Most Popular Movies of 2015 on Letterboxd as of 24 February 2025: # of User Ratings vs. Actual Box Office
So I really enjoyed doing the "Letterboxd vs. Box Office series" but up until now it's been mostly recent years where Letterboxd is somewhat well known. So for the next post, I wanted to go back to a year when Letterboxd was still very very niche but still close enough to be relevant.
So why 2015? It's not the year with the biggest numbers - 2016, 2018, and 2019 have it beat. And in my opinion, it's far from the best year of the 2010s if we're talking quality of film. Well I thought it'd be good for several seconds.
Firstly, most of these films will be celebrating their 10th anniversary of wide relase this year. Second, what this year may lack in numbers and acclaim, as far as this sub goes this is probably the most important year of the 2010s as far as blockbusters go.
It was the year that brought back Jurassic Park, Rocky, Mad Max, and of course Star Wars not to mention what many see as the peak of the Fast & Furious franchise (as far as critical attention goes). It is also the end of Phase 2 of the MCU with the second Avengers movie surprisingly underwhelming. And there were also new IPs as far as film goes with Inside Out, Kinsgman: The Secret Service, and Fifty Shades of Grey.
It's also for me the big year of the indie boom that we're still seeing. We did see signs of momentum in 2012-2014 but this is really the first year we're seeing it break through. A24 finally started getting really awards attention with Ex Machina and Room picking up major award nominations and wins. From then on, we'd see more and more attention given to indie films from both A24 and other companies like NEON and Bleecker Street. It was the breakout year for a number of directors including Sean Baker, John Crowley, Alex Garland, Ryan Coogler and Adam McKay (as a "serious" director).
And finally while you won't see them on this list, this is a very important year as it's the first year direct-to-streaming movies really takes off. Beasts of No Nation and The Ridiculous 6 all debuted on Netflix. From then on, you'd see more and more films (both great and monstrocities) either being made or primarily distributed by companies like Netflix, Amazon, etc.
So yeah it's quite a significant year all things considered and it's very interesting looking back on this year a decade later and seeing what's really stuck around.
And remember these are films that had their wide distribution in 2015 so films like Green Room and The Witch, though they had their premieres at festivals in 2015, weren't publicaly released until the following year.
| Letterboxd Rank | Movie | Letterboxd Grade | # of User Ratings | Global Box Office | Global Box Office Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1. | Inside Out | 3.85 | 2,216,668 | $850,309,035 | #7 |
| #2. | Mad Max: Fury Road | 4.18 | 1,637,317 | $380,463,726 | #20 |
| #3. | Star Wars: The Force Awakens | 3.28 | 1,382,747 | $2,056,046,835 | #1 |
| #4. | Avengers: Age of Ultron | 3.15 | 1,343,829 | $1,395,316,979 | #4 |
| #5. | The Martian | 3.77 | 1,230,602 | $653,609,107 | #9 |
| #6. | Ant-Man | 3.23 | 1,191,372 | $518,858,449 | #14 |
| #7. | Kingsman: The Secret Service | 3.74 | 1,058,197 | $404,561,724 | #18 |
| #8. | Ex Machina | 3.98 | 1,040,337 | $38,261,299 | #159 |
| #9. | The Revenant | 3.88 | 1,021,828 | $532,938,302 | #13 |
| #10. | The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 | 3.36 | 946,173 | $646,219,954 | #10 |
| #11. | The Hateful Eight | 3.97 | 923,621 | $151,813,358 | #50 |
| #12. | The Lobster | 3.77 | 898,780 | $17,985,061 | #229 |
| #13. | Jurassic World | 3.06 | 849,515 | $1,671,063,641 | #2 |
| #14. | The Big Short | 3.83 | 760,750 | $132,624,681 | #57 |
| #15. | Room | 3.97 | 675,506 | $36,316,727 | #165 |
| #16. | Sicario | 3.98 | 663,463 | $84,264,182 | #89 |
| #17. | It Follows | 3.56 | 650,469 | $23,236,296 | #210 |
| #18. | Creed | 3.8 | 500,853 | $174,167,581 | #42 |
| #19. | Carol | 4.02 | 485,315 | $41,925,420 | #150 |
| #20. | Spotlight | 4.1 | 474,495 | $91,902,438 | #84 |
| #21. | Spectre | 3.19 | 455,756 | $879,077,344 | #6 |
| #22. | Minions | 2.89 | 448,204 | $1,157,271,759 | #5 |
| #23. | Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation | 3.72 | 400,800 | $688,858,992 | #8 |
| #24. | Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials | 3 | 390,664 | $310,566,162 | #25 |
| #25. | The Intern | 3.3 | 346,809 | $197,115,710 | #40 |
| #26. | Pitch Perfect 2 | 2.98 | 337,471 | $287,215,196 | #27 |
| #27. | Fifty Shades of Grey | 1.79 | 329,118 | $570,794,950 | #11 |
| #28. | The Visit | 3.09 | 322,809 | $98,677,816 | #77 |
| #29. | Furious 7 | 3.22 | 319,983 | $1,511,986,364 | #3 |
| #30. | Cinderella [2015] | 3.27 | 319,513 | $542,351,353 | #12 |
| #31. | Pixels | 2.25 | 296,371 | $244,041,804 | #31 |
| #32. | Crimson Peak | 3.39 | 293,540 | $74,966,854 | #97 |
| #33. | The Good Dinosaur | 2.89 | 281,423 | $333,771,037 | #22 |
| #34. | Straight Outta Compton | 3.79 | 277,373 | $202,182,981 | #39 |
| #35. | The Man from U.N.C.L.E. | 3.46 | 273,164 | $110,045,109 | #67 |
| #36. | Insurgent | 2.48 | 269,753 | $295,075,882 | #26 |
| #37. | Ted 2 | 2.77 | 255,999 | $217,214,143 | #36 |
| #38. | Focus | 3.09 | 248,416 | $168,065,700 | #44 |
| #39. | Hotel Transylvania 2 | 2.94 | 243,587 | $474,800,000 | #15 |
| #40. | The Age of Adaline | 3.24 | 239,979 | $68,984,536 | #101 |
| #41. | Me and Earl and the Dying Girl | 3.84 | 236,883 | $9,266,180 | N/A |
| #42. | The DUFF | 2.56 | 220,113 | $43,528,634 | #143 |
| #43. | Steve Jobs | 3.63 | 209,831 | $35,579,007 | #167 |
| #44. | The Danish Girl | 3.39 | 209,077 | $67,514,963 | #103 |
| #45. | Southpaw | 3.59 | 218,309 | $94,156,456 | #83 |
| #46. | Fant4stic | 1.33 | 205,044 | $167,849,187 | #45 |
| #47. | Spy | 3.19 | 197,668 | $233,844,106 | #34 |
| #48. | Brooklyn | 3.78 | 197,494 | $62,076,141 | #112 |
| #49. | Bridge of Spies | 3.6 | 189,739 | $162,498,338 | #47 |
| #50. | San Andreas | 2.47 | 189,365 | $474,590,832 | #16 |
A couple of cute observations:
- Interesting to see Spotlight is the 6th popular Best Picture nominee from this year. I understand it's far from the flashiest film (and I know that's the point) so isn't too much of a shock MM:FR, The Revenant, and The Martian are above it but I am surprised Room and The Big Short are.
- Even more surprised the score for The Danish Girl is even above a 3 given the progressive and queer audience on Letterboxd. You just know if this film came out now, it would be even more criticized and I remember it was already not looked upon favorably back in the day. Not quite Emilia Pérez backlash but "white guy putting on make-up to play trans woman in basic Oscar bait" wouldn't be quite as accepted.
- I think it's so funny how both in terms of box office and critical attention, this is by far the peak of the Fifty Shades series and it's even crazier that if say, The Martian wasn't as big as it was, it would've been the 10th Biggest film of 2015.
- A couple blockbusters (grossed $200M+) that aren't here: Home, Terminator Genisys, Taken 3, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, Daddy's Home, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, The Peanuts Movie, Everest, Tomorrowland, Gang jiong, Zhuo yao ji, Xia Luo Te Fan Nao, and The Ghouls
- Fant4stic isn't just the lowest rated film here, I believe it's one of the lowest rated blockbusters of all time on the site. I think Last Airbender is the only film with an even worse grade.
- Not exactly surprised at the lukewarm rating for Force Awakens 10 years on. I get it, I still quite love the film but I understand what the general consensus is. I'm even less shocked at the ratings for Spectre, Jurassic World, and Age of Ultron and honestly, I think all three should be lower. Age of Ultron especially, I think gets worse and worse and I think is one of the first examples of all the problems we see with modern MCU projects nowadays.
- You can definitely tell how still relatively young the demographic of Letterboxd is with the number of coming-of-age films, YA adaptations, and romance films are here.
- Could've sworn the grade for The Lobster was much higher than I remember, I swear I thought it averaged somewhere around 3.9 or 4.