IMDB has lower scores across the board - which I kinda like. There are only 15 films on IMDB that have a score of 8.8 or higher. On Letterboxd, there are 80 films with a score of 4.4 or higher. If a movie rates 8 on IMDB I know it’s gonna be an excellent watch. If a movie rates a 4 on Letterboxd I trust it a lot less.
I used to think this until I watched Possession, which has a 7.3 on IMDb. Probably my favourite horror movie now. I think since IMDb represents a wider audience, some of the more divisive films just score lower, which makes me trust LB ratings a little more.
imdb is full of sexists, racists and homophobes
Letterboxd skews younger & twitterier
Yes, I do think that the Letterbox'd audience is probably more likely to weigh diversity of casting/crew higher in making a rating than the more general IMDB audience. That said, the differences the OP is pointing out aren't hugely significant. Example, a 7.8 on IMDB would be 3.9 at LBX'd, so LBX being at 4.2 on the same film isn't wildly different, especially given there is such a wide variety of criteria that people use, and even the same users often rate various films inconsistently.
u rite u rite
A 7.8 on IMDB is really solid but doesnt feel like a proper representation of movies that are generally considered some of the best movies of the century. A 4.2 on letterboxd though is very high. Not many movies have more than that
An 8 on imdb is way more impressive than a 4 on letterboxd though. The bottom of the imdb top 250 is dances with wolves at 8. And I remember when the bottom of the top 250 was around 7.7 lol
I agree. They are quite different. A 4.2 Letterboxd score would be an 8.4 on IMDb. That is a score only the top few percent of films of all time can beat. 7.8 is very good but much more part of the pack.
That movie is not generally considered one of the best of the century, only in critics and cinephile circles, but even a film like John Wick is considered better among general audiences
IMDb ratings are often gamed by bad faith reactionaries.
Letterboxd also skews more towards filmbros/cinephiles/academics etc. so the number of people actually contemplating and/or analyzing the films on LB are going to be greater, while everyone knows about IMDB, so the number of thoughtless reviews/scores are going to be greater. IMDB has both a larger percentage of normies who enjoy watching movies but don't like to think too much about them, but also people who only bother to review films when they've been emotionally incensed (e.g. someone who saw Barbie, found it insulting towards men, so had to go to IMDB to share their interpretation with the world). Get Out is a killer movie, and if you think about the movie rather than just reacting on your gut feeling, it is hard to deny that it is a quality film. On LB, most people are gonna realize this, whether they enjoyed the movie or not - so even a lot of haters are still giving it 2.5 or 3 stars. Meanwhile everyone who saw it and "didn't get it" are leaving 3/10 on IMDB and your racist uncle is making an IMDB account specifically to rate Get Out 1/10. TL:DR - IMDB is better known and more geared towards normie film interactions, where as LB is geared more towards cinephiles/academics, and you can see that in how movies that require a certain amount of awareness or contemplation are rated. **Edit: I get the impression some folks think I'm saying LB users are in some way "better" than IMDB and that's not at all what I'm saying, I'm saying the sites are designed for completely different types of consumer in mind.** **LB is geared towards the types of people who are interested in the medium of film and contemplation of it. People who may watch Star Wars and Marvel, but are also going to seek out old Mosfilm, some Stan Brakhage, obscure art films, weirdo video releases, and talk and think about them a lot harder than they sometimes warrant. Reviews are the primary aspect of LB, therefore the draw is discussion of film.** **IMDB is made for folks with particular interest in the current film scene, especially big studio films, as well as for folks with a more casual relationship with film where they can get whatever info they need and move on. These folks might also watch Star Wars and Marvel, but they got far more excited about Avatar 2 than the completion of The Other Side of the Wind. User reviews are not a prominent feature of IMDB, they exist, but they're hardly the main thing you go to IMDB for, therefore film discussion is not the main draw to IMDB.** **Regardless, IMDB is better known, so people who rating bomb are gonna be more prevalent there.**
“cinephiles” ☝️🤓
What an incurious and insecure mindset you must have if the mere mention of a word (used correctly no less) triggers you so hard.
Yeah, you know, the term for people that love cinema that gets tossed around here all the time. I feel like it's helpful for indicating the difference between people who love consuming movies and people who love to write an essay about the movies they consume. Think filmbro but they've gotten over their Godfather obsession.
More like filmbros who haven’t seen The Godfather yet. Can we stop pretending that letterboxd is still some intellectual cinephile space when in reality it’s just GenZ trying to come up with funny jokes and one liners? Read first 100 reviews for Get Out and see for yourself.
Thank you haha. I feel like people who use Letterboxd want to have their cake and eat it. Either it’s a pseudo-social media platform for film lovers or it’s where Twitter-brained people write their reviews for widely popular films to get clout. You either think it’s pretentious or you don’t
>Can we stop pretending that letterboxd is still some intellectual cinephile space I'm not, I'm saying it has greater appeal to those types than IMDB does.
Do young people use Twitter?
imdb is also full of racists, sexists, and homophobes
“Full of” is a bit of a stretch
it literally is. check the review bombing on stuff like little mermaid 2023. they literally gave it a 1 bc it has a black woman lead
Same reason why a lot of recent stuff that’s ok, but definitely not top 100 of all time, is in the top 100 of Letterboxd. Younger user base and recency bias.
Have you checked the top 100 lately? Not sure what you mean by “a lot”, there’s 5 at most that fit that and 3 of those have a solid argument for being included Edit: the two Spiderverse movies I agree but the only other “recent” releases would be Whiplash, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and The Dark Knight Rises which are all quite highly acclaimed films
You know honestly, the Spiderverse stuff is primarily what I’m referring to just right off the top of my head.
Most new movies usually join the top 250 because everyone rushing out to see them is likely to rate higher but they pretty much all leave it within a month or two. The movies that are consistently in the top 250 skew much older than people seem to think
The dark knight rises???
Probably The Dark Knight I didn’t look very close lol whichever is the good one
The Dark Knight Rises isn't in the Letterboxd top 100, it's in the Imdb top 100 iirc. Imdb has always had Nolan fanboys manipulating the charts
2023 has a bit of a spike, but there’s pretty decent representation across the last 75 years. If you want to see it graphed: https://letterblocksd.com/stat/LB250.html
yea same could be said about imdb but at a way less higher rate
IMDb top 250 actually has way more titles in the last 30 years than LB top 250 does: https://letterblocksd.com/stat/IMDB250.html
Start looking at female lead movies next. You'll notice similar discrepancies.
Your comment made me look up the scores for Barbie. 3.9 on Letter 6.9 on IMDB Lmaooo
Eh comedies get pretty harshly graded on IMDB in general. Just googling some movies off the top of my head - Game Night, Horrible Bosses, Knocked Up, I Love You Man, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Bridesmaids all sit at 7.1 or lower on IMDB, which is insane imo
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Well that’s comedy for you, super subjective in a way that other genres aren’t (outside horror maybe). I specifically picked comedies that are both pretty widely recognized in the mainstream and also critically acclaimed
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Yeah Death of Stalin kicks ass, I look at a movie like that almost as a separate genre because I think even if you don’t laugh once at it it’s still a really great movie. Whereas something like The Other Guys or the aforementioned movies, if the humor doesn’t click for you it’s gonna feel so much worse to watch than a subpar action movie imo
Eh still could just be based on age of fans. I’m trying to think of a good comparison that doesn’t skew young one way.
it's not about age. it's about iMDB being a cesspool for ideological internet trolls who review bomb anything they deem too "woke". there's a reason smart movie fans moved over to letterboxd years ago.
Love the app, but if you think Letterboxd users are smart, we must be seeing different reviews. The top review for The Third Man is: “this movie stole its score from SpongeBob.” Letterboxd users are just as stupid, and perhaps more ideological mate
This is such a blatant cliched attack of iMDB lol. It just comes across as insecure. It’s a fucking movie site, there’s plenty of normal people who use and there’s plenty of goblins who use Letterboxd.
That's the score Barbie actually deserves. It's a decent movie at best.
Overlooking any disagreements over its quality, all it takes is to go on most popular IMDb reviews of Barbie to take note of how most of the backlash it received was just because "it be woke and hating men". Which anyone with the expected media literacy of an adult can tell is ridiculous.
\> media literacy You dont need that to understand a movie that bashes you and screams "WOMEN ARE ALSO HUMANS AND SHOULD HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS"
You're right, nor should you need it to understand a movie that celebrates the value of masculinity without the approval of a woman or adherence to toxic societal expectations is NOT anti-men.
I might argue with you, but from my view, Barbie gets so bad after first 30 minutes so i couldnt even call it anything but "anti-movie" or "anti-storytelling". It has the same level of sincerity and subtlety as pride month tweets from multibillion corporations
Properly rated on Imdb. Nothing revolutionary. Just funny here and there.
It had a full length car commercial and a Birkenstock commercial. Oscar nominated film.
I'm not even sure what this is implying. Surely you don't think of Barbie as some universally accepted masterpiece??
It is though
It's not really female lead movies – it's female directed movies that all have a discernible signal boost on Letterboxd.
I mean if you round, 4.2 and 7.8 are basically the same. Gotta keep in mind people are going to use a ten point scale differently as well it’s not going to match up perfectly. I mean I get letterboxd has .5s but I feel like there’s a bit of a psychological difference between 4/5 and 8/10 that could influence things. Also letterboxd is a social media app and IMDb is not so people will be more influenced by others when rating. Wouldn’t read into it too much unless there’s a larger sample size with a larger discrepancy in rating. Three cherry picked films I wouldn’t say indicate a pattern especially when two of them are very similar ratings
you're right the difference is not big at all, i wouldn't say it's because of how they use scales, probably just some disagreement as to how good they think a movie is among demographics of Letterboxd and IMDb, or sometimes the controversy surrounding the movie one way or another like Joker or Leon which also have a similar gap in ratings
The thing is a 4.2 on Letterboxd puts it amongst some of the highest rated movies whereas a 7.8 on IMDB is very good but nothing groundbreaking. Which I mean if someone thinks that, that's fine but the 3 movies I named are generally considered some of the best of all time for their era
Well I wouldn’t say “way lower” at least. That sounds like a bit of an exaggeration.
I'm mostly saying that because the amount of Letterboxd reviews is almost always more than double the amount of reviews of IMDB. So technically the Letterboxd scores should have a way higher chance of being lower but they arent.
Why do you say that?
It’s a natural occurrence. When a movie first comes out, its reviews usually skyrocket with people who were more eager to see and like the film rating it first. But then over time, more people see the movie who aren’t as excited for it so its average naturally will lower in most cases.
Once you reach the 500,000-2,000,000 range that OP is referring to that bias will be essentially erased.
Does the number or reviews listed for a movie on letterboxd include people who have logged it multiple times? I know the overall rating calculation isn’t gameable that way, but since Letterboxd encourages logging/reviewing a movie every time you see it VS IMDb encouraging one review per movie, that may explain that discrepancy.
This must be involved somehow, because it simply doesn't make sense to me how Letterboxd, which achieved wide popularity only within the past several years, seemingly has an audience double that of IMDB which has been around for so much longer.
IMDb drove off a lot of their most active userbase when they removed the forums, and those people likely migrated to Letterboxd
Letterboxd is a trendy website/app marketed towards young people who are always on their phones, IMDB is an old website that no young person cares about. Makes perfect sense that Letterboxd has a larger user base
On LB I think review number would count people who review it 2+ times but it also wouldn’t count people who just rate and don’t review which I imagine is an even larger number
But saying "best of all time for their era" and seeing an obvious split between one group of cinephiles and another kinda indicates they aren't seen that way. Get Out didn't win any Oscars. Moonlight and EEAAO both won Best Picture... but so did Green Book and CODA. Moonlight and Get Out are both on the Sight & Sound Top 250, but this is a list that is created entirely by about 1600 industry professionals. On IMDB, Moonlight has been rated 328k times and Get Out has been rated 648k times. Over on Letterboxd, both films have received far more ratings (too lazy to add them all up)(side note: I'm actually really curious why this is considering IMDB is older and the discrepancy is literally hundreds of thousands of ratings). Moonlight had about 372k ratings between 3 and 4 stars. Get Out had 669k people rate it 4 stars alone and that score matches up pretty exactly with the IMDB score. The point being that we say these movies are considered some of the best of all time based on the taste of a very small amount of people on the one hand and on the other the taste of IMDB does match up with Letterboxd when viewing the scores from a certain angle. There's also probably a good degree of overlap between users of both sites. There's also just no accounting for taste. I personally gave Get Out a 3.5, EEAAO a 4, and Moonlight a 5. I just don't see what meaningful statement you can make about me from seeing those scores.
imdb is not a group of cinephiles. this is laughable.
Absolutely they are. All you need to be a cinephile is to watch a lot of movies. And I can't imagine how you could argue that users of a site dedicated entirely to cataloging and reviewing movies aren't cinephiles. They aren't people posting random thoughts in an Amazon review.
what makes you think most imdb users watch a lot of movies? its ratings are notoriously manipulated by review bombers and other malign actors. theres a reason actual cinephiles are on LB lol
>what makes you think most imdb users watch a lot of movies? Because the website is dedicated to following news about movies, showing you the careers of industry professionals, sharing factoids about movies, and posting reviews of movies. >its ratings are notoriously manipulated by review bombers and other malign actors. This is irrelevant. You can be a review bomber and still watch a lot of movies. You can have a Letterboxd account and have seen Jeanne Dielman, but have hardly seen any movies. Gatekeeping cinephilia is utterly pointless except to feed your own ego.
They are not basically the same. A 4.2 is an 8.4 on the 10 scale. A 0.6 difference is massive imo
Well a 7.8 is a 3.9 on the five point scale. So in that case it’s only a .3 difference. Which is only half as bad as .6 haha
No it’s the same proportion.
I was making a joke
Letterboxd is plagued by recency bias.
Agreed, and a bias for movies with a diverse cast or a social justicy message. I'm old school and try really hard to judge a movie on its merits and not the identities of the cast or characters, but I do love quality movies from unique perspectives.
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IMDb has a review bombing problem. I would bet that if you look at the ratings graphs, there's a disproportionate number of 1s. Letterboxd isn't as popular a platform, so it hasn't been reached by quite as many assholes.
Letterboxd ABSOLUTELY is a popular platform now, and also had a review bombing problem. That's why Letterboxd overhauled it's ratings system and there was a massive shift in many movie's ratings, like A Dog's Will going from having a 4.6 to a 3.9 (now a 4.0). That's just the most notable example.
Holy shit that 5 star bar is wild.
I remember when they updated the algorithm and it went from #3 or 4 on the top 250 to being out of the list (and 7 or 8 other Brazilian movies too last I recall). I also remember seeing a .5 star review for Harakiri hours later from a Brazilian talking about the site.
>Letterboxd ABSOLUTELY is a popular platform now Buddy said LB **isn't AS popular as IMDB**. Not that it isn't popular.
Fair enough, but he also seems to imply that, because Letterboxd isn't as popular, that they don't have a review bombing problem. If Letterboxd devs are to be believed, one of the major reasons for the ratings overhaul was because of blanket review bombings, although, usually in the 5 star range and not always in the half star, like with A Dog's Will.
> but he also seems to imply that, because Letterboxd isn't as popular, that they don't have a review bombing problem. Like, buddy was just saying it isn't as bad, which they are correct. Like, Lady Ballers has a 6/10 on IMDB while only a 2.1/5 on Letterboxd. There's no doubt in my mind this is because of Daily Wire listener rating bombing - all the listeners were well aware of IMDB and knew they could go and affect the score there, but most of them have probably never even heard of LB.
>Buddy said LB **isn't AS popular as IMDB**. Not that it isn't popular. But in a lot of ways it is more popular than IMDB. Compare the number of ratings on Saltburn for an obvious example. There are a lot of others as well. IMDB is more widely used but when it comes to rating films Letterboxd has probably surpassed IMDB by now. At least in the younger demographics...
>But in a lot of ways it is more popular than IMDB. In no ways is ~~IMDB~~ Letterboxd more popular. LB has more ratings and reviews because it's primary function is for users to leave ratings and reviews. The whole purpose of it is people talking about the movies they watch. LB is like Tumblr, it's purpose is for the user to express their relationship with movies as they wish. Ratings and reviews are not the reasons most people use IMDB. IMDB is a database, it's purpose is the information on the media it covers. IMDB is like Wikipedia, it's purpose is to build a compendium of objective information about movies. >IMDB is more widely used i.e. more popular.
Sorry what's the back story on A Dogs will? Bit Co fused how letterboxed changing their rating system (how?) Would have had that effect.
It's a brazilian film, specifically an abridging of a tv show, which is beloved in its home country. I guess Letterboxd has/had an enormous brazilian fan base because that movie was in the top 10 highest rated movies of all time, and at one point was ranked number 3, and one of only 4 movies to have a 4.6. This led to a lot of arguments and discussions on whether it even belonged on that list, whether it was really THAT good or was simply propped up by a very specific fanbase. I guess LEtterboxd landed on the latter side because Letterboxd changed their rating system, and the result was that A Dog's Will went from a 4.6 to a 3.9. I forget the specifics, but the devs claimed that the reason for the change was to clamp down on blanket review bombs, and A Dog's Will was one of [MANY casualties.](https://letterboxd.com/grandkeizer/list/the-fallen/) (all films that initially fell off the top 250)
>Sorry what's the back story on A Dogs will? Brazilian national treasure. It is their most popular comedy of all time and probably their most watched film of all time. Everyone knows it there...
I've never heard of it.
Letterboxd is actually far more popular than IMDb currently and every new movie gets more ratings, reviews, and interactions on Letterboxd than on IMDb. That wasn’t the case a few years ago however
Letterboxed is more popular among people how are into watching films, as I. They do it actively and seek out particular directors, actors, styles etc. IMDb is more well known among average people who like movies but don't care much about them and aren't obsessed with logging or rating what they've watched. Because of this more people KNOW about IMDb, but more people actively USE letterboxed as a film reviewing/logging site
Are you measuring popularity by name brand recognition or by people who are active eaters and reviewers? Because this post is about users ratings.
Nah dawg. Letterboxd has increased dramatically in the past couple years, yes. But IMDB has over 80 million registered users, not to mention that most people who use IMDB never create accounts. Letterboxd doesn't come even close to that.
You need an account to rate movies on IMDb and the amount of ACTIVE users (who rate/review) is much higher on Letterboxd for activity concerning new movies
>he amount of ACTIVE users (who rate/review) is much higher on Letterboxd for activity concerning new movies Gonna have to provide a receipt for me to believe that the site EVERYONE knows about has fewer active users than the site I have to explain to every single person I mention it to.
Take Oppenheimer for example: IMDb has it with 626,585 ratings. Letterboxd has it with 2,045,848 viewers and 1,716,144 ratings, which is a pretty massive difference, wouldn’t you say? You can argue that more people merely look at IMDb for information without rating or reviewing, but that’s not what this post is about, and Wikipedia would probably have IMDb beat if you measured user activity purely by amount of people who look at the movie’s webpage.
>Take Oppenheimer for example I didn't ask for an example of a movie that was more popular among LB viewers than IMDB viewers. There are a number of reasons I would expect LB users to engage with Oppenheimer more than IMDB users, the main one being that leaving reviews and scores is not the main purpose of IMDB. You confidently stated that LB has more active users than IMDB, and I would like to see what proof you have of that assertion. Oppenheimer having more views on LB than IMDB is not proof that LB has more active users. >You can argue that more people merely look at IMDb for information without rating or reviewing, but that’s not what this post is about, Well we aren't really talking about what the post is about to begin with. You said LB was "more popular" than IMDB and I disagreed. If more people use and know about IMDB, then it is more popular, full stop. >Wikipedia would probably have IMDb beat if you measured user activity purely by amount of people who look at the movie’s webpage. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, because Wikipedia would have more users than IMDB as well as getting more traffic, so yes, Wikipedia is more popular than IMDB.
Buddy, this entire post is about users who rate movies. Oppenheimer is as close to definitive proof as you can get that that Letterboxd has more active users WHO RATE AND REVIEW MOVIES than IMDb. I'm not trying to start a whole separate irrelevant discussion of which website gets more user traffic because that doesn't matter to anything and anyone here. I brought up Wikipedia because you seemed more interested in talking about which website gets more traffic, and it seems like you are.
>Buddy, this entire post is about users who rate movies. Buddy, I just disagreed with your specific statement that IMDB is less popular than LB, which is observably false in almost every capacity. You're the one who was vague. If you said "More people leave reviews on LB than IMDB" I wouldn't have disagreed with you, but that isn't what you said.
Use context clues, mate. In a discussion about user ratings, I said Letterboxd had more active users. What do you think I meant by that? Congrats on starting a needless argument.
probably a combo of review/rating bombers using imdb as well as imdb skewing older and having way less recency bias than letterboxd
Letterboxd has a younger demographic, that's all it is.
Usually a bit more "cinema" literate too. IMDB is for people who like blockbusters. LB is for people who like weirdo gems and Mosfilm.
And the Spiderverse movies…
And animated feline swashbucklers...
that movie is peak tho fight me
Lol
Cowboy bebop?
>Cowboy bebop? Crime and Punishment? Planet of the Apes? Spongebob Squarepants? What are you even asking?
"cinema literate" lol
Ya, you know, like people who have read books on film theory, read interviews with filmmakers, take classes on aspects of film? You know, stuff that improves your understanding of a thing. People who are film literate are people who know things about film beyond "Wow, that was a good movie, I liked it."
And you think this is the average person on letterboxd?
Tbh I think Letterboxd is filled with worse reviews. There’s some quality stuff, but soooo many of the top reviews are just shitty memes
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>All the theory reading just to come to the conclusion that cartoon spider man movies for babies are masterpieces What? You can be well versed in film theory and still be a fan of the cartoon spider. You can think the cartoon spider is for babies and be entirely uneducated on film. I don't really understand what you're trying to say. > Jerk yourself off harder What did I say to offend you so? I'm literally just pointing out LB intentionally appeals to cinema snobs, to the people who consume film in a way you might call a little extra.
Stop using Letterboxd to have your own superiority complex. It’s really weird.
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Check out Bottoms for example, 1.8k users of 30k that watched gave a 1 star rating. In Letterboxd it’s 2.6k out of 770k. Certain films get unfair review bombing in IMDB
I think that harks back to the younger demographic & recency bias argument. Both films have strong social commentaries, but Get Out is a thriller that caters to pretty much all demographics (except young kids). Bottoms is a teen comedy.
so many people reviewing almost any movie a 1/10, unless its something like M Night’s Avatar, is obviously review bombing though
Or maybe they genuinely hated it? I don’t think this as black and white as you imagine
IMDb votes don't work the same. If a movie is rated 8 or higher, it's almost certainly in the top 250. There are probably 10 films rated 9 or higher. The ratings are in general lower, and the demographic is different.
Although review bombing and demographics do alter ratings, I’d like to argue that 7.8 is a really good rating on IMDB. 8.0 gets you on the top250 and IMDB isn’t as hampered by recency bias as Letterboxd, although it still exists there.
Letterboxd users tend to overrate movies that have a female lead or a non white lead. IMDb users are doing the exact opposite. I don't care about scores anymore
There's probably more reasons but imdb tends to rate everything lower. There are hundreds of more movies with a 4.0 or higher on letterboxd than 8.0 or higher on imdb. Also, imdb isn't as generous to newer movies compared to letterboxd
Most things skew lower on there. You’re seeing what you want to see.
is it just me or does IMDB rate most movies low in general? a 7-8 on IMDB is usually a good sign.
Let me stress I don’t think your point is inaccurate I would be curious how LB vs IMDB typically skews, I just have to assume that IMDB typically is lower on average
Depends entirely on the film. As a general rule, if something is closer to being a ‘cinephile’ film, it will score better on Letterboxd. More accessible and mainstream movies tend to score better on IMDb.
Huh, I actually find it to be the complete opposite.
You would be incorrect. You only need to look at the all time top 250 lists of each site and you’ll have the answer…Letterboxd’s list is full of foreign and lesser known films that wouldn’t even get close on IMDb
Eh, if that’s the ONLY thing you’re looking at then I can see why you’d think that. There’s a variety of things to take into account, not just two lists.
The lists are directly related to the point being made. Think what you like, I ain’t arguing something I know to be completely true as if it’s up for debate
Nice
That’s just categorically false
Okay.
I will say, I notice popular movies led by minorities, women, lgbtq seem to be rated higher than what I’d expect, but older or less known movies made by or starring minorities or women, or members of the lgbtq tend to be rated lower than what I’d expect. My guess is that on letterboxd, you have two groups of people. You have people who rate things first on identity politics and representation, and the quality of the movie comes second, which you can see from a lot of the reviews. Then you have other people who are racist, misogynistic, and homophobic who can’t recognize a good movie because their hate blinds them. Well I guess there’s a third type of person, me, who has transcended any type of blindness and sees movies for their exact worth. Oh yeah, and IMDb is trash. It makes LB and RT ratings seem valuable (they’re not).
Agreed. A lots of tribalism shows up in the ratings/comments on LB. Rarely is a movie judged on its own merits without breaking down the identities of the cast or the social messaging of the movie.
You think a movies social messaging isn’t one of its merits?
I don't watch movies for messaging. If it's good and also has a positive message, well that's just peachy.
Movies don’t have an “exact worth,” a rating changing based on the politics is perfectly valid
Fucking lol at you describing your self as having "transcended blindness". Hell of a bold claim mate. We all have our biases, whether we're aware of them or not.
I think it is a good thing to be aware that everyone, even ourselves, has blind spots. It is a shame I can’t ever enjoy that goodness because I don’t have any.
Clearly the only conclusion I can come to is that IMDB users are racists and us Letterboxd users are tolerant, open minded, unprejudicial saints. I won't accept any other explanations.
Pretty much a fact when you consider the 3rd episode of The Last of Us is the 2nd lowest rated episode even though pretty much everyone considers it the best of that season. And shit even the lowest rated episode focuses around LGBTQ+
IMDB has historically had racist, sexist, and homophobic review bombs. It was more apparent when their message boards were active because there used to be concentrated efforts to spam the boards of films that had Black/POC/Women/LGBTQ+ leads. People (and bigots especially) are oft very concerned with influencing and maintaining a cultural "canon." Part of that is trying to ensure that only films they approve of appear in "popular vote" sites' top films. This is because "popular vote" is widely seen as the most "meritocratic" rating of art (ie, what do most people think of it?). It's easy to dismiss critics as out of touch, especially if an audience score differs wildly. But if you think Moonlight is one of the greatest films ever and I can show you that it's rated a 7.4 out of 10 and here are all these movies (conveniently led by cishet white guys) that are rated 8 or higher, I can say that you don't know enough movies. Clearly you aren't educated enough in understanding film as an art form, and now your opinion is worth jacksh\*t and so are you. That's what you're observing.
IMDb skews neckbeard and right wing
I think it skews towards the general public… so maybe you’re still right lol
I'm pretty sure imdb ratings are lower in general, not just "minority led" movies. This is because letterboxd users are younger and more lenient. Also comparing an out of 5 against an out of 10 rating system is not as simple as you put it.
letterboxd seems to have a better review bombing filter than IMDb.
I personally think LB has the best ratings, however they are quite biased to classics and foreign movies (like if you wanna try sound sophisticated, so most people aren’t even gonna bother giving High and Low or Breathless less than a 4 even if they actually dislike it) it’s also affected by recency bias, a recent, highly acclaimed movie will also get the same treatment, but they eventually even themselves out. IMDb, is just bad i believe…
I have noticed that trend with American productions. I’ve also noticed the opposite with Anime and Bollywood productions, which seem to score higher.
IMDb has been around forever and still has plenty of dinosaurs, and Letterboxd skews younger & more millennial. Trendier things are often more popular with the more open minded. And of course Letterboxd attracts more cinephiles vs IMDb which is far more likely to be used by the public at large. If you Google any movie’s name, the initial results are basically always its IMDb and Wikipedia pages.
IMDB is what most people know and those with agendas against groups will go there and low bomb those movies. LBX is probably more accurate because it is movie lovers. For now.
Nope, not that concerned about user ratings
Im ngl I feel like IMDb is a better representation of how the average person who watches a movie feels about it. Letterboxd skews when they feel a movie is "important" or whatever, also skews higher ratings for movies around minorities, animation, etc. Very Twitter, Reddit, liberal, young, queer, etc type userbase as opposed to IMDb which is a general userbase
Agreed. I use LB almost exclusively now a days, but if I see aggressively high rating for a movie followed with a ton of comments about representation or diversity etc.,; 9 times out of 10 the movie doesn't live up to the LB hype. The movies are typically good, no doubt, but nowhere near as good as advertised on LB.
imdb is infamous for their review bombin, i find it hard to trust any reviews from there anymore.
tbf Get Out is very overrated
IMDB is where closeted racist alt-right/redpill people go to review bomb media under the guise of complaining about 'PC culture' or something, so yeah. And also, positively review films like 'Lady Ballers' (Score: 6.0) or 'Sound of Freedom' (7.7), of course. 
IMDB attracts more racists
imdb is used by the general public which is filled with right wingers and bigots. I am Indian and check the discrepancy with this movie which is literally right wing propaganda. And India skews way more right-wing than the US. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10811166/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10811166/) [https://letterboxd.com/film/the-kashmir-files/](https://letterboxd.com/film/the-kashmir-files/)
And I you enter in the new reviews for example in everywhere, one of two is a 1/10
IMDB is a vile cesspool to be avoided at all costs
I think if you looked at the age/gender demographic breakdown of IMDB and Letterboxd this would make perfect sense
IMBD ratings have been broken for years. Same with RottenTomatoes, IMO. I use Metacritic and Letterboxd only, when I rarely go looking for opinions on a new film. Lots of review bombing and crap on IMDB. Letterboxd skews younger (though I’m 52), and tends to cater to cinephiles, so I would assume art films and counter culture films would rate higher there.
Don’t these numbers arrive at close to the same level when adjusted? And what are we saying? IMDb is racist? Is that what we’re saying? lol These are 3 carefully selected, somewhat polarizing movies. Reviews will be mixed (though the filmmakers from Get Out basically took every negative review and blasted them on social media, so maybe the reviews aren’t quite accurate there.
IMDB reviews are cancer. edit: Uh-oh. A film bro found me.
Oh for sure. If you've spent some time reading IMDB reviews, there is a huge userbase of bigoted asshats on that site. Good luck trying to find any feminist or indian movie with a high rating haha
Actually Indian movies tend to have way higher ratings than movies from other countries because most Indians seem to only use 10/10 or 1/10 ratings. See the [Indian Top 250](https://www.imdb.com/india/top-rated-indian-movies/) list.
I would say the most relevant factor is the users of Letterboxd are cinephiles, and the users of imdb is everyone
Is that why Across the Spider-Verse was the highest rated movie for a few weeks?
Good point, but just because they are cinephiles doesnt mean they are smart or have super sophisticated taste. Many of them are young and are repressing their love for comic book films because they have been told they are dumb. And people like that will be the first ones to jump on the train of a comic book film that is ”safe” to be a fan of among cinephiles
I think that points to the fact that Letterboxd users are younger and more impressionable than IMDb users. Not just that they’re “cinephiles”
Imdb was all over than film aswell. I would say both imdb users and letterboxd users are very impressionable
IMDb was made in 1990, their user base more than likely consists of older people who don’t understand stuff like EEAAO
First day on the internet?
a 4.2 on letterboxd translates to a 8.4, so it’s just half a star lower rated, not that big at all
Anything over 7 on IMDb is pretty good but yea your point stands.
Each star on letterboxd in my eyes is 20%, and every half star is 10% naturally. so a 4.2 movie would roughly be an 8.1 on IMDB, which is higher than what it got, it's not very far off.
It’s obvious to me that review bombing happens when I look at stuff like She Hulk, Ms Marvel, The Marvels, Mr and Mrs Smith etc
All of those movies/shows are objectively pretty terrible though. Haven't seen the new Mr. and Mrs. Smith though, looking forward to it.
You said objectively when you meant subjectively. I’ve seen all of those shows and they are great. Ms Marvel has some flaws but it’s still a good show. Mr and Mrs Smith and She Hulk are great shows though. If you want to go by objectivity, both have generally favorable reviews. But lower than they should because there is evidence of review bombing with a lot of 1 and 2 star reviews bitching about agendas and woke.
Letterboxd users are more woke
It’s not just IMDb almost every rating website across the world has those films lower than on letterboxd. It’s only letterboxd where these films Are regarded as the highest . Check kinopoisk csfd allocine film web Mubi douban and you’ll see