Once something gets as big as reddit it's probably difficult to call it a "community" in any real sense. It's a community in the same way that usenet (in it's entirety) is a community.
Front page stuff is going to naturally be things that appeals to the largest cross section of people, you see this on HN too to an extent. A blog post talking about a novel application of an obscure algorithm languishes at the bottom with 10 comments whilst "popular blogger bashes Windows 8" gets to the top with ~300 comments.
I like to think of subreddits more as an easier alternative to installing phpBB than as a part of the whole.
Maybe you're right about subreddits, but I still think it'll hurt the subcommunities to be associated with a larger more immature whole. Now if reddit was just search engine for forums and each forum was more independent, that would be different.
There are plenty of subreddits that have communities of their own.
It might not be that movie though. Still, have you seen the top raved about films on HN (there was a frontpage show hn on this recently)? Pretty obvious, typical choices. And there is nothing wrong with that. I'm cool with your reddit opinions. Just weird to use comments about a movie as an example against reddit and then swing over to endorsing HN.
But still, the movies that are gushed about here are so typical and mainstream and many times mirror imdb's top movies that it really makes any case of trying to use movie opinions to show HN as better than Reddit rather silly.
I am not 17. I am 38.
Just a few days ago, there was this trailer on the front page, for a movie with mecha robots fighting godzillas or something, and it was just... terrible. For whatever reason, maybe to get some reassurance, I read the comments. 3000 people falling over themselves wanking over it. In disbelief I loaded more and more comments just to try and find at least one negative comment. What are these people, 17 year-olds? And then it hit me. They ARE 17 year-olds.
I get it, subreddits blah blah blah, but there's no point. Sticking to subreddits destroys the sense of community which is so important for online forums. When the front page is dominated by teenagers, how long do you think others will stick to the site? Not to mention, having to log in to see your own specialized front page is a hassle when you're on many devices and don't really care enough to have an active account. Subreddit discovery is also too difficult, and then there's the whole filter bubble going on. I'd prefer a general purpose forum with higher quality people than hiding in some corner of a site dominated by teenagers.
More and more, HN is filling that purpose for me, with a healthy balance of tech and non-tech. I sort of wish there was a separation between "tech" and "general" though, so that the general discussions could expand without affecting the tech side of things.